Author: Nancy, PANews
As FOMO around Robinhood Chain remains high, the market unexpectedly delivers a cold shower.
On the evening of September 2, Robinhood Chain saw another flash rally. Leveraging the wealth-creation effect of crypto-stock pairings, the meme coins JINQIAN, centered on the US stock short-squeeze narrative, and FAMI, named after a Nasdaq penny stock, ignited market sentiment upon launch, attracting significant capital and attention. However, following community skepticism over shell-game harvesting, their market caps plummeted. When the hype faded, it was the retail followers who ultimately bore the losses.
Meanwhile, Robinhood Chain transaction fees have surged amid the on-chain boom, driving platform revenues to record highs, while users are complaining that they can no longer afford it and even jokingly calling it the "aristocrat chain."
The U.S. stock short squeeze narrative backfires; is Robinhood Chain facing a cooling-off period?
Stock memes have become a popular trend on Robinhood Chain. Especially after the short squeeze narrative surrounding the meme coin BONER drove market sentiment a few days ago, capital has begun seeking the next asset with similar炒作 potential.
Last night, the token named FAMI launched and quickly attracted a massive influx of funds within minutes. Shortly after, the meme token JINQIAN, paired with FAMI, also rapidly gained market attention. JINQIAN’s market cap peaked above $73 million, while FAMI reached a high of over $53 million, with combined trading volume for both tokens approaching $240 million—evidencing their significant popularity.
The rapid rise of these two meme coins is linked to a prior announcement by crypto KOL Rune. A few days ago, Rune previewed his plan to acquire approximately 37.4% of a Nasdaq micro-cap stock via OTC for around $1.8 million. The stock has a short interest of 92.3%, and he intends to tokenize it on Robinhood Chain, paired with a meme coin to execute a short squeeze.
Soon, the community linked this clue to Farmmi, a Chinese agricultural supplier listed on Nasdaq. The company primarily engages in the processing and sale of agricultural products such as shiitake mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, and other edible fungi, as well as related agricultural trade activities. Strikingly, its annual report also mentioned the mushroom variety “Jinqian mushroom.” As a result, Farmmi’s stock price surged as much as 350% during trading. Even more intriguingly, the market capitalization of the on-chain token FAMI, which shares the same name, briefly reached ten times Farmmi’s actual market value.
However, this celebration quickly took a turn. The community discovered that FAMI was not an official stock token issued by Robinhood; its supply mechanism and allocation strategy resembled a carefully crafted script, with the creators packaging the narrative as a liquidity bait.
On-chain data shows that the total supply of FAMI is 37,430,000 tokens, closely matching Farmmi’s total outstanding shares. This supply was generated一次性 through two minting events during creation, with the deploying wallet retaining 38% and deploying a contract named PoolRepricer to self-manage pricing; since then, the supply has remained unchanged. Meanwhile, FAMI has no designated issuer and no share redemption mechanism, and it is not linked in any way to actual Farmmi shares. In contrast, Robinhood’s official stock token is issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited and is only available for subscription and redemption by authorized participants.
Rune later clarified that the previous acquisition post was generated by Claude, and the figures mentioned were fabricated or exaggerated. Additionally, FAMI on the chain was not issued by him.
In contrast, FAMI and JINQIAN both plummeted, with their market caps dropping to approximately $4.9 million and $2.7 million, respectively, a significant decline from their respective peaks.
This may be a microcosm of the recent FOMO surrounding Robinhood Chain—where the mechanics are fake, the narrative is fake, but the on-chain attention is real, even flowing toward Nasdaq. For the market, this spectacle has served as a cooling mechanism for the escalating sentiment.
Sixty percent of players lost money, but Robinhood Chain made a fortune.
For average players, the on-chain casinos that seem full of opportunities may only allow a few to actually walk away with profits.
Dune data shows that over the past 30 days, the proportion of traders who made a profit versus those who incurred a loss on Robinhood Chain (those who sold at least one asset) was 40% and 60%, respectively.
On FOMO App, one of the primary trading terminals on Robinhood Chain, the situation is even more severe. According to Dune data, over the past 90 days, the FOMO App had approximately 477,000 trading addresses, of which more than 441,000 were at a loss, accounting for about 94.27%; only around 27,000 addresses were profitable, representing about 5.7%. In other words, on average, out of every 100 trading addresses, only about 6 were profitable, while 94 were losing money.
More notably, losses among some traders were also substantial. Approximately 63.6% of trading addresses incurred losses of under $100, but around 30% suffered losses exceeding $500, with 8.9% losing over $1,000, 7.3% losing over $5,000, and even 3.98% losing more than $10,000. In contrast, among the profitable addresses, 87.5% earned less than $100 in profit, and only about 0.14% achieved profits exceeding $1,000. This means that profits for the majority of addresses were quite limited.
Meanwhile, the rising transaction costs on Robinhood Chain are squeezing players' already limited profit margins.
According to Token Terminal data, as of September 1, the average transaction fee on Robinhood Chain has risen to $0.33, more than 64 times higher than at the beginning of August. For comparison, Base’s average transaction fee during the same period was approximately $0.0026, and Solana’s was around $0.013. During peak trading periods for popular meme coins, congestion, failed transaction retries, platform fees, and routing losses compound, making the actual cost per transaction significantly higher. However, Robinhood’s official wallet currently offers transaction fee subsidies for eligible swaps, which will continue until September 29.
Rising transaction costs mean a higher barrier to entry for users, but for Robinhood Chain, they also mean stronger revenue capture.
According to the latest data from ArbData, its cumulative fee revenue has risen to $18.6 million, reaching a new all-time high. Meanwhile, Blockworks data shows that as of September 2, Robinhood Chain’s Layer 2 gross profit margin reached as high as 97%. The steadily increasing fees also reflect the ongoing surge in on-chain trading activity.
For players, the more active the on-chain ecosystem becomes, the higher the cost of seizing opportunities; for Robinhood Chain, it’s a continuous surge in revenue.