Sherwood Launches First Agentic Finance Protocol on Robinhood Chain to Secure AI Trading

Sherwood is launching as the first agentic finance protocol on Robinhood Chain to solve the "bring your own agent" friction currently hindering automated trading. By moving agentic strategies onchain, the protocol allows users to participate in AI-driven portfolios without needing technical expertise, addressing a critical usability gap in the rapidly expanding autonomous finance sector.

What was announced

Sherwood is building an onchain layer where AI agents propose strategies, "guardians" verify them, and smart contracts execute the decisions. This development follows Robinhood's decision in May 2026 to allow AI agents to trade via its platform. While Robinhood reported that over 100,000 agentic accounts were opened within two months of launch, the current model requires users to build, prompt, and supervise their own software agents. Sherwood aims to bridge this gap by shifting the technical burden away from the individual investor.

The protocol operates through a vault-based system. Capital is held in standard onchain vaults where depositors pool funds and receive shares. Instead of an agent holding private keys and funds directly, it must submit a proposal to the vault that commits to specific onchain calls. These proposals undergo two distinct checks: a review window where depositors can vote them down, and a verification process by "guardians" who have staked the protocol’s $WOOD token. These guardians replay the proposed transactions on a simulated fork of the chain to ensure the calls are not malicious or broken. Only proposals that clear both hurdles can execute.

During its beta phase on a fork of Robinhood Chain, Sherwood saw 125 vaults created by agents. These agents proposed 304 strategies across portfolio management, Morpho lending, and concentrated liquidity. The guardian network, through 1,116 votes, blocked approximately 8 percent of these proposals before they could go live. The protocol uses a fixed supply of one billion $WOOD tokens, which serve as the economic weight behind the review process. The system is designed to work across tokenized stocks, real-world assets, and crypto, with audited open-source contracts provided by Nethermind.

"Robinhood proved the demand. In two months, more than a hundred thousand people chose to hand trading to an agent, and most of them still have to build and watch that agent on their own. The next step happens onchain, where agents coordinate like a hedge fund and execute strategies under mandates the contracts enforce, with a track record anyone can read. Robinhood Chain is the natural place to build that."

Carlos Beltran, cofounder at Sherwood.

The companies involved

Robinhood, led by Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Vlad Tenev, has transformed from a retail-focused brokerage into a significant infrastructure provider for the onchain ecosystem. Its Robinhood Chain serves as a layer two network for financial services and tokenized real-world assets, which are currently available in more than 120 countries. The company has a substantial presence in the fintech sector, with 44 previous stories documented by FF News covering its expansion into AI, travel, and global finance operations.

Sherwood is a protocol specifically designed for the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, founded by computer scientist Carlos Beltran and Ana Julia. Beltran has a background in building Solidity protocols across DeFi and SocialFi since 2020, having served as a core contributor at Moonwell and Mamo. The project is also supported by advisor Luke Youngblood, who is a cofounder and advisor at Moonwell. Sherwood positions itself as the security and coordination layer for agentic finance, moving away from the "sandbox" model of individual agent management toward a decentralized, managed protocol. The protocol plans to eventually hand control of its parameters to token holder governance.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely followed Robinhood’s aggressive pivot toward automated and onchain services throughout 2026. In October, we reported that Robinhood Unveils AI Trading Agents and 24/7 Weekend Stock Trading at HOOD Summit 2026, which established the "bring your own agent" model Sherwood is now building upon. This followed the launch of third-party tools for the ecosystem, such as when Narravance Launches Viral Stocks Detector for Robinhood’s Agentic Trading Ecosystem. Beyond its trading core, we also covered how Robinhood Integrates Duffel to Launch Embedded Travel Booking for Premium Cardholders and how the company Scales Global Finance Operations with Ramp Integration to support its international growth.

What this means

The arrival of Sherwood signals a shift from experimental, developer-centric AI trading toward a structured financial product. By introducing a guardian layer and staked verification, the protocol addresses the primary barrier to mass adoption: the "black box" risk of autonomous agents. This move puts pressure on traditional wealth managers and robo-advisors, who may struggle to compete with the transparency and real-time execution of onchain agentic protocols. However, the sector faces significant regulatory headwinds as global authorities determine how existing financial rules apply to AI actors. The success of this model will ultimately depend on whether the guardian network can scale without introducing latency that negates the speed advantages of AI-driven trading.