Robinhood Chain moved into second place among blockchains by 24-hour decentralized exchange volume, processing $1.49 billion and beating Ethereum, BNB Chain and Base, according to DefiLlama. Solana remained first at $2.5 billion. The surge has been driven in part by launchpad activity, with Pons — a Robinhood Chain-native platform — collecting $4.89 million in fees on Aug. 31 versus $1.72 million for Solana’s pump.fun. That gave Pons 63.9% of all launchpad fees paid across crypto that day, while launchpads on Robinhood Chain together accounted for about 70%. The network, originally introduced by Robinhood for tokenized equities, has become a major venue for memecoin issuance. Pons has out-earned pump.fun on daily fees every day since Aug. 29, and its V2 model adds both launch fees and swap fees across bonding curve trades and Uniswap V4 pools. Robinhood Chain has also become the largest home for Uniswap V4 trading, with $720.3 million in 24-hour volume, or 51% of all Uniswap V4 activity across chains. Robinhood itself does not collect application fees from these launchpads. Its revenue comes from gas fees, which DefiLlama tracked at $2.13 million over 24 hours. Net chain revenue, after Ethereum L1 costs, blob costs and the 10% Arbitrum Expansion Program license share, stood at $1.92 million as of Sept. 1, 16:15 UTC.

Gate Research says Robinhood Chain is emerging as one of the most closely watched examples of a traditional finance firm building its own public blockchain, but the network’s early traction has come from Meme tokens rather than tokenized securities. In the report, Robinhood Chain is described as an Arbitrum-based, EVM-compatible Layer 2 built for tokenized stocks, ETFs, private assets, stablecoins and other real-world assets, with a long-term goal of linking issuance, wallets, trading, liquidity and applications in one system. The study argues that the chain’s first wave of growth has instead been led by Meme tokens, Launchpads and active DEX trading. As of July 23, the report says Robinhood Chain had 101 RWA assets on-chain with a combined value of about $21.84 million, while more than 40,000 new tokens were being created in a single day during the same period. That gap, according to Gate Research, reflects the much lower supply threshold for Meme assets compared with regulated financial products. The report also highlights Gate DEX’s full integration with Robinhood Chain. Gate Alpha, Gate Wallet and Gate DEX Swap now support ecosystem asset discovery, wallet interaction, on-chain trading and cross-chain swaps, expanding the network’s distribution channels and external capital access. Gate Research’s core view is that Robinhood Chain currently operates in a two-layer structure: RWA as the long-term asset destination, and Meme as the short-term liquidity engine.

Pump.fun lost a large slice of the token-launch market in early July as a wave of launchpads on Robinhood Chain, led by NOXA and later Pons, pulled its weekly share down to 26.7%. Four weeks later, that share had climbed back above 50%, with pump.fun posting a 90-day high of $9.21 million in weekly fees for the week ended Aug. 11. The broader launchpad market expanded even faster than pump.fun lost ground, with total fees across 125 launchpads rising 77% to $75.39 million in the 30 days through Aug. 11, according to The Defiant’s calculations using DefiLlama data. Much of that growth came from Robinhood Chain, whose launchpad fees nearly matched Solana over the same 30-day window before cooling on a weekly basis. Pons became the largest new challenger, generating $19.80 million in 30-day fees across two versions, while Uniswap Labs entered the chain with pools.trade and a zero launchpad-fee model. Even so, the surge in launchpad activity has not translated into a broad recovery in memecoin prices: CoinGecko data cited by The Defiant shows the sector remains 83% below its December 2024 peak.

