HONG KONG — Robinhood launched its public testnet for its own Ethereum layer-2 blockchain on Wednesday with plans for broader launch later this year as the brokerage app aims to move more trading activity onchain.

The new network, called Robinhood Chain, is built on Arbitrum and is designed to support tokenized real-world assets, including equities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other assets. Developers will be able to publicly build on the network for the first time after six months of private testing, ahead of a future mainnet launch, the company announced at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference.

With the chain, Robinhood aims to allow users to trade 24/7 and self-custody their assets in Robinhood’s own crypto wallet. Users…