The team behind dYdX just launched a new exchange that lets you trade Tesla stock and a 50x leveraged perpetual contract from the same self-custodial wallet. Arcus, which went live on July 1 on Robinhood Chain, is what happens when a DeFi trading powerhouse and a retail brokerage giant decide traditional finance needs to live onchain.

The platform already processed nearly 285,000 transactions in its first week, racking up $33 million in trading volume and $15 million in total value locked.

What Arcus actually does

Here’s the pitch: around 95 tokenized stock tokens available for fee-free trading, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No waiting for the NYSE to open. No settlement delays. Just onchain representations of equities that trade whenever you want them to.

Then there’s the spicier side. Arcus also offers 35 real-world asset perpetual futures contracts with leverage up to 50x. In English: you can take outsized bets on traditional assets using DeFi infrastructure, with no intermediary holding your funds.

The real kicker is composability. Tokenized stocks on Arcus can be used as collateral for perpetual futures positions. So if you’re holding Apple stock tokens, you can put them to work backing a leveraged trade.

Arcus runs on Robinhood Chain, a Layer-2 network built using Arbitrum Orbit technology. The platform is accessible in over 120 countries, though notably not in the US, Canada, or the UK. Eddie Zhang serves as CEO of the project, with dYdX founder Antonio Juliano sitting on the board. The team has been careful to note that Arcus operates separately from the dYdX v4 Chain, positioning it as a distinct product rather than a rebrand.

What this means for investors

The planned ARCUS governance token is the obvious thing to watch. The team has indicated reserved allocations for the existing dYdX community, which could create interesting dynamics for current dYdX token holders. No tokens are available for trading yet.

The 50x leverage on RWA perpetuals deserves scrutiny. The platform’s decision to exclude the US, Canada, and the UK from its 120-country footprint is a preemptive compliance move, but the regulatory landscape for tokenized securities remains deeply unsettled globally.