On September 3, crypto KOL Rune revealed that Bonk Guy, the top-performing trader on the social trading platform Fomo, is 64 years old this year. According to Bonk Guy’s disclosed positions, he invested approximately $67,000 in PONS, the native token of Pons—a launchpad on Robinhood Chain—achieving a paper gain of nearly 9,100%. This position stems from a recent launchpad battle on Robinhood Chain.
64-year-old hunter
Three years ago, Bonk Guy (@theunipcs) went long on BONK with a $16,000 principal and 6x leverage, briefly achieving eight-figure unrealized profits, only to be fully liquidated during the black swan event in October last year. This time, he has returned to the top of the profit leaderboard by trading a set of tokens on Robinhood Chain: PONS, USELESS, and Marscoin. As of late August, his cumulative spot trading profits exceeded $10 million, with over $5.7 million in profits in the past 30 days, and his total portfolio value once surged to $15.74 million.
His 9100% gain stems from riding a self-reinforcing pricing mechanism on Robinhood Chain called PONS. How this mechanism operates determines not only how much he can earn, but also which direction this launchpad battle will take next.
Pons
Pons is operated by Pons Labs, with each newly issued token fixed at 1 billion units, created at a cost of only 0.0005 ETH. A 1% transaction fee is applied, with 70% going to the token creator and 30% to the protocol. Of the protocol’s share, 80% is used to repurchase and burn PONS on the secondary market, while the remaining 20% is allocated to team operations. This design ties the issuance and trading volume of new tokens directly to PONS repurchases and burns: the more new tokens are created and the more actively they are traded, the higher the fees generated, a portion of which continuously translates into market demand for and destruction of PONS, directly linking platform trading activity to PONS’s supply and demand dynamics.
With this mechanism, Pons captured the largest wave of traffic after NOXA, the leading platform, paused token launches in mid-July, and has since steadily expanded its market share: by early September, Pons accounted for approximately 66% of all token launches on the chain, and 78% of all new token trading volume originated from Pons. On September 3, Pons’ daily protocol fees surpassed Pump.fun, exceeding $6 million, driving the valuation of its token, PONS, to a historic high of approximately $970 million—a more than 200% increase in one week. Currently, about 29% of the total supply has been repurchased and burned. After launching V2 in August, new tokens on Pons can now be paired for trading with stock tokens such as NVIDIA, Apple, and Robinhood upon completing their graduation phase.
LONG
If Pons’s core is cash flow buybacks, LONG has always bet on the narrative—directly bundling stock tokens with memes into a single product. Launched in early September, LongX packaged a 3x leveraged position in NVIDIA as a token and opened trading pairs with meme tokens; Artificial Inu, the highest-market-cap meme token on the LONG platform, is paired directly with the NVIDIA stock token, reaching a market cap of over $200 million at its peak and surging far beyond NVIDIA’s spot price during the same period. Given its combination of leveraged stock exposure and meme trading attributes, its price clearly does not simply follow the underlying stock’s movements but is also influenced by leverage mechanics and on-chain speculative sentiment. LONG has also designed a “community model”: a portion of fees is automatically burned, while another portion is locked into a treasury, aiming to establish its own differentiated identity by applying the logic of capital accumulation to stock-paired memes. Currently, on the LONG platform, meme tokens paired with targets such as Costco, Micron, and SpaceX have also entered the tens of millions of dollars in market cap and are vying for the platform’s second-largest position.
Pools
In early August, Uniswap Labs directly launched its launchpad on Robinhood Chain. On the day Pools went live, founder Hayden Adams publicly labeled high-fee launchpads in the market as "predatory," implicitly targeting platforms like Pons that charge a 1% fee. Pools took the opposite approach: a trading fee of only 0.25%, with creators able to claim up to 0.05% of that fee, while the remainder is automatically reinvested into permanently locked liquidity pools—with no additional launchpad fees. Tokens listed on Pools are instantly integrated with Uniswap’s web interface, wallets, routing API, and third-party integrations such as MetaMask and Ledger, meaning a token launch immediately gains visibility across the entire Uniswap ecosystem. On its first day, Pools captured 40% to 50% of all token listings and trading volume across the chain, thanks to its official credibility and distribution channels, delivering a substantial challenge to Pons’ market leadership. Pons built user loyalty through first-mover advantage and its buyback mechanism, while Pools relies on the reputation of its DeFi team and lower fees—two strategies currently clashing head-on.
