The X account of Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was compromised on Thursday by bad actors attempting to promote a fraudulent cryptocurrency token. A post published to Tenev’s account claimed that Robinhood was launching a native memecoin named Vladhood (VLAD) as the official mascot for Robinhood Chain, promising a future listing on the main Robinhood trading application alongside a smart contract address.
Neither the official Robinhood nor Robinhood Crypto X accounts amplified the announcement. The official block explorer for Robinhood Chain quickly flagged the token contract, deployed via a launchpad protocol, as a potential scam. Despite the warning, the fake contract recorded nearly 1,900 transactions before the fraudulent posts were taken down.
Robinhood’s communications team later confirmed the security breach, stating they were working alongside X to restore full access to Tenev’s account and secure the profile.
The security incident highlights ongoing volatility surrounding Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer-2 network built on the Arbitrum Orbit stack. While Robinhood engineered the network to support tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), speculative memecoin activity has dominated early adoption. Per Entropy Advisors, Robinhood Chain has processed nearly $9 billion in cumulative decentralized exchange volume since its launch, driven largely by high-risk retail trading activity.
