Joke capital: how memecoins turned Robinhood Chain into a market leader

The proprietary blockchain network of the US brokerage company Robinhood became one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency platforms in less than two weeks. The main source of activity was not real-world assets (RWAs)*, which the company had initially focused on, but speculative interest in memecoins.

* RWA refers to real-world assets whose associated rights are represented digitally through tokens on a blockchain. Such assets may include real estate, stocks, bonds, precious metals, commodities, debt obligations, and other objects that exist outside the cryptocurrency environment. The physical object itself is not transferred to the blockchain. Instead, a token is created on the network that may confirm ownership rights, a share in an asset, entitlement to income, or a claim against the organization that issued the token.

While Bitcoin is trading near multi-year lows and venture investors'* attention is shifting towards artificial intelligence, memecoins have once again attracted cryptocurrency traders. As has repeatedly happened in the market, the sharp rise in activity on an individual blockchain was linked to speculative excitement surrounding meme tokens.

* Venture investors finance young companies, startups, and technology projects with high growth potential but also a high probability of failure. Unlike investors who purchase shares in established and profitable companies, venture investors often invest in businesses at an early stage, when they do not yet have stable revenue, a large audience, or a proven business model.

Robinhood launched its own blockchain and built a cryptocurrency ecosystem around it. The company primarily positions Robinhood Chain as infrastructure for the tokenization of real-world assets. However, a significant portion of the capital entered the network for another reason: the boom in memecoins, publicly supported by Robinhood's chief executive.

Memecoin market capitalization exceeds $300 million.

According to CoinGecko, as of July 14, the total market capitalization of memecoins in the Robinhood ecosystem exceeded $300 million. The aggregator included more than 60 assets in the relevant category.

The largest tokens by market capitalization were Cash Cat (CASHCAT) and Cash Dog (CASHDOG). Their market values were estimated at approximately $190 million and $40 million, respectively.

The Robinhood trading platform has a large user base of approximately 27.7 million accounts. However, memecoins can currently be traded only by users of blockchain applications, such as Robinhood Wallet.

According to unofficial information, memecoins may potentially be listed in the broker's main application, although the listing fee is allegedly as high as $100 million. These rumors are further increasing interest in low-liquidity memecoins on Robinhood Chain, as traders expect that some of them may subsequently appear in Robinhood's main application.

How Robinhood Chain activity has changed

In just a few days, Robinhood Chain became one of the most active EVM*-compatible networks. Trading volume on decentralized exchanges within the network increased almost tenfold, the number of new addresses grew more than twentyfold, and the blockchain surpassed many competitors in terms of the number of active traders.

* EVM is Ethereum's virtual machine, meaning the software environment in which smart contracts are executed and decentralized applications operate. A network is described as EVM-compatible when it supports the same logic, token standards, addresses, and development tools as Ethereum.

The sharp increase in activity began after Vlad Tenev's statement was published on July 8. The head of Robinhood noted that Robinhood Chain was well suited, among other things, to launching memecoins.

As recently as July 7, the network's total revenue from user fees amounted to less than $300 per day. By July 9, the figure had reached $28,000. During its first 13 days, the network generated more than $68,000 in revenue, placing it second in total revenue among major blockchains.

By July 14, Robinhood Chain had entered the top five largest networks by daily and weekly trading volume. The figures exceeded $800 million and $3.9 billion, respectively.

Thanks to these spot trading volumes, Robinhood Chain surpassed Arbitrum, Tron, Polygon, Near, and Optimism. The Robinhood network lagged behind BNB Chain, developed by the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, by only a few percentage points.

For comparison, on July 7, daily trading volume on Robinhood Chain was slightly above $30 million.

The number of daily transactions increased more than tenfold over the same period, from approximately 300,000 to 3.5 million by July 14. However, the network remains far behind the largest blockchains. For example, more than 280 million transactions are processed on Solana every day.

NOXA surpasses Pump.fun in revenue

The increase in activity associated with memecoins also affected the performance of individual platforms within the ecosystem. Since July 8, NOXA, a memecoin launch platform operating on Robinhood Chain, has generated more daily revenue than Pump.fun, the largest comparable platform built on Solana.

By July 14, NOXA's daily revenue had not fallen below $1.25 million. The highest figure was recorded on July 11, when revenue reached $2.8 million. For comparison, Pump.fun's revenue stood at approximately $500,000.

The number of tokens being created also increased sharply. While approximately 800 assets were issued on NOXA on July 7, the number had exceeded 12,500 by July 9.

At the same time, the function for creating new tokens on the platform has been unavailable for several days. NOXA representatives explained the suspension by pointing to the activity of bots that copied new assets and distributed spam on a large scale. Trading in previously issued tokens continues on Uniswap.

How Robinhood Chain is connected to Ethereum

Robinhood Chain is a second-layer network, or L2*, built on top of Ethereum using the Arbitrum technology stack. Its architecture provides for a portion of the revenue generated to be allocated to the development of the Ethereum and Arbitrum ecosystems.

* L2 (Layer 2, a second-layer network) is an additional blockchain network built on top of a primary network, such as Ethereum, to process transactions faster and more cheaply. In this case, Ethereum serves as the first layer, or L1, while the L2 network handles a significant share of operations in order to reduce the load on the main blockchain.

Under current market conditions, this method of launching a blockchain is considered less popular. Many new projects prefer to create independent networks that do not rely on the infrastructure of other platforms.

Statements by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin placed additional pressure on the second-layer solutions sector. In one of his publications on Ethereum's strategic development, he described the concept of second-layer networks as meaningless. At the same time, the native tokens of second-layer blockchains were among the least profitable categories of cryptoassets in 2025.

However, Robinhood Chain may become one of the few exceptions if the high level of activity is sustained. Against the backdrop of the network's rapid, although still short-term, growth, experts have once again begun discussing the benefits that second-layer platforms may provide to Ethereum.

ARK Invest described the launch of Robinhood Chain as an "ultra-bullish" signal for Ethereum, as the network's development could increase demand for ETH.

At the same time, the fund's analysts consider the distribution of Robinhood Chain revenue to be unfair. According to the data they presented, 10% of revenue is allocated to the Arbitrum ecosystem and 15% to Ethereum.

Meanwhile, Ethereum co-founder and Consensys chief executive Joe Lubin predicts that tens of thousands of companies will partially transfer their business processes to the Ethereum ecosystem over the next two to three years. To achieve this, they will simultaneously use the main Ethereum blockchain, L2 solutions, and private EVM networks.

According to Lubin, the widespread adoption of this infrastructure by companies will eventually have a significant impact on Ethereum's economic performance.