Two and a half weeks ago I told you I was holding $PONS from a $23 million entry. The market cap is now above $280 million, $PONS is the largest token on Robinhood Chain as of yesterday, and the fee numbers coming out of the launchpad have started to look like a genuine challenge to the biggest name in the category.
That name is Pump.fun. So today’s update does two things. First, it puts Pons vs Pump.fun side by side on current stats, because a lot of the numbers flying around on X are half right. Second, it lays out every profit-taking level I hit on the way up, since I promised receipts and I intend to keep paying them.
Pons by the Numbers Right Now
Here is where the Pons launchpad stands at the time of writing, using DefiLlama’s tracked figures plus the team’s own announcements:
- Daily fees: roughly $1.9 million in the past 24 hours, $8.4 million over seven days, $18.3 million over 30 days
- Cumulative fees: about $34 million since the launchpad went live on July 13
- Protocol revenue: around $330,000 per day, $7.95 million cumulative
- Buyback and burn: $3.5 million of protocol revenue has already gone into $PONS buybacks that end up at the burn address
- Supply burned: the team confirms 29% of the original 1 billion supply is gone, leaving roughly 710 million tokens
- Creator payouts: over $20 million paid out to token creators, which explains why builders keep choosing Pons over the competition
- Launches: close to 290,000 tokens from around 86,000 creators
- Chain share: Pons captures well over half of all launchpad volume on Robinhood Chain
- Chain leader: $PONS flipped CASHCAT yesterday at a $218 million market cap and is now the largest token on Robinhood Chain
On top of that, the last week brought cbBTC pairing support (launch tokens against Bitcoin via Chainlink CCIP), spot listings on Gate and KuCoin, and a 5x perpetual on Aster. New venues plus a shrinking float is a combination that tends to move price, and it did.
Pons vs Pump.fun: The Head-to-Head
Now the interesting part. Pump.fun has been the undisputed launchpad leader since 2024, with over $1.2 billion in cumulative fees. Pons is seven weeks old. Here is how they compare on the same data source, same day:
| Metric | Pons (Robinhood Chain) | Pump.fun (Solana) |
|---|---|---|
| Fees, 24h | ~$1.9M | ~$2.2M |
| Fees, 7d | ~$8.4M | ~$13.7M |
| Fees, 30d | ~$18.3M | ~$45.1M |
| Protocol revenue, 24h | ~$330K | ~$1.65M |
| Protocol revenue, 30d | ~$3.8M | ~$34.5M |
| DEX volume, 30d | ~$153M | ~$2.5B |
| Token market cap | ~$280M | ~$2B |
| Buyback policy | 80% of protocol revenue | 100% of protocol revenue |
| Age | 7 weeks | 2+ years |
Two things jump off that table.
On gross fees, the gap has almost closed. Pons is doing roughly 90% of Pump.fun’s daily fee volume while trading at about 14% of its market cap. Yesterday I saw claims that Pons had flipped Pump.fun on daily revenue, and depending on the hour you checked, the fee lines may well have crossed.
On protocol revenue, though, Pump.fun still earns about five times more per day. That is not a data error. It is the fee split, and it deserves its own section.
Why the Revenue Gap Looks Bigger Than It Is
Pons charges a 1% trading fee and hands 70% of it to the token creator. The protocol keeps 30%, and 80% of that slice funds the $PONS buyback and burn. Pump.fun keeps the majority of its fee for the protocol itself and passes a smaller share to creators.
Neither approach is wrong. They are different business models:
- Pump.fun extracts more per dollar of volume, then buys back $PUMP with all of it. Great for token holders, less generous to the people launching tokens.
- Pons pays creators first, which is why $20 million has already flowed to builders and why launches keep piling up. The protocol earns less per trade but grows the pie faster.
For a valuation comparison, the cleaner metric is gross fees, because that measures how much economic activity each platform actually attracts. On that basis, Pons at ~$280 million versus Pump.fun at ~$2 billion still looks like a discount for a platform doing 40% of the 30-day fees. Whether the discount is justified depends on one question: can Pons keep this pace for more than a few weeks?
What Pons Has Going For It
Beyond the raw numbers, a few structural advantages matter here.
The chain. Robinhood Chain has become the most active new ecosystem of 2026, and Pons is its default launchpad. Every new user onboarded through the Robinhood app is a potential Pons trader. We covered how that battle played out in our Pons Family vs Pools Trade comparison, and the answer since then has only gotten clearer.
