While Bitcoin and Ethereum tread water — BTC added a modest 1.8 percent over the week, ETH even less — September’s biggest story is being written on Robinhood Chain. There, launchpad token Pons (PONS) surged 393 percent in seven days, nearly 2,800 percent in a month, and trades around $0.68 on Friday morning with a market capitalization of $480 million. The best part of the story is not the price, but the backdrop: the protocol generates $5.95 million in daily fees — more than pump.fun, the king of Solana memecoins, every single day since August 29. Then Uniswap Labs itself stepped into the game.
What exactly is Pons?
Pons is a token launchpad — a factory where anyone can create a token with a fixed supply and launch it on Robinhood Chain. The model is familiar from pump.fun and similar platforms on Solana: the token first lives on a bonding curve, where early liquidity grows with demand, and once it reaches a set threshold, it “graduates” and moves into a real liquidity pool. The difference lies in the destination — instead of a Solana DEX, Pons has been sending graduating tokens straight into Uniswap V4 pools since August 3, thanks to its V2 upgrade that linked the launchpad to the world’s largest decentralized exchange.
Token creators are paid in Ethereum, which in the memecoin world is almost revolutionary — most launchpads pay in their own tokens, which are often worth less than the paper they are printed on. Pons also supports pairs with tokenized stocks such as NVDA, AAPL and HOOD, plus the USDG stablecoin, blurring the line between crypto casino and serious market. All together it sounds like a scenario where someone threw pump.fun, Robinhood and Wall Street into a single blender.
The numbers breaking Solana’s monopoly
The most impressive figure is not the price gain but the traffic. DefiLlama records $5.95 million in daily fees and $1.11 million in protocol revenue — putting Pons above pump.fun in the daily comparison since August 29. On the DEX alone, the protocol turns over $120.9 million in 24-hour volume, and $719.4 million cumulatively since launching on July 13. For context, Solana was synonymous with memecoin mania for years; now Robinhood Chain — a network built on Arbitrum’s Orbit technology — is stealing that title in full view of the industry.
That this is not mere stats on a single protocol is confirmed by the bigger picture: Robinhood Chain generated $901.5 million, or 56.3 percent of Uniswap V4’s total $1.6 billion volume, over the latest 24-hour period. Behind it sit Ethereum with $465.5 million and BNB Chain with $93.9 million. Uniswap’s deployment on Robinhood Chain holds $207 million in total value locked and produces $7.72 million in daily fees. In other words, the largest decentralized exchange now lives on a chain almost nobody mentioned three months ago.
When Uniswap becomes owner of its own rival
The strangest twist came on Thursday, when Pons announced that Uniswap Labs had purchased PONS tokens “for long-term alignment.” The size of the position, the price and the structure of the transaction were not disclosed, and Uniswap did not officially comment — which immediately sparked debate over whether this was a strategic open-market purchase or an allocated grant. The irony is perfect: Uniswap Labs launched its own launchpad, Pools.trade, on the same chain on August 5 — a direct competitor to Pons. By August 31, Pools.trade was collecting $38,553 in daily fees, while Pons generated $4.89 million on the same day.
Instead of fighting a protocol that brings millions in volume to its V4 network, Uniswap chose to — buy. The “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy from the sports playbook, turned into an on-chain transaction. For Pons, this is also a stamp of legitimacy: few launchpads can say the largest DEX exchange became their shareholder. For Uniswap, it is a hedge — if Pons keeps dominating the launchpad scene on Robinhood Chain, Uniswap sits on both sides of the table: charging fees on the liquidity that Pons’ graduating tokens bring into V4 pools while holding the token of the protocol generating that activity.
Binance opens the door, price breaks records
A day earlier, on Wednesday, Binance Alpha added PONS and FLORK to its offering, enabling market and limit order trading — although a spot listing on the main exchange has not been announced. The news sent the price to an all-time high of $0.739, and at one point Thursday the token printed a range from $0.53 to $0.74. The day closed up 25.8 percent, with volume of around $170 million. When a token with a half-billion market cap turns over a third of its value in 24 hours, the market is clearly not speculating about the future — it is betting on the present.
The price history looks like a video game chart: from an all-time low of $0.0033 on July 17, the token reached $0.017 by August 6, then entered an exponential phase in late August. From $0.15 on August 29 to today’s $0.68, only six days have passed. Every pullback — and there were several, like the drop from $0.046 to $0.029 in mid-August — was treated by buyers as an opportunity. Technically, key support now sits at $0.52 to $0.53, the level of the old record broken on rising volume, with psychological support at $0.40. On the other side, resistance is purely psychological: the round $1 level is the first serious test, and above it there are no historical levels to hold sellers back.
What is worrying is the rhythm. When a token triples in a week and quadruples in a month, launchpad token history suggests corrections of 40 to 60 percent are the rule, not the exception. pump.fun once spawned hundreds of tokens that lost 90 percent of their value after “graduating.” Pons differs in that it is the protocol itself — a tool, not a player — but tools also fall when the market decides to charge the bill for excessive enthusiasm.
Risks: the other side of the coin
The biggest risk is youth. The protocol is less than two months old and spent most of its existence in a bearish trend before exploding. The Uniswap purchase sounds impressive, but without a disclosed position size, it remains possible that this is a symbolic allocation with a marketing effect bigger than its actual impact. Supply carries an additional burden: 712 of the 1 billion tokens are in circulation, meaning the remaining 28.8 percent waits in the background — and any major unlock or early-stage sale could pressure the price.
The regulatory gray zone cannot be ignored either. Pons enables trading of tokenized stocks like Nvidia and Apple — an area where the SEC is still drawing lines, especially after the agency proposed its first major overhaul of the transfer agent system in 40 years. If a regulatory storm hits tokenized equities on-chain, Pons could find itself in the crosshairs even though it was not created to circumvent the law. Finally, there is concentration: the entire story depends on one chain, Robinhood Chain. Arbitrum gained 52 percent over the week precisely because the market recognized the value that chain brings to its ecosystem — but dependence on a single home means that home’s problems become the token’s problems.
Conclusion
Pons is the best example this week of what crypto does best — compressing into one month what traditional markets take a decade to achieve. The combination of Robinhood Chain, Uniswap V4 integration, a Binance Alpha listing and a purchase by Uniswap itself created the perfect storm: real volume, real partners and a healthy dose of spectacle. For investors entering at these prices, the rule remains as old as the market itself: during a gold rush, the safest business is not digging for gold, but selling shovels. Pons is exactly that — a shovel-selling company. The question is only how much someone is willing to pay for those shovels once the last nugget is mined.
Financial data (September 4, 2026, source: CoinGecko): price $0.68 (+25.8 percent in 24h, +393 percent in 7 days, +2,774 percent in 30 days); market cap ~$482 million; 24-hour volume ~$170 million; circulating supply 712 million of a 1 billion maximum; all-time high $0.739 (September 3); all-time low $0.0033 (July 17); protocol daily fees $5.95 million (DefiLlama).
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments — value can drop to zero. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.