Robinhood Chain is moving far beyond a simple tokenized-stock story, according to a PANews feature based on a 168X interview with independent on-chain researcher Alu. Alu said the network, only a few months past mainnet launch, has already grown from stock tokens into a broader ecosystem that includes Launchpads, stock-token pair trading, LP structures, treasury systems, agents, memes, DeFi, and several new liquidity mechanisms. In his view, AI and PONS represent only the first phase. The larger opportunity may emerge later in RWA and DeFi.
The discussion, hosted by Mr. Z, drew on Alu’s tracking of Robinhood Chain from day one. The article said he had early involvement in DELTA, HOOKR, and PROLOGUE, and later positioned early in STONK on Solana. The interview covered Robinhood Chain’s core advantages, the contrasting models behind LONG and PONS, and a long list of projects including AI, SHROOM, OPEN, BUN, PAID, UBIK, HOOKR, ZZZ, and AGI. The thread running through the conversation was that the key shift is not simply putting stocks on-chain, but turning them into assets that can be used natively across crypto markets.
Why Alu thinks Robinhood Chain deserves close attention
Alu said his bullishness did not come from a single narrative. He said he had been watching Bridge TVL, DeFi TVL, stablecoin market cap, and the pace of developer migration. If those indicators had failed to grow, he said Robinhood Chain could have followed the path of many earlier Layer 2 networks that faded shortly after launch.
By mid-September, though, he said several of those figures had already moved quickly into the front ranks of mainstream public chains. For a chain less than three months old, he called that pace remarkable. If the growth does not show clear signs of slowing, he said, a run at top-three status across several key metrics cannot be ruled out.
More important than the numbers, in his telling, are three structural advantages that Robinhood Chain appears to have at the same time.
First, he pointed to regulated access and retail distribution. Robinhood is already a brokerage with its own app, wallet, and a large user base. Alu’s point was that this kind of user distribution is not something a typical Layer 2 can simply buy.
Second, he highlighted RWA as a quote leg. He said tokenized stocks are not a new idea by themselves, but Robinhood Chain is notable because real-world assets are starting to function directly as quote assets and liquidity assets inside crypto markets.
Third, he pointed to the speed of native ecosystem formation. In only a short time, he said, the chain has not just reproduced standard DeFi components. It has also produced Launchpads, stock-token pairs, Uniswap Hooks, agents, cross-stock LP products, and other composable structures. He said it is rare to see a newly launched chain build this many native experiments this quickly.
The real shift is not tokenized stocks alone
Alu argued that the market still tends to frame Robinhood Chain as a tokenized-stock trade. He said that misses the more important development. To him, the innovation is not the stock token as a certificate. It is the stock becoming an asset that can join other crypto use cases.
In the interview, he laid out several examples. Stocks can be paired with meme assets. They can sit inside LPs. They can be used in liquidity routing. Later, he said, the same assets could expand into lending, collateral, options, and a wider range of DeFi products. If dividend rights and voting rights are eventually attached to tokenized stocks, he said, the need for specialized DeFi infrastructure becomes even more obvious.
That is why he framed the larger RWA opportunity in a specific way: not as moving a stock certificate onto a blockchain, but as making stocks operate more like ETH or USDC, as native on-chain assets that can be freely recombined.
LONG and PONS represent two different issuance paths
Alu described LONG and PONS, two of the most important Launchpads in the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, as different rather than directly zero-sum. He did not present them as a situation where one must necessarily eliminate the other.
His definition of LONG was an internalized model. Fees are folded into its own pools and treasury. It controls inventory, LP, and treasury resources, then builds more products around that balance sheet. He cited stock-token pairs, index products, leverage wrappers, and LONG 500 as examples. The strength of this setup, he said, is that replication gets harder as TVL and liquidity deepen. The weakness is that most innovation has to be built in-house.
PONS, by contrast, was described as an externalized model. It focuses on the issuance gateway, order flow, fees, and buybacks, while leaving LP compounding, Hooks, AI market making, cross-stock liquidity, and inference capital markets to outside specialist teams. In Alu’s framing, LONG tries to keep as much value as possible on its own balance sheet, while PONS lets the broader ecosystem innovate around its issuance layer. One wins through integration. The other wins through specialization and division of labor.
He said PONS does not need to defeat LONG to succeed. Its goal, in his words, is closer to becoming a toll booth for issuing everything. As long as projects launch through its infrastructure, PONS can collect fees, drive buybacks, and hold onto issuance rights and order flow while other vertical services grow around it.
He used specific examples from the interview: HOOKR for Hook design, Mosh for AI market making, SHROOM for cross-stock liquidity, and ORBIO for inference capital markets. This structure, he said, allows valuations to be split across verticals. Each project could potentially reach $100 million or more without diluting the story of PONS as a core issuance layer, because those services still originate from the same base.
Why Alu sees AI as LONG’s de facto platform token
When asked which side he preferred, Alu said he leaned toward LONG and held a high view of AI. One reason was thematic. He called RWA the main trend within the current cycle, and said LONG holds a clear position there. The second reason was odds. In his assessment, AI offers better upside than PONS.
