Written by: 0xFacai
$8.15 million in fees per day, $54.3 million per week.
This is the profit data submitted today by Pons, the launch platform on Robinhood Chain.
Leading the narratives of "crypto-equity pairing" and "token allocation," platform tokens are soaring, with "golden dogs" emerging everywhere, and Robinhood is drawing on-chain traders to reallocate their funds and time.
For established ecosystems, the threat is now upon them—what countermeasures have they taken?
Solana's official team makes a direct call to buy
On the launch platform side, Solana is betting heavily on StonkFun.
StonkFun allows memes to be paired with stock tokens and other crypto assets. Stock tokens like SPY and assets like ZEC can also be traded as pairs. Trading activity around memes drives liquidity for these assets on Solana, providing a concrete use case for stock-token pairs and on-chain asset trading.
STONK is the platform token of StonkFun, with a portion of StonkFun’s revenue used to repurchase and burn STONK. The repurchase dashboard shows that StonkFun has collectively invested approximately $2.82 million to repurchase STONK, with the repurchase curve accelerating significantly in early September. As a result, ecosystem trading activity translates into buying pressure for the platform token, and STONK’s price appreciation attracts further attention to the launch platform.
The platform also uses a portion of trading fees to repurchase and burn the top ten tokens by market capitalization within the ecosystem, with allocation weights based on market cap. This gives leading projects ongoing opportunities to receive platform support, while also channeling trading momentum toward ecosystem tokens.
ZCAT is one of the most closely watched among them.
An anonymous cat in a paper bag has encapsulated Zcash’s privacy culture in a meme. It is paired with ZEC on Solana, accumulating reward funds through a 3% transfer fee, which are then distributed proportionally to eligible holders. By holding ZCAT, users have the opportunity to receive ZEC.
This is also the logic Ansem values most when calling ZCAT. On September 7, he publicly stated that he had purchased ZCAT the previous day and had already received the ZEC distribution. In his view, those who believe Zcash will continue to rise and capture market attention will also seek out related, more volatile memes; and placing this meme on Solana, where traders are already concentrated, makes perfect sense.
Zcash holders and meme traders were not necessarily the same group. ZCAT created a bridge between them: the former see their familiar asset and privacy symbol, while the latter gain a tradable asset that is easy to share and yields ZEC during holding. Ansem’s role was to bring this logic to a broader audience of traders.
More noticeable than KOLs shouting orders is Solana’s official stance.
On the evening of September 7, Solana’s official account unusually posted a highly meme-style image: a man in a suit with a paper bag over his head standing at the NYSE podium, with the Solana logo behind him. The caption read simply: “The bag stays on.” The paper bag references ZCAT, while the stock trading setting echoes STONK.
Behind this image lies a series of coordinated actions. Previously, the Solana official team and co-founder Toly had interacted with StonkFun; Raydium, upon integrating its issuance services, also posted a cat-themed tweet saying “I love cats,” which the ZCAT community interpreted as a response. With the issuance platform, trading protocol, and ecosystem accounts all participating, ZCAT’s momentum continued to grow.
Along with this round of momentum, STONK and ZCAT have both reached new highs.
However, the official enthusiasm has sparked dissatisfaction among Solana OG meme communities. KOL JW100X questioned why NEET has been operating for a year without receiving such treatment, while the new trend has had everyone putting paper bags on their heads in just two days.
The official team now needs to demonstrate that support for memes within the ecosystem can benefit more serious, well-managed projects. The change currently visible is that Solana has at least begun actively stepping up to support its ecosystem.
Incompetent Base
Base has taken a sudden turn—Hunter Biden has announced the launch of LAPTOP on Base on September 9.
According to disclosures by The Wall Street Journal, the team received 30% of the supply, locked for six months and released over two years; airdrop recipients include wallets that incurred losses on TRUMP.
For retail investors who have developed a kind of "PTSD" from celebrity-launched tokens, it’s hard to rebuild trust with just a new name and a small airdrop—especially when Small Biden is still burdened with massive debt.
Hunter Biden said he didn’t know how to repay his $15 million debt—now he does.
Solana has already endured the aftermath of the celebrity coin frenzy. The wild price swings of political and celebrity tokens damaged the ecosystem’s reputation, and disputes surrounding meme token issuance and trading have ended up in court—with the “Pump.fun” case even naming Solana Labs, the foundation, and related executives as defendants. Although claims against these Solana entities were dismissed on August 31, the reputational damage and legal costs Solana incurred serve as a cautionary precedent for Base.
Moreover, Base's own market performance is terrible.
During this round of popular Base memes, Basecat and BLUECHIP are two representative high-market-cap assets. After the LAPTOP news broke, their prices declined significantly, with 24-hour drops of 26.46% and 8.99%, respectively.
Before new buyers emerge, the pre-sale of Renminbi first competes for the attention of existing participants. Those preparing to join the new offering need to free up funds, while existing memecoins must still attract buying pressure and maintain community confidence. For already weakening projects like Basecat and BLUECHIP, this competition resembles a zero-sum extraction of existing liquidity and is difficult to view as a positive development for the ecosystem.
Cobie strongly clarified regarding Base, stating: "No permission from Coinbase is required to launch a token on Base. LAPTOP is not a joint issuance by Hunter Biden, Jesse, Coinbase, or Base. The presence of a token on an permissionless chain does not imply official endorsement."
But this still doesn’t address Base’s passive position in this round of competition. While the official team cannot decide who launches tokens, it can determine where to allocate its marketing resources and product capabilities. Traders are looking for an ecosystem worth staying in—where existing projects have room to sustain operations, new applications can meet emerging demands, and new trends offer participants more opportunities.
In this specific meme rally, Base has yet to respond in a manner commensurate with Robinhood’s threat, instead allowing an unreleased celebrity coin to dominate the conversation. The community’s frustration stems precisely from this disparity.
BSC, on the other hand, follows its own rhythm, relying on a relatively consistent listing pathway for expectation management, a stable base of Chinese retail investors, and the rise of FOMO, which has created fertile ground for the ongoing spread of Chinese-language token narratives. Topics once confined to the Chinese-speaking community are now reaching a broader audience, and BSC’s overall momentum remains steadily positive.
Only Base began to fall behind, helplessly watching Robinhood become the very thing it had dreamed of.