Morning Minute: Robinhood Chain Flips Ethereum and Base in Fees

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors are slightly red after U.S. and Iran exchanged attacks again; BTC at $77.9k
• Solana’s disinflation vote passes Friday with the narrowest margin
• Avici neobank hacked for $1.1M, user funds lost
• Robinhood DEX volume soars to highs, flips Ethereum and Base in fees
• PONS gets Hyperliquid listing, retraces 30% then bounces after posting new revenue ATH

💸 Robinhood’s Two-Month-Old Chain Is Now Out-Earning Ethereum

Robinhood turned on its own blockchain July 1. Two months later, it collects more in fees than Base and Ethereum do, the apps built on it out-earned Ethereum’s over the past day, and its token launchpad Pons is printing more revenue than most chains.

Chain revenue is what the network keeps from transaction fees. Over 30 days Robinhood Chain pulled in $3.13 million, third among all chains behind Canton at $49 million and Tron at $26 million. Base did $2.89 million. Ethereum did $2.47 million. Over the past day the gap widened, with Robinhood at $495,477 against $71,703 for Base and $25,746 for Ethereum.

App revenue measures what the protocols on top actually earn, and Robinhood Chain apps took in $1.84 million over 24 hours, second only to Solana at $5.03 million and ahead of Ethereum’s $1.14 million. Ethereum still wins the 30-day count at $45.84 million against $21.05 million, so this is a one-day sample. For now.

The balance sheet grew with it. Total value locked reached $727.15 million, up 7.4% in a day, with $2.32 billion bridged in and a stablecoin supply of $769.44 million that gained 7.8% on the week. DEX volume ran to $1.19 billion over 24 hours and perps added another $189.86 million. Onchain real-world asset volume set records four days running, each session clearing roughly $115 million against a July peak near $60 million, and RWA market cap on the chain now sits at $149.22 million.

And Pons has been the big individual winner and driver of the growth. Pons does roughly $208.82 million in 30-day DEX volume and booked a record $690,000 in revenue Saturday, which annualizes to $64 million on $279.88 million in fees. Its token went with it. PONS trades at $0.3591 after a 46% day and a 499% week, carrying a $254.89 million market cap on $79.58 million of volume. On Tuesday, it was $0.1333 and $94.9 million. Around 80% of Pons V1 revenue goes to buying back and burning the token, which is why revenue and price are moving together instead of separately.

Overall, the trend is clear. Robinhood Chain is going to be a force in onchain crypto. Their CEO and leadership team continue to lean in. RWAs are growing at a rapid pace onchain (largely thanks to memecoins). And traders are starting to focus almost exclusively on the Robinhood Chain at the moment, given the broad surge in token prices across infrastructure plays like Pons, AI and Delta and pure memes like Cashcat and Hmm. Expect the metrics reported above to continue growing up and to the right for the near future…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors were slightly red over the weekend; BTC +0.2% at $77.9k; ETH -1% at $2,450; SOL -2% at $103; HYPE -2% at $81.30
• Top alt movers include XMR (+12%), MNT (+8%) and LIT (+6%)
• Oil +4% at $87; Gold -0.3% at $4,510
• Stock futures are slightly red after the US and Iran exchanged strikes for first time since July; DOW -0.2%, Nasdaq -0.2%
• Solana validators doubled the network’s disinflation rate in a vote that cleared by 0.33 points, hitting the 1.5% issuance floor by 2029 instead of 2032, while a separate fee-burning proposal failed
• The Ninth Circuit ruled Nevada can regulate Kalshi’s sports contracts, rejecting the argument that federal commodities law preempts state gaming rules and splitting with an April ruling that went the other way in New Jersey
• Six wallets dormant since 2011, 2012, and 2014 moved 553.59 BTC worth about $40.15 million between August 16 and 26, with decade-old coins stirring at a faster clip in 2026 than in most prior years
• BitGo acquired NYDIG’s institutional trading arm for about $42.5 million in cash and stock plus up to $15 million in earnouts, adding roughly 30 staff and a derivatives and financing desk
• A flaw in an outdated Rain card contract drained about $1.1 million from Avicie’s neobank, taking $500,800 from 1,685 Avici users and knocking AVICI down 49% to a record low before it pared losses
• Cronos halted its entire blockchain Sunday after an attacker drained about $75M from Tectonic, the network’s largest lender, stranding roughly $60M
• Polygon disclosed it patched consensus and denial-of-service flaws through two hard forks rolled out privately before going public, including one that would have let a single crafted transaction force costly work across every validator

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $202M in net outflows on Friday but $924M in net inflows on the week; the ETH ETFs saw $102M in inflows on Friday and $815M on the week
• Evernorth cleared its SEC registration for a $1 billion XRP treasury merger, sending the Armada Acquisition Corp. II deal to a September 30 shareholder vote ahead of a Nasdaq listing under XRPN

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were red and closed a red week; DOGE -9%, SHIB -7%, PEPE -11%, PENGU -7%, TRUMP -5%, SPX +19%; Fartcoin -2%
• Robinhood chain leaders were mixed but saw big runners; PONS +14%; Statics +200%; Cinema +73x; Boner +500%; Up +140%; Cashcat -10% at $200M
• Solana leaders included Heehaw (+80x to $4M), SKR (+80%), and TJR (+900%); Ansem -20% at $290M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks -1% at 32 ETH, BAYC -3% at 7.7 ETH, Pudgy -4% at 4.1 ETH
• Spawnhood (+900%) and Wif Outlaws (+12%) led top movers; Quotrons hit a new high of 4 ETH before retracing
• Original Blokyz raised $64M in their presale raffle to mint at 0.03 ETH, with the NFTs now sitting at a 0.136 ETH floor