Foresight published a review of Pons, the token tied to a launchpad on the Robinhood chain, and used it to question a popular claim in the market: that anyone who wanted exposure during this cycle should simply have bought the strongest consensus leader, Pons, from the outset.
The article, based on a social media post listed in its reference section, argued that a sector leader is rarely obvious at the beginning. Even after a project is recognized as the leader, that position can still be overturned later. On that basis, the idea of “holding the leader from day one” was presented as far less practical than hindsight makes it appear.
From NOXA to Pons, then pressure from pools.trade
According to the review, the earliest launchpad to appear on the Robinhood chain was NOXA, which at the time was the clear leader in the segment. That changed quickly after NOXA ran into an incident and stopped operating. Pons then emerged and took over the traffic and attention that NOXA had accumulated, becoming the new leader.
That leadership did not last unchallenged. Uniswap later launched its own launchpad, pools.trade. Given Uniswap’s visibility and influence, traffic moved rapidly from Pons to pools.trade, and Pons lost its leading position.
Pons regained attention after pools.trade failed to gain traction
The article said pools.trade did not succeed in building out the business after it went live. At the same time, the Pons team moved quickly with a new mechanism, stepped up buybacks, and pushed listings more aggressively. Those steps gradually pulled traffic and attention back from pools.trade, allowing Pons to retake the top spot, where it has remained.
That sequence was central to the article’s broader point: Pons did not become the Robinhood chain’s leading launchpad token through a straight, predictable path. Its rise involved setbacks, competition, reversals and timing.
What a “normal” decision process would have looked like
The piece then asked what a more reasonable and risk-aware path of participation might have been. Its answer started with a simple premise: investors should participate in the leader, but they also need to reassess when the leader runs into trouble.
Using that framework, the article argued that a rational participant would likely have entered NOXA first, because NOXA was the only undisputed leader when it appeared. After NOXA’s incident, that person would need to judge whether the team could recover. If the answer was no, the logical next move would be to exit and rotate into the next target, Pons.
After entering Pons, the next major decision point would have come when Uniswap launched pools.trade. The article said Uniswap’s advantages over Pons were so large at that time that continuing to hold Pons would not have been an easy or obvious choice.
The pressure did not stop there. Once pools.trade began operating, sentiment among users worsened and the market broadly expected Pons to fail. The article said the Pons price at one stage fell by nearly 50%. Anyone who wanted to stay through that period and still capture the eventual recovery had to keep conviction through a deep drawdown.
Three 50% calls and a 12.5% outcome
To show how difficult that path would have been, the review set out three hypothetical decision points, each with a 50% chance of being called correctly:
- After NOXA’s incident, a participant has a 50% chance of correctly deciding that the team will not recover and moving into Pons.
- After Uniswap launches pools.trade, the participant has a 50% chance of correctly believing Pons can still beat Uniswap and holding on.
- When Pons falls by nearly 50%, the participant has a 50% chance of maintaining strong enough conviction to keep the position.
Multiplying those assumptions produces a 12.5% result.
On the article’s reading, that means a participant would have needed to follow the Robinhood chain launchpad segment from the start, identify Pons, and then make the right call in several separate episodes that only look straightforward after the fact. The chance of ending up with a large win under that path was put at just 12.5%, only slightly above 10%.
The article compared that number with baccarat odds
To put the figure in context, the piece cited common baccarat win rates in Macau: about 45.8% for betting on banker and about 44.6% for betting on player.
Its conclusion was blunt. For a rational participant, the probability of making extraordinary gains from Pons was still far below the win rate of a banker bet in baccarat.
Pons’ rise was not framed as pure inevitability
Returning to the project’s trajectory, the article added that when Uniswap launched pools.trade and Pons faced a real risk of being pushed out, the Pons team’s stronger buybacks and aggressive listing measures may not even have come from certainty that the strategy would revive the project. The piece suggested those moves may have been more like an urgent attempt under pressure.
That is why the review said Pons’ eventual position as the Robinhood chain leader carried a significant element of opportunity and timing, even while acknowledging that the team itself was strong.
It then drew a broader distinction between speculation and investing. In the article’s view, capturing large gains in Pons from the very beginning would have required unusually strong judgment, while ordinary participants were relying heavily on luck.
Wait until the picture is clear, the article says
The review closed by paraphrasing Duan Yongping’s investment approach. In that account, he does not buy a target very early. He waits until he can clearly understand the business, especially whether it can continue making money over the long term, and only then takes a large position.
If he cannot find such a target, or if the price is already too high by the time the picture becomes clear, he would rather miss it than force a trade.
The article said that approach is more realistic for ordinary people to follow. For names like Pons, it argued, standing aside or missing the trade is not necessarily a bad outcome. It added that readers joining purely with a gambling mindset could ignore that line of reasoning.
Reference: https://x.com/btckik/status/2095709905995100412?s=46
Disclaimer: Markets carry risk, and investment decisions require caution. The article does not constitute investment advice. Readers should consider whether any opinion, view or conclusion fits their own circumstances and bear responsibility for their own decisions.