He said LONG does not currently have a separate platform token, but is building deep liquidity around AI with the aim of making it a liquidity hub for tokenized stocks. In the ideal case he described, a large share of future Robinhood stock trading would route through pools built between AI and stocks.
He also explained why he believes the market has not fully priced that possibility. LONG has never clearly said that AI is its platform token, so the market lacks a simple valuation framework. PONS, by comparison, is easier to model because it is directly tied to Launchpad activity, fees, and buybacks. AI does not have the same explicit identity. As a result, he sees AI as LONG’s platform token in practice, while arguing that the market has not fully valued it that way.
SHROOM and OPEN in the liquidity layer race
On SHROOM, Alu said the project’s role is fairly clear. It is designed to capture mispricing and volatility across different stock pairs and turn those conditions into yield that LPs can collect. He sees it as a distinct piece of infrastructure.
He also noted a risk. If a large share of order flow is eventually absorbed by AI inside the LONG ecosystem, SHROOM could be pushed to the margins. Even so, he does not see them as perfect substitutes. In his view, AI is more closely tied to routing inside LONG, while SHROOM is more like an independent product within the PONS ecosystem that is built around cross-stock structures.
The interview placed SHROOM’s market cap at roughly $15 million to $20 million. Alu described that as an early-stage infrastructure valuation. If the project becomes the default venue for multi-stock LP activity, he said a valuation above $100 million would not be particularly extreme. The metrics he wants to watch are concrete: the number of cross-stock pools, liquidity depth, the share of fees automatically compounded back into LP positions, and the eventual routing weight the product commands.
He compared SHROOM with OPEN and said both are trying to build a liquidity layer, though from different camps. OPEN is more aligned with LONG. SHROOM is more aligned with PONS. The common variables are pool count, depth, fee generation, and the ability to secure order flow.
OPEN, he said, has also been building its own customized Hook in an effort to improve fee income. If AI or the wider LONG ecosystem performs well, he said lower-valued assets of that sort could be re-rated alongside it. Even so, he still sees a higher ceiling for SHROOM. One plain reason is team identity. OPEN is anonymous, while SHROOM appears to have experienced DeFi builders behind it. In early bull-market conditions, he said, he is increasingly willing to pay a premium for teams that have demonstrably built products before.
HOOKR and the importance of rule-setting
Alu called HOOKR an underappreciated asset. His reasoning was that Uniswap v4 Hooks can be understood as a market for rules.
He said a project launching through PONS can choose different Hooks to shape anti-sniping logic, dynamic fees, fee destination, and broader liquidity behavior. Whoever controls those rules begins to influence launch quality itself.
The interview also mentioned an earlier cooperation between Uniswap and PONS. From there, Alu said it is natural to imagine a future in which PONS integrates a rule market such as HOOKR directly into its issuance layer. In that setup, launching a token would no longer mean simply issuing a coin. It would also mean choosing the liquidity rules that govern how the asset trades from day one.
He summed up the difference this way: a Launchpad decides who gets to issue, while a Hook decides how that token trades. Over time, he said, the second part may prove more important than many people now assume.
BUN and Mosh as a new issuance primitive
Alu did not reduce Mosh’s BUN to a meme trade. He said the more important point is that Mosh introduced a new issuance primitive.
As he described it, the process starts with crowdfunding a bundle before launch. A large share of supply is then locked in a non-withdrawable vault, and an Agent Swarm uses that inventory for two-sided market making. The article said about 70% of the supply is currently locked this way, which helps explain the gap between a fully diluted valuation above $90 million and a circulating market cap of around $20 million.
He said market attention came from two places. The mechanism itself is new, and some Web3 venture investors have also started discussing and spreading the idea of agentic market making. Still, he stressed that this does not mean the design has already proved itself. The Agent Swarm market-making algorithm remains relatively early, and the real test will be whether it can generate profit consistently and whether fees such as those tied to ALF, or Agentic Liquid Fund, show real inflows and are actually used to buy back BUN.
His bottom line was blunt: the market is currently pricing a new issuance mechanism built around AI-agent market making, not a mature business model.
PAID as an event-driven trade, not a long-term hold
Alu’s view on PAID was more cautious. He said he would classify it as an event trade rather than something to hold for the long run.
He acknowledged that the product’s innovation is easy to understand. Creator fees are turned into real dollars through X Money and sent directly to celebrity accounts. Compared with earlier structures such as Bags, he said, the path is simpler and therefore spreads more easily.
But he also said the main weakness is the same one this kind of model has always faced: it depends on sustained celebrity interaction and sustained attention. A celebrity with millions of followers may engage once because the idea is new. That does not mean they will keep promoting the project or keep building around it. He also suggested that creator fees may not be large enough to keep major public figures interested over time.
That leaves PAID, in his view, as something traders can use while attention is present. Once that attention fades, he said, fundamentals are unlikely to catch the falling price. For that reason, he said he would not hold it long term.
