Transaction fees on Robinhood Chain have fallen sharply as the memecoin frenzy that pushed the network to the top of the revenue rankings has cooled. CoinDesk data shows the chain’s fee income is down 97% from its peak, even though transaction counts remain close to record levels.
As recently as Aug. 30, applications on the two-month-old network generated $2.7 million in a single day, twice Ethereum’s daily figure and second only to Solana. Roughly $2 million of that came from token issuance platform Pons and memecoin trading app GMGN, as users launched 22,600 tokens in 24 hours.
At its early-September peak, Robinhood Chain collected roughly $8 million in fees from 13.1 million transactions in one day, averaging 64 cents per transaction. By Sept. 16, however, the daily tally had dropped to about $230,000 across 8.9 million transactions, or just 2.6 cents each, according to growthepie data.
That means the amount paid to use the network fell 97%, while on-chain activity declined 32%. The gap suggests the chain did not simply empty out; it became significantly cheaper to use.
Weekly figures point to only a modest pullback in activity. Based on CoinDesk calculations using DeFiLlama, Robinhood’s decentralized exchanges processed about $13 billion in the seven days through Sept. 16, up 5% from the previous week. Stablecoin supply slipped only 1% to around $1 billion, with about $930 million of that sitting in decentralized-finance applications.
Projects built on the chain are still earning far more than the network itself. DeFiLlama data shows those businesses generated about $8 million in fees over the latest 24 hours and retained $1.5 million in revenue, versus the network’s own $230,000.
What traders are saying
Pseudonymous trader Unipcs, ranked first by all-time profit on the FOMO platform, told CoinDesk on Telegram that earlier high gas fees did not affect him or the “trencher” traders he knows. In his view, users do not focus on fees as long as there is money to be made on-chain.
The cooldown is most visible at Pons, the launchpad where users create and trade new memecoins and which powered much of Robinhood Chain’s boom. Data shows Pons logged about $616 million in trading volume from Sept. 10-16, down 37% from the previous seven-day period. Over the same stretch, protocol revenue fell from $10.7 million to $5.8 million, though that still works out to roughly $830,000 a day.
At the same time, Uniswap V3 volume on Robinhood Chain more than doubled from $2.5 billion to $5.3 billion, while Uniswap V4 volume fell 22% to $4.9 billion. Across all decentralized exchanges tracked by DeFiLlama, total Robinhood Chain volume rose 5% to $12.8 billion.
Unipcs said he remains bullish on Robinhood Chain and expects the network’s user base, trading volumes and fees to set fresh records before year-end. He added that speculative memecoin activity remains concentrated mainly across Robinhood Chain, BNB Chain and Solana.
Earlier this month, Pons creator Ozzy told CoinDesk that the platform uses 80% of its protocol revenue to buy and burn PONS, permanently removing purchased tokens from circulation. At last week’s revenue pace, that would send around $4.6 million to the program.
Did traders move to Solana?
Some market participants argued that high fees may have pushed traders back to Solana. But the broader data does not show a large-scale migration. Solana’s decentralized exchanges processed about $17 billion between Sept. 10 and Sept. 16, down 8% from the prior week, while PumpSwap, the exchange linked to memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, recorded $2.9 billion in volume, down 36%. That is broadly in line with Pons’ 37% decline.
Direct bridge flows do show some money moved toward Solana. deBridge, which enables token transfers between the two networks, processed $8.2 million from Robinhood to Solana during Sept. 10-16 and just over $6 million in the opposite direction, leaving a net outflow of about $2 million from Robinhood.
The previous week had been almost perfectly balanced, with $13.4 million leaving Robinhood and $13.3 million entering. Transfer counts, however, tilted toward Robinhood in the latest week, with about 5,000 Solana-to-Robinhood orders versus 3,800 going the other way.
Removing the most extreme days does not change the picture. In the seven days ending Sept. 4, Robinhood Chain averaged 11.5 million transactions and about $4 million in daily fees. In the seven days ending Sept. 16, it averaged 10.8 million transactions and $641,000 in daily fees. In short, the network is still busy, but the revenue mix and the venues capturing demand appear to have shifted.
