Pons is making more money than Pump.fun and it is only getting started

A memecoin launchpad on Robinhood Chain is quietly outearning Solana’s biggest token factory. The fees are real, the volume is accelerating, and the gap is widening every day.

A memecoin launchpad nobody outside of onchain circles talks about is printing more revenue than the protocol that defined the category. Pons, the dominant token factory on Robinhood Chain, has beaten Pump.fun in daily fees every single day since Aug. 29. On Aug. 31, it pulled in $4.89M. Pump.fun, running on Solana where gas is already near free, did not come close.

This is not a fluke day or a cherry-picked metric. Pons is processing $4B in cumulative platform volume. It is launching more than 10,000 tokens per day. And the economics are structured so that the people deploying tokens keep most of the money, which is exactly why they keep coming back.

The question is no longer whether Pons can compete with Pump.fun. It already is. The question is what happens when Robinhood Chain’s 90-day gas waiver expires on Sept. 29 and users have to start paying for transactions again.

The fee machine behind Pons

Pons charges a flat 1% fee on every trade that happens on tokens launched through its platform. That fee splits roughly 70/30: creators take the larger share, the protocol keeps the rest. In a market where most launchpads extract value and give nothing back, Pons runs in the opposite direction. Creators have earned more than $25M in cumulative fees.

That split matters because it creates a flywheel. A creator launches a token, promotes it, drives volume, and earns fees from the trading activity their promotion generates. The incentive to launch another token the next day is obvious. So is the incentive to launch five.

Ten thousand token deployments per day is a staggering number. Most of those tokens will go to zero. That is the nature of memecoins and everyone involved knows it. But the volume those tokens generate while they are alive feeds the fee machine, and the fee machine feeds the creators, and the creators feed the volume. It is a loop that sustains itself as long as attention stays on the chain.

Pump.fun built this model first. Pons copied the playbook and dropped it onto a chain where gas costs nothing, which turned out to be the only variable that mattered.

Why zero gas changes everything

Robinhood Chain is an Arbitrum Orbit L2 that launched a 90-day gas waiver on July 1. Every transaction on the network is free until roughly Sept. 29. That single decision rewired the economics of memecoin trading.

On Solana, gas fees are close to zero but not actually zero. A fraction of a cent per transaction adds up when a degenerate trader is executing hundreds of swaps a day across dozens of tokens. On Robinhood Chain during the waiver period, that cost is literally nothing. The only fee a trader pays is the 1% Pons trading fee, and 70% of that goes to the person who created the token they are trading.

This is why Pons volume exploded. The friction that exists on every other chain, even low-fee chains like Solana, vanishes entirely. A user can launch a token, trade into it, trade out of it, and repeat the cycle without ever thinking about network costs. The behavioral difference between “almost free” and “actually free” is enormous.

Robinhood Chain generated $4.01M in daily revenue on Sept. 2. Solana, by comparison, earned $78,000 that same day. The L2 that most of crypto Twitter ignores is generating 50 times the daily revenue of the chain that dominates the conversation.

The PONS token rally and what it signals

PONS traded at $0.078 on Aug. 24. By Sept. 1, it hit $0.43. That is not a typo. The token is up 18,000% since July, and the rally accelerated as fee revenue numbers started circulating on social media.

The market cap sits around $307M with roughly 710M tokens in circulation. Twenty-nine percent of the supply has been burned, which tightens the float and amplifies price moves in both directions. Daily trading volume regularly exceeds $100M, which means the token is liquid enough for institutional-sized positions but volatile enough to lose half its value in a bad week.

What makes the PONS rally different from a typical memecoin pump is that it is backed by real revenue. The protocol is generating millions in daily fees. That does not mean the token is fairly valued at $307M or that it cannot crash 80% tomorrow. It means the speculation has a foundation, which is more than most tokens at this market cap can say.

The burn mechanism also creates an interesting dynamic. As more tokens are burned and supply shrinks, the remaining tokens represent a larger share of protocol fees if the team ever implements a fee-sharing mechanism. That is a big “if,” but the market is pricing in the possibility.

Uniswap enters the ring

Uniswap Labs did two things that signal where institutional money sees the opportunity. First, the team bought PONS tokens and publicly stated the purchase was “for long-term alignment.” Second, Uniswap Labs launched pools.trade on Robinhood Chain on Aug. 5 with lower fees than Pons.

