Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
After the狂欢, the Robinhood ecosystem's meme coin rally finally saw a predictable correction.
According to GMGN market data, as of 14:00 Beijing time on September 10, PONS's market cap has dropped to $460 million (including repurchased and burned tokens), down 19.4% in 24 hours; AI's market cap has fallen to $197 million, down 12.1% in 24 hours; CASHCAT's market cap has declined to $165 million, down 14.4% in 24 hours; MEME's market cap has dropped to $60.9 million, down 28.8% in 24 hours...
As the Meme coin rally cools, Robinhood Chain's fee revenue, which peaked at approximately $5.6 million on September 4, has declined for seven consecutive days and has shrunk to about $2.75 million over the past 24 hours.
The reason for this pullback is actually quite straightforward. On one hand, over the past two weeks of intense market activity, the unrealized profits of early holders have grown significantly, causing mounting selling pressure from profit-taking positions. On the other hand, as ecosystems like Solana and BSC implemented highly targeted measures to divert attention and capital, the inflow of new funds and fresh interest into the Robinhood ecosystem slowed down. Combined with internal capital reallocation and fragmentation, this caused the upward momentum—previously driven by sentiment and liquidity—to lose steam, leading to a concentrated wave of profit-taking.
Of course, this downturn doesn't mean the end of Robinhood's story—it's more like the first wave of wild Meme coin accumulation has temporarily subsided, with the fastest-rising and most crowded tokens seeing significant pullbacks as market sentiment gradually returns to rationality.
Looking further into the future, this chain, inherently endowed with Meme DNA, still holds tremendous potential. At the very least, its leader, Vlad Tenev, appears to have identified a new source of liquidity.
At Goldman Sachs' annual meeting, Tenev targeted billionaires.
On the same day as the major pullback in Robinhood’s ecosystem memes, Robinhood co-founder and CEO Tenev attended the annual Communacopia + Technology Conference. Hosted by Goldman Sachs, this event is one of Wall Street’s key gatherings for investors in the technology and media sectors, featuring primarily institutional investors, analysts, and corporate executives.
At the event, Tenev participated in a one-on-one fireside chat hosted by Goldman Sachs analyst James Yaro (who is also a HOOD bull and has repeatedly issued bullish ratings on HOOD). Interestingly, during this serious interview focused on “technology” rather than “cryptocurrency,” Tenev spent nearly the entire time discussing Robinhood Chain.
Throughout the conversation, "tokenized stocks" was the most frequently mentioned keyword by Tenev. Tenev stated that Robinhood Chain’s core advantage is not merely moving traditional stocks onto the blockchain, but enabling these stock tokens to truly enter DeFi—allowing third-party developers to access, combine, and build new financial products on top of them. Currently, Robinhood Chain has launched over 200 tokenized U.S. stocks, available in more than 120 countries and regions outside the United States.
Tenev also mentioned the role of Meme within this narrative.
When discussing recent on-chain innovations, Tenev noted that developers have begun combining tokenized stocks with crypto-native assets such as memes, with some of these combinations “going beyond Robinhood’s original expectations.” In other words, according to Tenev, recent memes like PONS and MEME that surged on Robinhood Chain are not entirely outside the official narrative—they instead exemplify the potential for open on-chain assets to be recombined and repriced.
Building on the Meme craze, Tenev clearly has an even bigger goal—to bring institutional capital into Robinhood Chain. At the event, Tenev explicitly stated that one of the key priorities for the next phase of Robinhood Chain is to further expand liquidity and attract more institutional participants. Previously, Robinhood primarily focused on “making it easier for ordinary people to buy stocks”; moving forward, the goal is “enabling global users and institutions to participate in these assets through on-chain infrastructure.”
This is also the most noteworthy aspect of this “mission”—Memes may simply be the easiest entry point to generate early attention for Robinhood Chain, but in Tenev’s vision, they are far from the end goal. Robinhood aims to turn this chain into infrastructure connecting traditional financial assets, DeFi, retail investors, and institutional capital alike.
From this perspective, this current Meme coin correction feels more like an opportunity to reassess—distinguishing between those that merely rode the hype and those truly positioned to benefit from Robinhood Chain’s future liquidity and infrastructure advantages is the key question the market must now answer.
So, is now a good time to buy the dip?
Personally, I remain quite bullish on the long-term narrative of Robinhood Chain, and HOOD is one of my primary long-term holdings in the U.S. stock market.
Regarding selections in the Meme sector, projects with a stronger infrastructure focus and clear buying support may currently offer higher safety margins. The reason is simple: Meme coins thrive on attention and emotion, while infrastructure benefits directly from on-chain transactions—if Robinhood Chain continues to attract users, capital, and trading volume, the underlying infrastructure stands to benefit in theory.
Taking PONS as an example, PONS still generates over a million dollars in protocol revenue daily. Under the transparent buyback mechanism, a decline in PONS price actually accelerates the buyback pace, which to some extent offsets the selling pressure from profit-taking.
For pure meme assets, the most important screening criterion right now is whether the underlying cultural meme has long-term resilience—whether it will still be noticed when the next wave of hype arrives. A potential candidate might be the meme currently supporting the “Robinhood vs. AMC” narrative, especially since Tenev continues to frequently tease AMC.
Ultimately, I don’t believe the Robinhood Chain rally has reached its end, but for now, it would be a more comfortable strategy to wait for the market to deflate the bubble rather than chasing the next sudden Meme surge—then seek out projects with real revenue, buybacks, and meaningful ecosystem positioning.