In addition to these three, over a dozen launchpads are active on Robinhood Chain, including PAIR, which focuses on stock basket pairings; CLUTCH, which emphasizes community and NFTs; Pools fun, in collaboration with Sushi; Hood Dev, geared toward developers; and others, each carving out their own niche.
If you can't beat them, join them?
In early August, on its first day of launch, Pools briefly captured 40% to 50% of all token issuances and trading volume across the chain, showing strong momentum. However, this advantage did not last: by early September, Pons had regained the lead, accounting for approximately 66% of token issuances and 78% of new token trading volume. Despite Pools’ low fees and official distribution channels, they ultimately failed to seriously challenge Pons’ dominant position.
More interestingly, before the competition ended, Uniswap Labs' identity changed first.
On September 4, Uniswap Labs announced the purchase of PONS, without disclosing the specific amount or holding percentage. Following the announcement, PONS rose approximately 40% within hours.
On one side, their own Pools are competing with PONS for access to the Robinhood Chain launchpad; on the other, Uniswap Labs has become an investor in PONS.
The market began interpreting this investment as a dramatic statement: "If you can't beat them, join them." However, Uniswap Labs may not have been primarily interested in PONS as a competitor, but rather in the fully formed flywheel on Robinhood Chain—encompassing token launches, trading, fee generation, and platform token value capture. While Pools can continue competing for token launch access, PONS allows Uniswap Labs to simultaneously bet on the chain’s most successful current hub for traffic.
The Deadline Behind the Hype
The launchpad battle on Robinhood Chain is essentially a fight for traffic.
Pons uses fee buybacks to turn token issuance and trading volume into demand for PONS; LONG ties stock tokens to memes, attempting to transform price fluctuations of traditional assets into new speculative targets; Pools bet on low fees and Uniswap’s distribution capabilities. Though these three mechanisms appear different, they are currently competing for the same group of users.
Data from Robinhood Chain illustrates this point: as of August 10, approximately 92.9% of accounts interacted only with meme coins, while only about 3.7% of accounts used tokenized stocks. Robinhood Chain aims to enable on-chain finance, but what initially gained traction remains a meme frenzy.
This is the real risk behind platform tokens like Pons and LONG. Their current price surge isn’t just about investors betting that one particular launchpad will win—it’s about betting that meme trading on Robinhood Chain will continue to grow. The more tokens are issued and the more frequently they’re traded, the stronger Pons’s fee buyback mechanism becomes; the more meme capital flows into stock-paired trading, the greater the narrative potential for LONG.
The problem is that all these flywheels are built on the same assumption: on-chain speculative momentum cannot stop.
Robinhood’s 90-day gas subsidy for selected wallets will expire at the end of September. After the subsidy ends, how much of today’s billion-dollar DEX trading volume will remain? Will the launchpad, which relies on meme-driven traffic, see a rapid decline in fee income? And will users who entered Robinhood Chain due to wealth effects from tokens like Pons and LONG actually stay to use financial products such as lending and stock tokens?
This is the true turning point in this launchpad battle.
If the hype around memes fades and traffic leaves with it, then what Pons, LONG, Pools, and others are competing for today is simply who can claim a larger share of tokens during this speculative cycle. But if these platforms can truly retain meme users and gradually guide them toward lending, tokenized stocks, and other on-chain financial services, then what’s at stake isn’t just the price fluctuation of a single platform token—it’s control over the next financial gateway for Robinhood Chain.
The content in this article is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice. The market carries risks; investments should be made with caution.