Robinhood Chain collected more gas fees over the past 24 hours than any other blockchain, after memecoin launch activity pushed the two-month-old network’s base fee far above the lowest price its contracts allow, The Defiant reported, citing DefiLlama data.
Most of that jump came from price rather than raw transaction growth. Over the same stretch, transactions on the chain increased by about 36%, while the execution gas cost of an average transaction moved from under $0.01 to about $0.32. Robinhood is currently covering those fees for customers who swap inside the Robinhood Wallet app under a promotion that expires on Sept. 29, 2026.
Users paid $4.45 million in gas on Sept. 2, up 18.8% from the previous day and 82 times the $54,254 paid on Aug. 22, according to DefiLlama. Its accounting includes both Robinhood Chain execution fees and the Ethereum data component. Canton ranked second that day at $1.69 million, followed by Tron at $873,930, Solana at $612,579, BNB Chain at $480,271, and Ethereum at $304,277.
Over the past seven days, the chain generated $12.44 million in gas fees, equal to roughly two-thirds of the $18.45 million it has earned since its mainnet launch on July 1.
Base fee moved off the 0.02 gwei floor
Robinhood Chain enforces a minimum gas price of 20 million wei, or 0.02 gwei. That value can be read from the ArbGasInfo precompile at address 0x6c, and it matches the default used by Arbitrum One.
Blocks sampled directly from the chain’s public RPC endpoint show the median base fee sitting at that floor from Aug. 17 through Aug. 23. Since Aug. 24, it has remained above the minimum every day.
During the 24 hours to 16:27 UTC on Sept. 3, the median base fee across 600 sampled blocks came in at 0.467 gwei, or 23 times the floor, with intraday readings above 5 gwei. At the same moment, Arbitrum One was at 0.02 gwei and Base at 0.005 gwei.
| Measured onchain | Aug. 21-22 | Sept. 2-3 |
|---|---|---|
| Median base fee | 0.0201 gwei | 0.467 gwei |
| Gas consumed per second | 13.2 million | 36.9 million |
| Transactions per block | 9.96 | 13.97 |
| Gas per transaction | 132,766 | 272,229 |
| Execution gas cost per transaction | under $0.01 | $0.32 |
At intraday peaks, a transaction of that size costs roughly $3.40. The report noted that DefiLlama’s 82-fold increase runs ahead of the 47-fold rise in execution cost because DefiLlama also prices the Ethereum data component and priority tips, which are excluded from the per-transaction estimate above.
Gas burn nearly tripled
Robinhood Chain consumed an average of 36.9 million gas per second over the past 24 hours, compared with 13.2 million on Aug. 21 and 22. Blocks carried an average of 13.97 transactions, up from 9.96, while each transaction used 105% more gas.
Per Arbitrum documentation, Arbitrum Nitro tracks a gas backlog against several targets measured over windows ranging from nine seconds to a full day. When the backlog grows, the base fee rises exponentially to discourage usage. As the backlog clears, the fee falls back. Robinhood Chain’s base fee has increased on nine of the past 10 days.
Robinhood covers swaps until Sept. 29
Customers swapping inside the Robinhood Wallet app are not paying those costs right now. Robinhood’s support page says the company covers network fees on crypto and stock token swaps on Robinhood Chain, along with one-time ERC-20 approval fees, for swaps above $0.50, with 「no additional caps, limits, or frequency restrictions」.
The offer runs from the launch of Robinhood Chain through 11:59 PM EST on Sept. 29, 2026. Wallet-to-wallet transfers, bridge transactions, anything executed through the dapp browser, and third-party wallets are excluded. Robinhood also says it may change or end the offer without notice.
That leaves traders using Pons, GMGN, or Uniswap directly paying the current rate. Robinhood Wallet users will also face that price in 26 days unless the offer is extended.
Pons V2 drove a large share of activity
DefiLlama data shows Pons V2, a launchpad that exists only on Robinhood Chain, generated $6.09 million in fees over the past 24 hours and $26.33 million over seven days. Uniswap V4 on the chain collected $6.65 million, trading bot GMGN took in $2.65 million, and Uniswap V3 generated $870,480.
According to CoinGecko, PONS traded at $0.5827 on Thursday, up 42.9% over 24 hours, 388.2% over seven days, and 2,727.3% over 30 days. Its market capitalization stood at $413.8 million, ranking it 117th. The token hit an all-time high of $0.6011 at 17:19 UTC on Sept. 3 and recorded $126.7 million in turnover over the past day.
DEX volume on Robinhood Chain reached $1.55 billion over 24 hours, down 7% from the prior day and up 88.1% over seven days. Total value locked stood at $819.6 million.
Gas rose to nearly a quarter of all fees paid on the chain
Gas has shifted from a minor line item relative to application fees to nearly a quarter of everything paid on the network. On Sept. 2, total fees across Robinhood Chain and every protocol deployed on it reached $19.12 million, with gas accounting for 23.3%. On Aug. 22, the share was 2.5%.
The report said no other large network is pricing its own capacity that high.
| Chain, Sept. 2 | All fees paid | Chain gas fees | Gas share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robinhood Chain | $19.12 million | $4.45 million | 23.3% |
| BNB Chain | $2.89 million | $480,271 | 16.6% |
| Solana | $10.54 million | $612,579 | 5.8% |
| Base | $1.86 million | $97,583 | 5.3% |
| Arbitrum One | $268,976 | $13,857 | 5.2% |
| Ethereum | $9.34 million | $304,277 | 3.3% |
Application fees scale with the value being traded, while gas fees reflect the amount of compute capacity the chain can supply. Trading volume kept climbing. Capacity did not.
Throughput changes require council approval
Lowering fees by raising throughput is not a decision Robinhood can make on its own. Governance documents show that Robinhood Chain’s parameters are controlled by a Security Council with eight signers: two held by Robinhood, and one each by BitGo, Chainlink Labs, Fireblocks Trust Company, Offchain Labs, Paxos, and Talos.
Routine changes require six of eight approvals and a seven-day onchain timelock. Emergency actions can skip the timelock, but they need seven of eight approvals.
Arbitrum’s revenue share is rising with it
DefiLlama’s accounting shows Robinhood kept $4.01 million of the Sept. 2 gas fees after Ethereum data costs and the 10% revenue share owed under the Arbitrum Expansion Program license. The gap between the gross and net figures was almost exactly 10%, leaving Ethereum data costs close to zero for the day.
That revenue share is split between 8% for the Arbitrum DAO treasury and 2% for development funding. At Sept. 2 fee levels, that puts roughly $356,000 a day into the DAO, versus about $4,300 on Aug. 22. CoinGecko data shows ARB trading at $0.1381, up 10.6% over 24 hours and 44.2% over seven days.
The report also said Robinhood Chain passed Ethereum on daily application revenue in late August and ranked second among all chains by DEX volume at the start of September. It overtook Base on daily active users three weeks after launch.
ETH traded at $2,500.32, up 4.6% over 24 hours.