The pools.trade launch is direct competition. Uniswap is not partnering with Pons or building on top of it. The team is building a competing product on the same chain with a fee structure designed to undercut the incumbent. That is a vote of confidence in Robinhood Chain and a declaration of war against Pons in the same move.

The PONS token purchase complicates that narrative. If Uniswap Labs is building a competitor, why buy the competitor’s token? The most likely answer is hedging. If Pons wins, the token appreciates and Uniswap profits from the position. If pools.trade wins, Uniswap captures the fee revenue directly. Either way, Uniswap has exposure to the growth of memecoin trading on Robinhood Chain.

For Pons, the Uniswap entry is both validation and threat. Validation because one of DeFi’s most respected teams is building on the same chain. Threat because Uniswap has brand recognition, engineering talent, and existing liquidity network effects that Pons cannot match. The next 60 days will determine whether Pons can defend its market share or whether the Uniswap brand pulls volume away.

The case against Pons

The bull case writes itself. The bear case deserves equal weight.

The entire Pons economy runs on a gas subsidy that expires on Sept. 29. When users start paying for transactions, the “actually free” advantage disappears. Volume could drop sharply. If the gas waiver was the primary driver of adoption rather than the product itself, the revenue numbers collapse the moment the subsidy ends.

Ten thousand token deployments per day sounds impressive until you consider what those tokens actually are. The vast majority are low-effort memecoins created to extract fees from the first wave of buyers. The security risks in DeFi are well documented, and memecoin launchpads concentrate those risks. Rug pulls, coordinated dumps, and wash trading are features of this market, not bugs.

The 70/30 creator fee split incentivizes volume at any cost. A creator who earns fees from trading activity has every reason to manufacture that activity artificially. Without serious wash trading detection, the $4B cumulative volume number could include a significant amount of recycled capital that inflates the real economic activity.

The PONS token itself has no formal claim on protocol revenue. Holding it does not entitle you to a share of fees. The 18,000% gain is driven by speculation about future utility that may never materialize. If the team announces a fee-sharing mechanism, the token could surge further. If they do not, holders are sitting on an expensive bet with no yield.

Robinhood Chain is also a single L2 controlled by a centralized sequencer. The regulatory environment for crypto assets is evolving, and a centralized chain running a memecoin factory is exactly the kind of thing that attracts attention from enforcement agencies. The Clarity Act vote on Sept. 15 could reshape the legal ground rules for tokens launched on platforms like Pons.

Pump.fun is not standing still

Pump.fun still processes enormous volume on Solana. The protocol has brand recognition, a larger user base, and a proven track record that spans multiple market cycles. Writing it off because Pons had a strong week would be premature.

Solana’s ecosystem is deeper. The chain has more wallets, more DEXs, more infrastructure, and more developer tooling than Robinhood Chain. A token launched on Pump.fun can immediately trade on Raydium, Jupiter, and dozens of other venues. A token launched on Pons trades on Pons and pools.trade. The liquidity surface area is not comparable.

Pump.fun also charges real fees on a chain where users already accept gas costs as part of the transaction. When Robinhood Chain’s gas waiver expires, Pump.fun’s cost structure will look relatively more competitive than it does today. The gap that Pons exploited narrows significantly once both platforms operate on chains where gas is cheap but not free.

The counter-argument is that user habits formed during a free gas period may stick. Traders who built their workflow around Robinhood Chain over the past 90 days might not leave even when gas costs return. But behavioral economics suggests that free-to-paid transitions always cause churn. The question is how much.

What to watch

• Daily fee comparison after Sept. 29. The gas waiver expiration is the single most important variable. If Pons maintains its fee lead over Pump.fun after users start paying gas, the bull case strengthens dramatically.
• Wash trading analysis. Independent researchers need to quantify how much of the $4B cumulative volume is organic versus recycled. If organic volume is even 50% of reported numbers, the economics still work. If it is lower, the story changes.
• Uniswap Labs pools.trade market share. Track whether pools.trade is taking volume from Pons or growing the total pie. If Pons volume stays flat while pools.trade grows, the chain is winning but the protocol is losing.
• PONS token utility announcements. Any fee-sharing, staking, or governance mechanism changes the valuation framework entirely. Without it, the $307M market cap is purely speculative.
• Regulatory signals from the Sept. 15 Clarity Act vote. A restrictive outcome could affect every memecoin launchpad, but centralized L2 platforms with identifiable operators face the most direct exposure.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Cryptocurrency markets are volatile and speculative. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions. Published Sept. 4, 2026.