UBIK, ZZZ, and AGI: backing teams and narratives in the early stage
In the agent category, UBIK stood out to Alu. The project presents itself as a world memory layer for agents. He explained the idea by comparing it with current AI usage. Today, he said, context, personal preferences, and tool-calling history are scattered across different model providers such as ChatGPT and Claude, without a permanent shared memory. If a large number of agents emerge, a separate memory layer would become much more valuable.
That is what UBIK is trying to build: infrastructure where memory can be stored permanently and accessed or interacted with by different agents. Alu said the concept makes sense to him, and he also noted the team’s connection to aixbt as a reason he is watching it closely.
At the same time, he was clear that the product has not yet been delivered. He said the current valuation of roughly $20 million to $25 million looks reasonable if viewed mainly as a bet on team and narrative. Any move to a higher valuation, in his view, would need to come after an actual product launch, along with data, distribution, and signs of network effects.
His logic on ZZZ and AGI was similar. He said one of the project types he is paying the closest attention to in this cycle is former builders from the last cycle who return with a new mechanism.
For ZZZ, he highlighted involvement from developers related to GMX. He said the product direction is not fully clear yet, but his working interpretation is that it aims to become an AI coordination layer and community-gated token on Robinhood. Users would hold the token to enter the community, submit ideas to agents, and let those agents execute, coordinate, and deliver. He acknowledged that the project is still very early and many parts remain vague, but the developer background keeps it on his watchlist.
He described AGI in a similar way. According to the interview, the team behind a previous-cycle Launchpad has now returned to build Clank, and AGI is the clearest runner so far. The team has not fully confirmed the longer-term roadmap, but if it does turn out to be the same builders and if Clank continues to be developed, Alu said he sees room for opportunity.
The STONK lesson: getting the thesis right is not enough
Looking back on STONK, Alu described it as a case where he got the thesis right but sold too early. He said he had concluded early on that stock pairing would not stay confined to Robinhood. Many chains were working on on-chain stocks, but in his view Robinhood was the place that truly pushed the stock-pairing playbook into the market. That led him naturally to look for narrative migration on Solana and Base, where he bought STONK early.
The mistake, he said, came from path dependence formed in Solana’s faster, more player-versus-player trading environment. The habit there is to lock in gains quickly. This time the thesis was right and the entry was early enough, but he did not give the eventual winner enough time.
His takeaway was that one of the easiest mistakes to make in the early part of a bull market is to apply bear-market or PVP profit-taking logic to an asset that is becoming part of a longer-term main trend.
What comes after meme activity: lending, options, collateral, and RWA DeFi
When asked what he is waiting for next on Robinhood Chain, Alu did not point to more stock-linked memes. He said the current runners are still concentrated in stock-token pairs, Launchpads, and early infrastructure. That is not enough if the ecosystem is really going to develop into an RWA-plus-DeFi story.
What he wants to see are stock lending, collateralization, options, hedging, brokerage-related products, and a broader set of applications that use tokenized stocks as collateral. In particular, he said that if Robinhood eventually adds rights such as dividends and voting to on-chain stocks, the ecosystem will need DeFi infrastructure capable of packaging and using those assets in more complex ways.
He acknowledged that existing projects could fill part of that stack. Uniswap can handle DEX functions. Morpho can support lending. Other mature DeFi protocols could also migrate over. But what he wants most is to see Robinhood produce native DeFi projects of its own instead of relying only on copied Ethereum playbooks.
For him, Robinhood becomes a true on-chain capital market not when stocks can trade 24 hours a day, but when those stocks can be borrowed, posted as collateral, used in LPs, recombined, and turned into new financial products.
How Alu says he screens projects in the early bull market
Alu closed the interview by stressing that the tickers discussed were his personal views, not investment advice. What he wanted listeners to take away was a framework.
At this stage, he said, he prefers projects led by public teams or by known builders launching a second venture. The reasons were straightforward: they carry reputation cost, they have built products before, and they are more likely to deliver rather than rely only on promotion.
He also warned about assembly-line projects. In his view, Robinhood Chain already has token factories with obviously repeated branding, similar website interfaces, and batch-produced templates. He said those signs call for caution.
One more warning was aimed at teams that say they are launching memes “just for fun.” Alu said that line should make investors more careful, not less. To him, it often acts as a pre-emptive disclaimer: no delivery obligation, no next stage, and no value-accrual plan. Those assets can be treated as pure speculation, he said, but investors should not invent a long-term thesis for them on the project’s behalf.
Mr. Z summed up the episode by saying Robinhood’s moat comes down to three things: regulated access, retail distribution, and RWA. LONG and PONS stand for internalized and externalized issuance routes. Projects such as AI, SHROOM, HOOKR, and UBIK are competing for liquidity, rules, routing, and agent infrastructure. The larger alpha, in that framing, may not sit in today’s memes at all, but in the RWA DeFi layer that could emerge once stocks become fully composable on-chain assets.