Memestocks. Pons v2 lets creators pair launches against stablecoins, tokenized stocks, and now cbBTC. No other launchpad is wiring meme culture directly into tokenized real-world assets, and Robinhood is the obvious home for it.
Fixed, fully circulating supply. No unlocks, no team allocation waiting to hit the market, no VC round. Every $PONS in existence is already trading, and the count only goes down.
What Pump.fun Still Has
Fairness matters, especially when I am long the other side. I also have history here: I joined the Pump.fun token sale in July 2025 from a beach chair on holiday, phone in one hand and a drink in the other. Thirteen months later I was taking $PONS profits from Amsterdam on my family trip. Over a decade in this game and the rule has never changed: as long as I have signal, I am grinding.
Pump.fun has survived two full cycles of meme mania and meme collapse. Its revenue dropped 96% from peak to trough in 2025 and it came back. Seven weeks of Pons data tells you nothing about how the platform behaves in a bear phase.
Pump.fun also owns Solana’s retail distribution, has spent hundreds of millions on buybacks, and runs livestreaming and cashback products that Pons has not built yet. The $2 billion valuation reflects a track record that Pons is still writing.
The realistic bull case is not that Pons kills Pump.fun. It is that two launchpads can coexist at the top of the category, and the second one is priced at a fraction of the first.
I trade $PONS on the Fomo app myself. Gasless, multichain, and you can follow other traders’ entries live. I might doxx my username on there at some point, so you can see the sells before I write about them.
My Position: Every Level, In Order
I said I would give receipts, so here is the full trail.
Entry: around a $23 million market cap, after covering the Pons launchpad in July.
First take-profit at $100 million. This was my stated target in the original post, and when Pons hit it I sold enough to pull most of my initial investment off the table. I wrote about that move in our Pons ATH update before flying out to Amsterdam.
Further sales at $180 million, $240 million, and $280 million. Each time the market cap crossed a new round number, I trimmed again. I posted every sale on X as it happened.
In total I have sold roughly 60% of the original position. Realized profit sits at about 400% on the capital I put in, and the remaining 40% is pure house money with an unrealized gain that is still very healthy at current prices.
The plan from here. I am done selling for now. The remaining bag stays until either the fee numbers roll over hard or the market cap runs to a level where Pons is priced like Pump.fun. If the burn rate keeps up and creators keep choosing the platform, that second scenario is not absurd. If volume dries up, I will not hesitate to close it out.
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Final Words
Seven weeks in, Pons is generating almost as much daily fee volume as the platform that invented the category, while paying creators more and burning its own supply at a pace no launchpad has matched. That is the bull case in one sentence.
The bear case is equally simple: seven weeks is not a track record, and Pump.fun has already proven it can survive the winter.
I have taken enough profit that either outcome is fine for me. If you are still deciding whether to get involved, size for the second scenario, not the first.
Want the full background before jumping in? Start with our breakdown of what makes a good meme coin, then work through the rest of our Robinhood Chain coverage.
If you trade memes, it also pays to know who moves them. We recently profiled the three loudest voices in the space: Ansem, Threadguy, and Murad. Read those before you follow anyone into a trade.
FAQ
Pons vs Pump.fun: which launchpad is bigger? Not yet. Pons generates roughly 90% of Pump.fun’s daily fees but far less protocol revenue, and its token trades at roughly 14% of Pump.fun’s market cap. On 30-day fees, Pons is the second-largest launchpad in crypto.
How much $PONS has been burned? The team confirms 29% of the original 1 billion supply has been burned, leaving roughly 710 million tokens in circulation. Burns continue automatically as 80% of protocol revenue buys $PONS and sends it to a dead address.
Why does Pump.fun earn more revenue than Pons on similar fees? Pons pays 70% of every trading fee to the token creator and keeps 30%. Pump.fun keeps a larger share for the protocol. Pons attracts more creators as a result, but earns less per dollar of volume.
Where can I trade $PONS? Most volume trades on Robinhood Chain DEXs, with centralized listings on MEXC, Gate, and KuCoin, and a perpetual on Aster.
Did I sell my $PONS position? I have sold roughly 60% across five levels between a $100 million and $280 million market cap, recovering the initial investment and locking in around 400% realized profit. The remaining 40% is still held.
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