Memecoin App Pons Drives Record Fees on Robinhood’s New Blockchain

A third-party token-creation application has emerged as one of the digital asset industry’s largest fee generators, driven by active retail trading on Robinhood Markets’ newly launched blockchain network.

According to a Thursday (Sept. 3) report by CoinDesk, users paid about $5.95 million in fees over a 24-hour period to create and trade tokens through Pons, an independent launchpad operating on the Robinhood Chain. CoinDesk reported that this trading surge briefly positioned Pons as the fourth-largest protocol by daily fees globally, exceeding even the fees collected by the underlying network hosting it.

The CoinDesk report highlights a shift in activity on the Robinhood Chain, which debuted in July with a focus on tokenized traditional assets. Pons allows users to deploy a new digital token within minutes for a nominal launch fee of about $1, after which the creator can immediately trade it on the network. Pons charges a transaction fee on all subsequent trades, dividing the revenue between the protocol itself and the token’s creators.

CoinDesk noted that on Sept. 2, users launched nearly 25,000 new tokens on Pons, representing a 19% increase from the previous day, while daily trading volume on the platform reached $544 million. Since its launch in July, the application has generated about 646,000 tokens from more than 167,000 unique creator addresses. This activity has also supported the platform’s native PONS token, which rose 300% over the week prior to the report as the protocol uses its transaction fees to buy back and retire its own tokens, reducing circulating supply by 29%.

While the vast majority of these newly minted assets hold little long-term utility, the concentrated trading volume has yielded significant network fees. According to CoinDesk, Robinhood Chain collected a record $4 million in transaction fees on Wednesday, representing approximately one-fifth of the $20 million in lifetime fees the network has accumulated since its inception.

The unexpected growth in user-generated memecoins contrasts with Robinhood’s original vision for the blockchain but highlights the influence of independent developers on public networks. “We have gotten a lot of developer activity too,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call, acknowledging that outside programmers were building on the network “in ways that we have not thought of.”

Robinhood CFO Shiv Verma clarified on the call that while network fees are high, Robinhood’s direct monetization is limited to a small percentage per transaction, which is shared equally with blockchain developer Arbitrum.

An analysis by PYMNTS.com suggests that while Robinhood originally designed its infrastructure for tokenized traditional equities like Nvidia and Apple, early speculative retail trading serves as a common testing ground for new financial networks before more mature, institutional use cases take root.

This retail-driven speculation stands in contrast to the broader commercial landscape. A PYMNTS Intelligence survey of middle market companies indicates that enterprise adoption of digital assets remains highly cautious, with only 5% of firms currently employing cryptocurrencies.