Robinhood Chain's explosive growth as a memecoin trading hub has sharply reversed, with network fees collapsing 97% in recent weeks even as transaction activity remained near record levels.
At its peak in early September, the chain collected roughly $8 million in fees from 13.1 million transactions in a single day, averaging 64 cents per transaction. By September 16, however, daily fees had fallen to approximately $230,000 across 8.9 million transactions, or just 2.6 cents each. This 97% fee decline occurred despite only a 32% drop in transaction volume, indicating that the network became significantly cheaper to use rather than simply experiencing reduced activity.
The surge in early September was driven primarily by token issuance platform Pons and memecoin trading app GMGN, which accounted for roughly $2 million of the chain's $2.7 million in daily revenue on August 30. Users were launching thousands of new tokens daily during that period.
Activity Remains Robust
Weekly data reveals a more nuanced picture than the sharp fee decline suggests. Robinhood's decentralized exchanges handled approximately $13 billion in trades during the week of September 10-16, up 5% from the preceding week, while stablecoin supply slipped just 1% to around $1 billion.
Applications built on the chain continued to outpace the network itself in fee earnings, collecting roughly $8 million in daily fees while the network itself earned $230,000.
The Memecoin Cooldown
Pons, the launchpad that drove much of Robinhood Chain's initial boom, recorded approximately $616 million in trading volume during September 10-16, down 37% from the previous week. Protocol revenue fell from $10.7 million to $5.8 million over the same period. Uniswap V3 volume on the chain more than doubled to $5.3 billion, while overall decentralized exchange volume rose 5% to $12.8 billion.
Unipcs, a top-performing trader on memecoin platform FOMO, stated that higher gas fees did not deter active traders during the expensive period, saying: "People don't care about that as long as they can make money on the chain."
No Clear Migration to Solana
Concerns that traders had shifted to Solana in response to higher Robinhood fees were not supported by chain-wide data. Solana's decentralized exchanges processed approximately $17 billion during September 10-16, down 8% from the preceding week, while PumpSwap recorded $2.9 billion, down 36% similar to Pons' decline.
Bridge data showed modest flows between networks. deBridge, which enables token transfers between Robinhood and Solana, processed $8.2 million from Robinhood to Solana during the week and $6 million in the opposite direction, resulting in a net outflow of about $2 million. The previous week showed nearly balanced flows of $13.4 million and $13.3 million.
