On Tuesday, the American financial services firm Robinhood Markets Inc. announced that it was rolling out its new non-custodial Web3 crypto wallet.
Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company said that the product supports the blockchain network called Polygon.
Currently, the application is only available for iOS users and 10,000 clients on the waitlist of the company will be able to access its beta version for now.
Crypto products
In the last year, Robinhood Markets has indicated its interest in developing crypto products and services for its clients.
At the end of January this year, the company launched the beta version of its crypto wallet, which offers support for bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and dogecoin (DOGE).
The availability of the crypto wallet was expanded to about 2 million customers of Robinhood back in April and in mid-May, the company had hinted at the release of a non-custodial Web3 wallet.
Now, it has announced the launch of the beta version of the wallet, which will initially offer support for the Polygon (MATIC) network.
Compatible with Ethereum, it is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain and this means that the Web3 wallet will be supported by everything connected to the Polygon network, including decentralized applications (dapps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
The blockchain
On Tuesday, Robinhood disclosed that they had opted for Polygon because of the speed and scalability that the network had to offer, along with its inexpensive network fees.
However, the company did add that Polygon would not be the exclusive blockchain for its Web3 wallet because they intended to make it a multi-chain wallet.
Robinhood said that the wallet was worth waiting for and only 10,000 customers would be able to use its beta version for now.
Robinhood Crypto’s chief technology officer, Johann Kerbrat said that the new product offers accessibility and new opportunities.
He said that just like they had accomplished with the stock market, the wallet takes away some of the complexities associated with DeFi and Web3 in order to make crypto more accessible to all.
NFT support
Even though the new product is currently a Web3 client, it should be noted that Robinhood has not yet added support for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
But, it is possible to use the Web3 wallet for connecting to DeFi apps, engage in yield farming programs and also access liquidity pools.
Robinhood also said that even though they had rolled out the wallet to 10,000 customers, for now, there had been about 1 million who had signed up on the waitlist.
The company is looking to expand its crypto offerings amidst a crypto market downturn, which has also affected its business significantly.
Polygon also responded to the announcement from Robinhood about the wallet launch. On Tuesday, its official Twitter account said that this launch would be immensely helpful for those interested in DeFi.
This is because it would allow them to get access to onchain DeFi and do it through a low gas infrastructure.