Robinhood Chain, which launched its mainnet on July 1, quickly became one of the most talked-about new networks in crypto after posting $3.1 billion in DEX volume in its first week and briefly overtaking Ethereum and Base on daily trading volume on July 12. In a July 31 Space hosted by data platform MyToken, four veteran market participants reviewed the chain’s breakout, the state of its ecosystem, the sudden shutdown of launchpad NOXA, and the lessons traders took from the first month of activity. The discussion showed no consensus on whether the frenzy is still early, already overheated, or effectively over. Some speakers argued meme-driven alpha has largely passed, citing lower daily activity and weaker turnover, while others said the chain remains in a messy early phase with no dominant launchpad or official structure in place yet. TVL was said to have climbed to about $325 million even as trading intensity dropped, with some of the capital apparently shifting toward yield products such as Robinhood Earn. Across the conversation, one theme kept coming back: tokenized stocks and stock meme trades. Speakers also highlighted the importance of on-chain tools, contract checks, community heat, and position discipline, especially in a market where average holding times can be measured in seconds rather than days.

Competition among token launch platforms on Robinhood Chain has shifted sharply over the second half of July, with Pons moving into the top spot on both token creation and trading activity. Dune data cited by Odaily shows that Pons issued more than 15,000 tokens in a single day on July 15, taking the No. 1 position among launch platforms on the chain and holding it ever since. Three days later, on July 18, daily trading volume for tokens launched on Pons reached $40.7 million, surpassing NOXA’s $37.4 million for the first time. The platform’s cumulative trading volume has now exceeded $1.5 billion. The product’s design appears to be a major reason for the shift. Pons, operated by Pons Labs and not by Robinhood itself, lets users create a token and deploy a Uniswap V3 pool in the same on-chain transaction. That removes the bonding-curve phase and avoids any later migration to an external DEX. New tokens have a fixed supply of 1 billion, creation costs 0.0005 ETH, and trades carry a 1% fee. Odaily also points to the rapid rise of the platform token PONS. GMGN data shows its market cap was under $5 million on July 16 before climbing above $67 million at its peak, then pulling back to around $40 million. Pons said on July 28 that 22% of PONS total supply had already been burned.

IOSG’s latest deep dive argues that Robinhood is no longer renting blockspace from someone else’s network. By launching its own Layer 2, the company now controls the rails for trading, settlement, collateral, yield and asset circulation, a move the report frames as a direct answer to Coinbase’s Base. Robinhood Chain was built for tokenized equities and broader real-world asset activity, yet its first wave of traction came from meme coins and AI agents rather than stocks. As of July 20, 2026, IOSG said RWA assets still accounted for only about 4% of total value locked. The report lays out a layered structure around the chain, including USDG as the main settlement dollar, USDe as a yield-bearing collateral asset, Wallet as the user entry point, and separate perpetual venues such as Lighter and Arcus. It also spends considerable time on the legal structure of Robinhood’s stock tokens, describing them as tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited rather than direct ownership of underlying shares. IOSG’s conclusion is that the infrastructure economics already make sense for Robinhood, but the unresolved question is whether meme-driven traffic can be converted into durable RWA activity and whether the company will eventually publish reserve proof for its stock token model.

PANews’ weekly roundup collected a wide range of crypto and AI stories that shaped market discussion over the past week, spanning trading venues, regulation, infrastructure, prediction markets, and artificial intelligence. Among the most watched developments, a macro analysis argued that South Korea’s stock market became more volatile than Bitcoin at one point as the AI trade pushed names such as Samsung and SK Hynix into the spotlight and leveraged ETFs amplified moves. In Washington, debate around the CLARITY Act stayed in focus, with a16z calling for the bill’s passage while the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce warned the Senate that it could accelerate deposit outflows. On the exchange front, BitMEX said it would shut down and halt new user registration immediately, a move that was followed by a 95% plunge in BMEX, with Bubblemaps saying 75% of the token allocation had never circulated on-chain. The roundup also tracked Robinhood Chain’s launchpad battle, Solana’s second-quarter tokenized asset growth, Circle’s 76% stock slide, Movement Labs’ bankruptcy filing, and a slate of shorter market and policy headlines tied to AMD, SEC, MoonPay, Etched, Bithumb, and others.

Meme token launch platform NOXA said in a post on X that it has not been sold or transferred. The project also said it has no connection to any newly launched platform or token using the same name. The statement came directly from NOXA’s official X account and addressed both ownership status and brand association in a short clarification. No other details were provided in the post referenced by the source.