Full disclosure before we start: I bought a PONS position at a 22 million dollar market cap, after it came down hard from its highs on the new launchpad “drama” versus Uniswap’s Pools.trade. From experience, these situations are usually an overreaction. The dust settles, degens jump back in, and everyone celebrates like nothing happened. I took a calculated risk here. Up a little so far, no victory lap yet. Let’s see how this plays out.
With that out of the way, let’s dig into what Pons crypto actually is, why it became the number one launchpad on Robinhood Chain, and how it ended up in a war with the biggest DEX in crypto.
What Is the Pons Launchpad?
Pons is a non-custodial token launchpad built exclusively for Robinhood Chain. Anyone can deploy a fixed-supply token in minutes, no coding required, and trade it from the first block. Think pump.fun, but for the Robinhood ecosystem. The interface is operated by Pons Labs, while users keep full custody and sign every transaction from their own wallet.
The timing of its launch was perfect. Robinhood Chain’s public mainnet went live on July 1, 2026, and Pons deployed just days later. When Noxa, the early market leader, suddenly halted new token launches on July 11, Pons absorbed most of the displaced activity. Within weeks it became the busiest launchpad on the chain, with around 58,000 daily active addresses. That is more than its two nearest rivals combined.
We first covered Pons back in July in our meme coin coverage on Robinhood, when it was still fighting for the top spot. Since then, the platform shipped its V2 upgrade: an ETH-denominated bonding curve, a Uniswap v4 hook, creator payouts in ETH by default, and support for tokenized stock pairs like NVDA, AAPL, and HOOD. Ironically, that deep Uniswap integration is now at the center of the beef. More on that below.
The PONS token itself trades on Robinhood Chain with a 1 billion max supply. It ripped over 1,100% from under half a cent to an all-time high near $0.049 in July, before the launchpad war knocked it back down.
Pons Fee Structure
The fee model is where Pons genuinely stands out, especially for creators.
Launching a token costs a flat 0.0005 ETH. From there, every trade in a Pons pool pays a 1% fee. That fee gets split 70% to the token creator and 30% to the protocol. On top of that, 80% of the protocol’s share goes into automated PONS buybacks, which ties platform activity directly to the token.
Compare that with Pools.trade, where creators can switch on an optional 0.05% cut. A creator on Pons earns roughly fourteen times more per dollar of volume than a creator on Uniswap’s launchpad. Traders pay more per swap on Pons, sure. However, if you are a creator deciding where to launch your coin, the math heavily favors Pons. This is the core trade-off in the entire launchpad war: cheaper trading versus better creator rewards.
Since V2, creators collect those fees in ETH by default instead of accumulating them in their own token. Small change on paper, big quality-of-life upgrade in practice.
The Data So Far
The numbers behind Pons are legitimately impressive for a platform that is barely a month old. According to the team’s own announcement on X, over 250,000 coins have now launched on Pons.
Daily volume has regularly run above $50 million during peak activity, and the platform processed $52 million on August 5 alone, the day the war kicked off. In its first weeks, Pons had already pushed past $116 million in cumulative volume across 1.68 million trades and nearly 98,000 wallets. Those figures have grown substantially since.
The runners are what keep degens coming back. CASHCAT, the flagship memecoin of Robinhood Chain, remains the biggest name trading in the Pons ecosystem. Behind it, tokens like TENDIES, DAHOOD, and ROBINHOOD have printed multi-hundred-percent runs, with TENDIES posting 26% days even in a choppy market. As always with launchpads, thousands of coins go to zero for every runner. If you are new to this game, read our guide on what makes a good meme coin before aping into anything.
The War Against Pools.trade
Here is where it gets spicy. Pons built its entire product on Uniswap’s infrastructure. Version one ran on Uniswap v3, and the V2 upgrade moved everything to a Uniswap v4 hook. Uniswap even featured Pons in its own launchpad aggregator, Uniswap Launches. Six days later, Uniswap Labs launched Pools.trade, a direct competitor, on the same chain.
Crypto Twitter did not take it well. “They did Pons dirty” became the consensus take, with many framing it as Uniswap eating its own ecosystem. The comparison to Apple “Sherlocking” its third-party developers came up repeatedly. Uniswap’s zero launchpad fee and 0.25% trading fee undercut everyone, and Hayden Adams openly defended the model as extracting far less from traders. On day one, Pools.trade out-launched Pons with 10,506 new tokens against 7,210.
The market reaction was brutal. PONS dumped 49% on the week as traders rotated toward the shiny new competitor. We broke down the full launch and backlash in our Pools.trade guide, so I will not rehash everything here.
Right now, PONS trades at a market cap in the mid-20 million range. That is a long way down from the highs, but also a meaningful bounce off the panic lows where I entered.
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My Take
Dust will settle. It always does in these launchpad wars. The real variable is not Pons versus Pools.trade, it is whether volume on Robinhood Chain itself keeps growing. If it does, both launchpads grow in volume and revenue. One will eventually get declared the “winner” by CT, but it is far too early to make that call, and far too early to sell.
Pons has a better reward structure for creators, and in my view more genuine support from Crypto Twitter after the way Uniswap handled this. Creators follow the money, and communities follow the underdog. So if I have to pick a side, I lean slightly towards PONS. That is exactly why I took the position, and why I am sizing it as a calculated bet rather than a conviction hold.
Final Words
Pons went from zero to the number one launchpad on Robinhood Chain in a single month, built a fee model that creators love, and then got blindsided by its own infrastructure provider. That is a full crypto cycle compressed into four weeks. Whether it defends its turf against Uniswap or slowly bleeds share, the fight itself is generating volume, attention, and new tokens on Robinhood Chain every single day. For traders and airdrop farmers, that is the real signal. Watch the war, respect the risk, and remember that in launchpad battles, the chain usually wins either way.
If you enjoyed this blog, check out the story behind StonkBroker NFTs, the first trending NFT on Robinhood to reach a floor of 7.5 ETH.
FAQ
What is Pons crypto? Pons is a non-custodial token launchpad on Robinhood Chain that lets anyone create and trade fixed-supply tokens. PONS is the associated token, which benefits from automated buybacks funded by platform fees.
How much does it cost to launch a token on Pons? The launch fee is a flat 0.0005 ETH, plus network gas. After launch, trading pays a 1% pool fee, with 70% going to the token creator.
How many coins have launched on Pons? According to the team, over 250,000 coins have launched on the platform since it went live in July 2026.
Why did the PONS price drop? PONS fell 49% in a week after Uniswap launched Pools.trade, a direct competitor on Robinhood Chain. Traders rotated to the new platform and repriced the competitive risk.
Is Pons better than Pools.trade? Pons pays creators far more per trade, while Pools.trade offers cheaper trading fees. Creators tend to favor Pons, and traders favor Pools.trade, so the winner depends on which side drives the market.
What are the biggest tokens on Pons? CASHCAT is the largest token in the Pons ecosystem, followed by runners like TENDIES, DAHOOD, and ROBINHOOD.
Morten Christensen
Crypto class of ’13, airdrop farmer since 2016. Avid trader and DeFi veteran. His market commentary has been featured by Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, and CNN.
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