A $1 token factory briefly outearned Pump and Hyperliquid on Robinhood's chain

A memecoin launchpad called Pons pulled in roughly $5.95 million in fees over 24 hours, ranking fourth among protocols tracked by DefiLlama — behind only Tether, Uniswap and Circle, and ahead of rival Pump ($4.64 million) and perpetuals venue Hyperliquid (~$2 million), per data cited by CoinDesk on September 3.

Pons is a third-party app, independent of Robinhood, that lets anyone mint a tradable token on Robinhood Chain — the network Robinhood launched in July with tokenized stocks as its headline product. A creator picks a name and symbol, pays roughly $1 to launch, and a market opens within minutes; Pons then takes a cut of every subsequent trade, split between the protocol and creators. Nearly 25,000 tokens launched on September 2 (up ~19% from the prior day) against $544 million in daily trading volume. Since July, Pons has produced about 646,000 tokens from more than 167,000 creator addresses, per the figures CoinDesk cited.

The activity fed the underlying network. Robinhood Chain collected about $4 million in fees over the same 24 hours — roughly a fifth of the ~$20 million it has earned since July — its biggest day yet. The PONS token rose about 300% in a week, a move that coincides with protocol-funded buybacks: Pons's technical docs say it spends most retained funds buying and burning PONS, and on-chain data show ~293 million tokens (29% of original supply) already removed.

Key facts

• Pons 24h fees: ~$5.95M, 4th on DefiLlama (CoinDesk/DefiLlama)
• Tokens launched Sept. 2: ~25,000; 24h volume $544M (CoinDesk)
• PONS up ~300% in a week; 29% of supply burned (CoinDesk, on-chain data)
• Robinhood Chain: ~$4M in 24h of ~$20M lifetime fees (CoinDesk/DefiLlama dashboard)
• Largest RH Chain token Cash Cat ~$254M; category total ~$577M (CoinGecko)

The real-world read

Treat the headline fee numbers with care. The ~$18 million Robinhood Chain has "retained" is not Robinhood corporate revenue: CFO Shiv Verma told the Q2 call the company makes "a few basis points" per transaction, not per volume, and shares about half of that with Arbitrum. So the relevant metric for Robinhood is transaction count, not the dollar value of the memecoins. Note also that Pons's 300% price surge is powered by its own buy-and-burn mechanism — recurring, protocol-created demand, not organic interest, and a design that flatters the token's chart. And despite hundreds of thousands of launches, roughly $577 million of value sits in a handful of names, with Cash Cat alone near $254 million; the "boom" is thin. On the corporate framing: CEO Vlad Tenev pitched tokenized stocks as the flagship, but user-created memecoins — not stocks — are supplying the network's heaviest usage. Robinhood shares rose 15% Thursday, though Morgan Stanley's upgrade this week cited the broader product line, not the chain.

Opinion, and whose

Tenev said stock tokens were the product he was "perhaps the most excited about," while conceding developers were building "in ways we have not thought of." All fee rankings and the causal link between buybacks and the PONS surge are CoinDesk's read of DefiLlama and on-chain data, not confirmed by the parties.

Not financial advice.

Sources

• CoinDesk (Tier 2 secondary), Sept. 3, 2026 — fee rankings, token/volume counts, buyback mechanics, executive quotes; citing DefiLlama, CoinGecko, on-chain data and Robinhood's Q2 earnings call.