Trader turns $2,600 into $1.2 million on PONS as Robinhood Chain fees spike

The Pons launchpad on Robinhood Chain is minting fresh blockchain millionaires, as an Arkham-monitored wallet has turned a $2,600 July investment on the launchpad’s token into more than $1.2 million in paper profits as of this September report.

The epic ROI reported by the blockchain-tracking firm highlights a new cohort of winners from the speculative frenzy around Robinhood Chain since its hot summer launch.

How a trader turned $2,600 in PONS into $1.2 million

The trader that Arkham identified as @heylittlechef on X bought in on PONS across four purchases on launch day, back when the token’s entire market cap was around $160,700.

As of this report, @heylittlechef has cashed in on $77,400 and is still sitting on a PONS position worth around $1.08 million.

Other traders have also taken big gains on PONS, including a wallet labeled 0x194 that turned $44,300 into around $811,000 in late July. That trader entered the trade at a $3.7 million market cap.

Interest has spread past retail, too. On-chain data shows market maker Wintermute has built a position worth about $3 million in PONS across multiple transaction tranches.

PONS has grown exponentially since launch, changing hands at $0.78 as of this report, with a market capitalization near $552 million. The token hit its $0.97 all-time high price on September 5.

The launchpad quietly minting fees on Robinhood’s chain

PONS is the token of the similarly named launchpad that allows users to create and trade fixed-supply tokens that graduate into deeper liquidity pools on Robinhood Chain. The Robinhood Chain itself is riding a hot hand after traders repurposed it as a de facto meme-trading base rather than the tokenized-stocks network it was presented as when it launched on July 1.

There is real substance behind the Pons run. The launchpad pulled in $90.93 million in fees and $16.83 million in protocol revenue over the last 30 days. Lifetime fees have already crossed $118 million and DEX volume has passed $1.5 billion, per DeFiLlama.

That activity has also helped Robinhood Chain’s baseline stats, helping the network set a $6 million single-day fee record on Friday, September 4.

What the project’s founder is telling holders

Much of the momentum ties back to Pons’ deflationary design, and its founder has been narrating the burns in real time.

Ozzy, who posts as @MEADGod, wrote on Tuesday that more than $208 million of PONS had been destroyed at current valuations, with circulating supply down to 699 million and shrinking “every 15 minutes.”

Roughly 80% of the revenue Pons generates is funneled into buying back and burning the token, DeFiLlama’s methodology notes.

Ozzy has also pushed back on a circulating complaint. In a Wednesday post, he said Pons does not allow taxes to be changed after a token launches, calling that claim “simply wrong,” and blamed some trading terminals for routing orders through high-tax pools rather than the ones Pons sets up.

Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.