Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev's X Account Hacked to Promote Fraudulent 'Vladhood' Memecoin

Jul 23, 2026

On July 23, 2026, hackers compromised Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev's X account to promote a fraudulent meme coin named Vladhood (VLAD). The post falsely claimed the token was the official mascot of Robinhood Chain and would be listed on the Robinhood app. The Defiant reported that the token creator collected about 31.6 ETH in trading fees and approximately 72 million VLAD, while on-chain monitor MLM separately estimated that the attacker generated around 650 ETH in proceeds, worth approximately $1.2 million to $1.3 million. Robinhood confirmed the compromise, said the unauthorized post had been removed and stated that it was working with X to restore access.

Vladhood memecoin scam deployment

▪The Vladhood token contract was deployed through PonsLaunchFactory and was quickly flagged as a potential scam by Robinhood Chain's blockchain explorer.
▪Attackers hijacked Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev's verified X account on July 23, 2026, to promote a fraudulent meme coin called Vladhood under the ticker VLAD.
▪The fraudulent post falsely claimed that Vladhood was the official mascot of Robinhood Chain and would be listed on the Robinhood trading app.

Coordinated attack timing

▪The wallet behind Vladhood, funded with 0.2955 ETH from a Relay cross-chain bridge solver at 11:25 am ET on July 23, 2026, launched the token at 12:38 pm ET.
▪The fraudulent promotion post went up on Vlad Tenev's X account 46 minutes after the token was launched, which The Defiant said indicated that the token launch and account takeover were part of a single coordinated operation.

Trading fee harvesting mechanism

▪According to Blockscout data cited by The Defiant, the Vladhood token creator called a locker contract's fee-collection function six times, collecting about 31.6 ETH and approximately 72 million VLAD.
▪According to on-chain monitor MLM, the attacker generated around 650 ETH in proceeds from the VLAD token, worth approximately $1.2 million to $1.3 million.

Robinhood account compromise response

▪The fraudulent post on Vlad Tenev's account attracted over 175,000 views in less than 20 minutes before users identified it as a scam and warned others.
▪Robinhood's communications team confirmed the compromise on July 23, 2026, stating they were working with X to restore access and that the unauthorized post was removed.

Robinhood Chain scam pattern

▪The Vladhood incident is at least the third social media scam tied to Robinhood Chain since its launch, following a hijacked SpaceX/Starlink promotion and a fake seed phrase leak claim.
▪Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer 2 network built on the Arbitrum Orbit stack, launched on July 1, 2026, to host tokenized stocks and real-world assets.
▪According to Entropy Advisors data cited by The Block, Robinhood Chain had generated approximately $9 billion in cumulative decentralized exchange volume, primarily driven by higher-risk memecoins.