[Column] Robinhood Chain: The Meme Coin Craze May Be Over, But Growth Continues

1. Is Robinhood Chain Dead?

During the year 2026, if you ask who had the hottest debut among blockchain networks, everyone would point to Robinhood Chain. Despite the unfavorable conditions in the crypto market and the fact that the proportion of crypto in Robinhood's revenue dropped from 27.2% in Q1 2025 to 12.6% in Q1 2026, Robinhood boldly launched Robinhood Chain on July 1, 2026.

The goal of Robinhood Chain was to build an on-chain financial ecosystem based on tokenized stocks. Immediately after its launch, several meme coins, such as Noxa and Cashcat, gained attention, making it seem like Robinhood's bold vision centered around RWA (Real World Assets) was struggling to gain traction.

However, interestingly, launchpads that offered pairs of meme coins with stock tokens, such as Long and Ponz, gained popularity, leading to a surge in trading volume. There were even humorous instances where the volatility of stock tokens influenced by meme coins affected the original prices of traditional stocks like HIMS and AMC.

On September 4, 2026, Robinhood Chain generated an astonishing $8.27 million in network fees in just one day, which is significant considering that the total revenue from Robinhood's crypto segment in Q2 2026 was around $100 million.
Source=Rollup

However, this intense interest was short-lived. Coupled with unfavorable macroeconomic conditions and the crypto market situation, the meme coin craze on Robinhood Chain cooled off temporarily, leading to a rapid decline in network fee revenue as network congestion decreased. By mid-October, the daily network fees were around $30,000 to $40,000, which is less than 1% of the peak on September 4.

Is Robinhood Chain a short-lived fad? Let's examine the ecosystem.

2. Examining Robinhood Chain

The pillars supporting the Robinhood Chain ecosystem can be categorized into four main components. The Four Pillars of Robinhood are as follows:

• Steakhouse USDG Vault
• Stock Tokens
• Launchpads and Meme Coins
• Perpetual Futures DEX (Perp DEXs)

2.1 Steakhouse USDG Vault

The total value locked (TVL) in Robinhood Chain is currently around $1.1 billion, with a significant portion held in an important vault. This vault, operated by Steakhouse Financial, supplies USDG to the Morpho lending market to earn interest. It currently holds approximately $540 million in TVL.

Interestingly, unlike what we observed earlier, the TVL of the USDG vault is gradually trending upwards. The main reason for this is the high interest rate. To attract users and secure TVL, Robinhood is offering an impressive interest rate of up to 7% exclusively for existing Robinhood users. Typically, other networks' stablecoin-based Morpho vaults offer an APY of around 3-5%, making the 7% APY of the USDG vault very competitive from an investor's perspective.

Analyzing the investors who have deposited funds into the vault, the distribution is somewhat centralized, but approximately 75,000 wallets have participated in the deposits. Particularly, considering that the top depositor is a protocol using USDG as a reserve asset, the actual number of wallets participating in the USDG vault is likely much higher.

While the crypto community strongly associates Robinhood Chain with meme coin trading among degen investors, it is quietly building a base of passive investors based on the USDG vault.

2.2 Stock Tokens

Robinhood Chain initially aimed to build its ecosystem around stock tokens, particularly RWA tokens. Consistent with this goal, more than half of the RWA tokens issued on the chain are stock and ETF tokens, followed by commodities and U.S. Treasury bonds.

The scale of stock tokens surged dramatically starting in early September, as discussed in the first part, due to the massive trading of meme coins paired with stock tokens, leading to a significant minting of stock tokens to meet the demand. Although the meme coin trading frenzy has somewhat cooled, the stock tokens issued during that time have not been significantly redeemed, and their scale remains stable. Approximately $150 million worth of stock and RWA tokens issued on Robinhood Chain can provide strong liquidity support as the Robinhood ecosystem moves to the next stage.

2.3 Launchpads and Meme Coins

Starting with Noxa, launchpads for meme coins like Ponz and Long have played a crucial role in establishing the current ecosystem of Robinhood Chain. Notably, while meme coins are typically traded in pairs with network-native assets like ETH (Ethereum) or SOL (Solana) on other launchpads, the concept of trading them paired with stock tokens emerged for the first time on Robinhood Chain, sparking the meme coin craze.

At first glance, the network fee revenue chart may suggest that the meme coin trading ecosystem on Robinhood Chain is completely dead, but surprisingly, the spot DEX trading volume remains robust. On September 4, when network fee revenue peaked, the spot trading volume reached $3.27 billion, and even after the popularity waned, it showed a trading volume of $3.24 billion on October 7, consistently maintaining a minimum of $600-700 million in recent trading volumes.

Particularly, the trading volume related to meme coins among the spot DEX transactions has not died down. Meme coin-related trading volume continues to account for more than half of the total trading volume. The meme coin ecosystem of Robinhood, which many thought was dead, has merely cooled off, but the spark remains alive.

2.4 Perpetual Futures DEX

While Robinhood Chain aims to build an ecosystem centered around stock tokens, it also has a very active perpetual futures DEX ecosystem capable of trading various assets, including RWAs. Two prominent perpetual futures DEXs, Lighter and Arcus, exist on Robinhood Chain. Robinhood has strategically invested in both protocols, with Lighter providing direct trading functionality in the Robinhood wallet and Arcus integrated as an LP partner for stock token spot trading, receiving significant support from Robinhood.

If the first wave of the Robinhood ecosystem passed through meme coins, the most promising sector for the second wave of the Robinhood ecosystem is perpetual futures. Both Lighter and Arcus are aggressively acquiring investors through point programs, and both trading volume and open interest (OI) indicating unsettled positions are steadily trending upwards. If these two protocols secure a larger investor base and successfully conduct airdrops, Robinhood Chain could enter its next golden era.

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