Robinhood Chain, the brokerage’s two-month-old blockchain, collected $34.4 million in user transaction fees over the 30 days ending September 10, more than triple the $11.3 million paid on Ethereum mainnet over the same stretch, according to DefiLlama data. Most of that haul arrived in the final week of the period as speculative trading on the network intensified.
The numbers are striking for a network that went live on July 1, 2026, built on Arbitrum Orbit technology. Within roughly ten days of launch, the chain was processing more than 7 million transactions a day. Its first full month generated about $3.6 million in fees, roughly 38% of all fees across major layer 2 platforms for that period.
This week the chain set a new record, taking in about $6.04 million in daily transaction fees, more than Ethereum and Coinbase’s Base network combined. An earlier snapshot from late August showed Robinhood Chain at $2.66 million in daily fees against Ethereum’s $1.57 million and Base’s $439,000. At its peak, the chain briefly ranked ahead of Hyperliquid, Ethereum and Base on application revenue in a single 24-hour window.
Where the fees come from
The engine is Pons, a memecoin launchpad that has become the chain’s dominant application. Pons collected $96.1 million in user fees over the 30 days ending September 10, making it the largest launchpad in crypto by fees and the biggest generator of the chain’s transaction revenue. Its PONS token rose more than 500% in a single week in early September and trades at a market capitalization above $350 million. The protocol has burned 29.34% of its total supply, directing about 80% of fees toward buybacks and burns.
Pons has out-earned Solana’s pump.fun in daily fees every day since August 29, according to DefiLlama. On peak days it captured more than 63% of all launchpad volume on the chain, in a 24-hour window when total launchpad volume reached $400 million.
Uniswap Labs bought a stake in PONS on September 3, citing long-term alignment, days after launching its own rival launchpad, pools.trade, on the same chain. Neither company disclosed the size or price of the purchase. The tie-up matters because Robinhood Chain now accounts for roughly 56% of all Uniswap V4 trading volume, about $1.6 billion in a single day, which helps explain why UNI has doubled since mid-August and hit a year-to-date high this month.
The economics favor Robinhood
The fee split is structured generously in the brokerage’s favor. The chain keeps about 89% to 90% of the fees it generates, with 10% flowing to Arbitrum, earmarked mainly for ARB token holders, and under 1% routed back to Ethereum for settlement. In one snapshot, the chain collected about $1.9 million in gross fees while paying just $12,000 to Ethereum for data availability.
After costs, the chain retained $30.1 million over the same 30-day period. Run at that pace, a full quarter would add roughly $90 million in revenue. That is meaningful but incremental next to the $1.3 billion in total net revenue Robinhood reported in the second quarter. The gain still shows up on the margin, and the chain’s costs are minimal since settlement on Ethereum is cheap at current gas prices.
The subsidy caveat
There is a catch behind the headline numbers. A 90-day gas subsidy covered transaction costs for users through the launch period, making activity effectively free and removing the friction that normally slows early blockchain adoption. That subsidy expires by the end of September. Once users pay their own gas, some share of high-frequency memecoin churn may fade, and fee revenue depends on whether trading volume survives the change.
There is also a mismatch between the plan and the reality. Robinhood positioned the chain as a hub for tokenized stocks and real-world assets, with support for 24/7 trading of tokenized equities. Instead, memecoin speculation has driven the overwhelming majority of on-chain activity. Tokenized equity trading on the chain is growing but remains a smaller slice of the fee pool, and the launchpad economy is what pays the bills today.
Robinhood’s crypto business is expanding on other fronts too. Notional crypto volume across its exchange hit $17.5 billion in August, up 61% from July, led by the Bitstamp acquisition, though that figure stays 38% below last year’s level. The company is pushing prediction markets and its own chain as growth vectors beyond vanilla spot trading.
What to watch next
The subsidy expiry is the near-term test. If daily fees retreat from the $6 million record toward the $2.7 million seen in late August, the chain would still out-earn most layer 2 networks, but the gap with Ethereum would narrow sharply. If memecoin activity holds through the transition, Robinhood will have built one of the most profitable application chains in crypto in under three months.
The longer-term test is whether tokenized equities ever become the main event. Regulators in Washington are still working through how stock tokens and perpetual futures fit the existing rulebook, and the SEC has moved cautiously on the product category. Until that clears, the chain’s revenue story rests on launchpad speculation, a business that can turn quickly when sentiment shifts.
For Ethereum, the episode is double-edged. A layer 2 paying less than 1% of its fees back to mainnet undercuts the rollup-centered roadmap argument, but it also shows the Arbitrum Orbit stack can spin up a top-fee network in weeks. Either way, the fee leaderboard now has a new name near the top, and it belongs to a brokerage.