Connect and read the chain in 5 minutes

Talk is cheap. In the next five minutes you'll connect to Robinhood Chain and pull real data off it — the current block height, the chain ID, and the gas price — with about fifteen lines of code. No wallet, no funds, no signup. Reads are free and public.

#Add the network to a wallet (optional, 60 seconds)

You don't need a wallet for reads, but if you want to poke around a block explorer with a browser wallet, add the network manually. In MetaMask: Settings → Networks → Add network → Add manually, then:

Network name:     Robinhood Chain
RPC URL:          https://rpc.mainnet.chain.robinhood.com
Chain ID:         4663
Currency symbol:  ETH
Block explorer:   https://robinhoodchain.blockscout.com

For anything that spends, use testnet (chain ID 46630, RPC https://rpc.testnet.chain.robinhood.com) and claim funds from the faucet first.

#Read the chain with raw JSON-RPC (zero dependencies)

Before any library, prove the RPC is real with nothing but curl. This asks the node for its chain ID:

curl -s https://rpc.mainnet.chain.robinhood.com \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"eth_chainId","params":[]}'

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"result":"0x1237"}

0x1237 is 4663 in decimal — the mainnet chain ID. The chain is answering. That's the entire foundation of everything that follows.

#Read the chain with viem

curl is fine for a sanity check; for real work you want typed results and helpers. Install viem:

npm init -y
npm install viem
npm pkg set type=module

Create read.ts (or .mjs) and paste:

import { createPublicClient, http, formatGwei } from 'viem'
import { robinhood } from 'viem/chains'

const client = createPublicClient({
  chain: robinhood,           // viem's official chain def — chain ID 4663
  transport: http(),          // uses the public RPC from the chain def
})

const [blockNumber, gasPrice, chainId] = await Promise.all([
  client.getBlockNumber(),
  client.getGasPrice(),
  client.getChainId(),
])

console.log(`chain id      ${chainId}`)
console.log(`block height  ${blockNumber}`)
console.log(`gas price     ${formatGwei(gasPrice)} gwei`)

Run it:

npx tsx read.ts

chain id      4663
block height  7727411
gas price     0.01 gwei

That block number was live when this tutorial was written; yours will be higher, because Robinhood Chain produces a new block roughly every 100 milliseconds. Do the math: that's on the order of half a million blocks a day. Keep it in mind when you scan historical logs later — "the last hour" is tens of thousands of blocks.

#Use a faster RPC (when the public one isn't enough)

The public RPC is perfect for learning and light apps, but it rate-limits. The moment you're scanning large block ranges or serving users, move to a dedicated endpoint. Alchemy is the recommended provider:

const client = createPublicClient({
  chain: robinhood,
  transport: http(`https://robinhood-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/${process.env.ALCHEMY_KEY}`),
})

You'll feel the difference immediately in Tutorial 7 when scanning launchpad history — the public RPC will return 429 Too Many Requests on a wide scan; a dedicated key won't.

#Skip the boilerplate: the hoodchain client

Everything above is standard viem. As your app grows you'll want the batteries-included client from the hoodchain SDK — it wraps viem with multicall batching on by default, both networks pre-wired, and an optional wallet:

npm install hoodchain viem

import { createHoodClient } from 'hoodchain'

const hood = createHoodClient() // mainnet 4663, public RPC, multicall batching on
console.log('block', await hood.public.getBlockNumber())

hood.public is a normal viem PublicClient, so nothing you learned is wasted — the SDK just removes the setup. From the next tutorial on, we use createHoodClient because it also knows about Stock Tokens, feeds, and swaps, which raw viem does not. When you need to drop to the metal, hood.public and hood.wallet are right there.

#Troubleshooting

Cannot use import statement outside a module — add "type": "module" to your package.json (npm pkg set type=module), or use the .mjs extension.

fetch failed / ECONNREFUSED — check the RPC URL for a typo; it's rpc.mainnet.chain.robinhood.com, no port, HTTPS. Confirm you have network access with the curl command above.

npx tsx is slow the first time — tsx is being downloaded. Install it once (npm i -D tsx) to make subsequent runs instant.

The block number looks huge / grows while you watch — that's correct. ~100 ms blocks. It's a feature, not a bug.

#What you learned

You connected to Robinhood Chain three ways — raw curl, plain viem, and the hoodchain client — and read live data with each. You know reads are free and keyless, why block numbers are enormous, and when to upgrade off the public RPC. Next, the one concept that makes Stock Tokens different from every other ERC-20 you've touched.