Pons propels Robinhood Chain fees to record $6 million in daily fees as DEX volume doubles

Robinhood Chain generated a single-day record of $6 million in fees on Friday, Sept. 4. Fees over the prior seven days totaled approximately $25 million, compared to just $1.4 million, representing a 17x increase in just one week.

Meanwhile, total DEX volume for the week totalled $12.4 billion, more than double the prior week’s total. Interestingly, daily active accounts averaged 396,000 across last week, which is lower than the prior week’s average.

This implies that Robinhood Chain has been extracting far more from its existing user base than before, as fees generated per active account have gone from $0.13 in mid-August to $15.90 by early September.

This entire phenomenon can be traced back to one protocol, Pons, now the chain’s leading token launchpad.

On Sept. 3, Pons managed to generate nearly $6 million in fees, which was more than what Pump.fun and Hyperliquid managed in the same day. The PONS token reached an all-time high valuation of over $970 million on Sept. 5, and the token is up over 200% in the last week alone.

Pons' tokenomics are quite reflexive, as roughly 80% of the revenue it generates is used towards token buybacks, with over 28% of the PONS supply burnt so far. It will be interesting to watch how Pons’ token launch count fares in the coming weeks, as fees are merely a lagging function of how many new pools exist to trade against, and whether the flywheel maintains if volume drops off.

This is an excerpt from The Block's Data & Insights newsletter. Dig into the numbers making up the industry's most thought-provoking trends.