Uniswap Labs buys PONS as Robinhood Chain launchpad fees surge

Uniswap Labs has purchased PONS, the token of a Robinhood Chain launchpad generating $5.95 million in daily fees, as PONS climbed to a new all-time high above $0.52.

Pons said Thursday that Uniswap Labs had “purchased $PONS for long-term alignment,” describing the transaction as a deepening of the relationship between the two projects.

The parties did not disclose how many tokens changed hands, the amount Uniswap Labs paid, when the purchase occurred or the address holding the position. Pons did not specify whether Uniswap Labs acquired PONS on the open market or received an allocation, a distinction raised by several users responding to the announcement.

Uniswap Labs had not issued its own statement detailing the transaction at the time of the disclosure.

PONS traded at $0.5013, up 17.5% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The token reached an all-time high of $0.5242 earlier Thursday after trading as low as $0.3476 during the same period, while turnover stood at $135.2 million.

Its market capitalization reached $357.1 million, placing PONS 118th among cryptocurrencies by market value.

The move came one day after Binance added PONS and FLORK to Binance Alpha 1.0. Crypto.news previously reported that Pons was generating $5.95 million in daily fees when the exchange announced the additions.

Uniswap Labs takes PONS position as V4 activity expands

Pons launched on July 13 and deployed its V2 contracts on Aug. 3, linking tokens that graduate from its bonding curve directly with Uniswap V4 liquidity pools.

Before the deployment, Pons had detailed an ETH bonding curve alongside Uniswap V4 integration, creator payouts in ETH and support for custom trading pairs involving tokenized assets.

Under the model, tokens begin trading through the launchpad’s bonding curve before liquidity moves into Uniswap V4 once a token graduates. The V2 plan included pairs using assets such as USDG and tokenized versions of NVDA, AAPL and HOOD.

Robinhood Chain has since become the largest network for Uniswap V4 trading by volume.

Uniswap V4 processed $1.6 billion across supported chains over the latest 24-hour period, according to DefiLlama. Robinhood Chain contributed $901.5 million, or 56.3% of that total.

Ethereum followed with $465.5 million, while BNB Chain recorded $93.9 million and Base handled $52.5 million.

Uniswap’s deployment on Robinhood Chain held $207 million in total value locked and generated $7.72 million in fees over the past day.

The PONS purchase consequently puts Uniswap Labs on the token holder side of an application that sends graduated assets into its V4 pools, although the size and structure of the company’s position remain undisclosed.

Pons competes with Uniswap’s own Robinhood Chain launchpad

Uniswap Labs operates another token launch platform on the same network.

The company launched Pools.trade on Aug. 5, two days after Pons shipped its V2 contracts. The platform allows users to create tokens through crowd or instant launches and routes completed launches into permanently locked Uniswap V4 liquidity.

Pools.trade charges no fee to launch a token, while trades carry a standard 0.25% liquidity provider fee.

The platform recorded more launches than Pons during its first day, but Pons subsequently pulled well ahead in fee generation.

By Aug. 31, Pools.trade was collecting $38,553 in daily fees compared with $4.89 million for Pons V2.

Pons has since generated $5.95 million in fees over 24 hours, $28.83 million over seven days and $40.84 million over 30 days, DefiLlama data showed. Approximately $1.11 million of the latest daily total was retained as protocol revenue.

The launchpad has out-earned Solana’s pump.fun in daily fees every day since Aug. 29. Pons had previously led pump.fun for six days in late July before falling behind for approximately a month.

Its revenue has become a large component of activity generated by applications on Robinhood Chain. A recent DefiLlama snapshot showed Robinhood Chain application revenue reaching $2.66 million over 24 hours, temporarily placing the network ahead of Hyperliquid, Ethereum and Base under the same metric.

GMGN, Pons and Uniswap together accounted for approximately 93% of the measured application revenue in that snapshot. Pons generated roughly $1.03 million, compared with around $1.11 million for GMGN and $327,707 for Uniswap.

Robinhood Chain carries most Uniswap V4 trading

Robinhood launched its chain mainnet on July 1 as an Ethereum Layer 2 built using Arbitrum technology, with tokenized equities forming a central part of its trading offering.

Memecoin issuance began during the network’s first week. Launchpads later started combining memecoins with tokenized equities in the same trading markets, giving users pairs denominated in assets linked to publicly traded companies.

Uniswap has become one of the main liquidity venues for that activity. Combined tokenized stock volume through Uniswap on Robinhood Chain passed $1 billion in August.

The figure covered cumulative swaps involving several stock tokens and did not represent the amount of tokenized equities held on the network. Markets have included tokens tracking companies such as Nvidia, Apple and Alphabet.

Across decentralized exchanges, Robinhood Chain settled $1.35 billion in volume over the latest 24 hours. Total value locked stood at $818.6 million after rising 9.1% on the day, while stablecoins on the network were valued at $868.5 million.

The chain collected $4.45 million in gas fees and retained $4.01 million in revenue after Ethereum settlement expenses and the 10% share owed to Arbitrum.

Trading activity has remained concentrated among a smaller number of applications and assets. On Aug. 30, Pons alone generated $445 million of Robinhood Chain’s $874.8 million in DEX volume, according to a subsequent analysis of the network’s trading activity.

PONS buybacks have removed more than 29% of supply

Pons uses a large portion of its protocol fees to buy its native token.

Approximately 80% of protocol fees are directed toward PONS purchases, according to Pons and DefiLlama’s accounting of protocol revenue.

Pons said Thursday that 29.34% of the total token supply had been burned. CoinGecko put circulating supply at 712.1 million PONS against a maximum supply of 1 billion.

The token’s record price came as UNI recorded its own weekly gains. Uniswap’s native token traded at $6.28, up 7.9% over 24 hours and 36.1% over seven days, giving it a market capitalization of $3.92 billion.

Pons has continued adding markets tied to Robinhood Chain’s tokenized-equity ecosystem. The launchpad listed another group of stock-token pairs Thursday, including UPS, SNAP, LULU, PFE and JNJ.