Last week, the article "Robinhood Chain: A Week of Creation, the First Wave of Wealth Effect Comes from a Cat" mentioned that CASHCAT relied on an abandoned old code name to surge to a market value of over 100 million within a week on the Robinhood Chain. Two weeks later, this chain has not cooled down, but rather has solidified the term "dark horse"—the excitement is even more magical compared to last week.
Entering the Top Five in the First Week
First, let’s look at the institutional assessment.
A report from the investment research firm Bernstein shows that during the first week of the chain's launch, the cumulative transaction volume of the DEX reached approximately $3.1 billion, making it one of the top five public chains in global trading volume. Looking solely at the 24-hour DEX trading volume, $809 million ranks third globally, only behind Solana and BNB Chain. Currently, there are over 65,000 users on the chain, holding $300 million in stablecoins and $13 million in tokenized stocks; after 15 days, the total locked value in DeFi has surpassed $100 million.
Tom Lee, chairman of the board of BitMine, the largest treasury listed company on Ethereum, made a more direct comment: "One of the biggest crypto success stories of 2026 is the explosive success of the Robinhood Chain, based on Arbitrum, on July 1." The person who controls the largest Ethereum treasury globally is willing to publicly declare this, indicating that the market's enthusiasm for the narrative of "brokerage firms creating their own chains" is higher than outsiders might think.
Bernstein also provided a reminder, which is the biggest paradox of this chain at present: the trading volume in the first week was mainly driven by meme coin speculation, and Robinhood's long-term goal remains to pursue RWA narratives like stocks, commodities, and perpetual contracts. In other words, the dazzling data behind it does not align with the official story they want to tell.
Behind the Excitement, Predators Have Entered the Scene
The speed at which traffic pours in is matched by the speed at which scammers target this flow.
The cross-chain interoperability platform Relay Protocol has recently issued a warning that a batch of scam tokens has emerged on the Robinhood Chain, where the mechanism is buying in but unable to sell out—after users place buy orders, the tokens will disappear from their wallets, and the money cannot be retrieved. Relay clarified that this is not a wallet hack; the users' private keys and other assets are still safe, as the issue lies within the token's own smart contract: embedded in the contract are rules that restrict selling, even allowing the direct transfer of users' funds to the attackers' wallets. Some contracts were also found to exploit hidden storage fields outside of the ERC-20 standard checks to bypass regular security scans and steal assets.
The on-chain analysis platform Bubblemaps uncovered another suspicious operation: the token ARROW from the lending protocol ArrowFinance, with 80% of its chips concentrated in a batch of interconnected addresses. One group of addresses, composed of 200 wallets, had previously shown no activity on EVM chains, yet all completed their stockpiling within the first three minutes of the token’s launch, with highly overlapping sources of funds—this appears to be a well-prepared sniper trap. Similar clusters of related addresses have been found on chain beyond just this instance.
The speed of token issuance has also spiraled out of control. The leading Launchpad NOXA.fun launched more new tokens in a single day than half the total new tokens issued across the entire chain; the platform has accumulated over 260,000 active addresses, with total revenue surpassing $13 million, and daily transaction fees once reaching $1.94 million. However, the problems of copycat finance and bots mass-issuing tokens have become increasingly severe, prompting NOXA.fun to suspend new token issuance and the team stated it is still seeking a solution.
Using the Founder as Bait
Even Robinhood’s founder has been caught up in this chaos.
TokenPocket's Chief Business Officer Michael revealed on X that Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev's wallet mnemonic phrase was accidentally leaked during a live stream. After obtaining the mnemonic, someone manipulated this address and a batch of associated wallets to concentrate buying a meme coin called "$1". Once this news spread, a wave of follow-up buyers rushed in—it's simple logic: if this truly was the founder's wallet, then this purchase equated to an internal signal.
The token's price soared, with market value jumping from about $500,000 to $14 million in a short time, and then quickly plummeting; in just these two hours, the trading volume reached approximately $20 million. Retail investors who rushed in were firmly trapped at the high point.
The implicated addresses were later frozen, but the operators did not stop, shifting to BNB Chain, where they issued a new token with the same batch of related wallets, inflating trading data by trading between themselves and cashing out. Currently, Robinhood's RPC service has blacklisted the original address, and nodes no longer process any transactions initiated from this address—money cannot be transferred out or sold.
This claim currently has only Michael's side as the source; Robinhood's official channels and Tenev himself have not publicly responded or confirmed, nor have any on-chain security agencies or mainstream media provided independent verification. The action of blacklisting the address by RPC itself can be interpreted in two ways: it may confirm this is the founder’s lost wallet, or it could simply be Robinhood's standard blacklisting process for an address identified as a scam—after all, the chain has only been live for two weeks, and similar malicious tokens and manipulation tactics have already appeared more than once. The truth will require more independent sources for cross-verification. But regardless of the truth, a token being pulled up nearly 28 times and then crashing within two hours, with thousands of people rushing in with real money—this is an established fact.
What the Founder Has to Say
The logic behind this chaos can actually be found in Tenev's recent public statements, which provide a key to understanding.
Last week, Tenev participated in the Master Investor podcast, discussing many issues related to retail investors and Robinhood Chain. He repeatedly emphasized one point: "Retail investors are the true smart money." In his narration, institutional investors increasingly rely on macro narratives for decision-making, often selling off under circumstances unrelated to the company's fundamentals; retail investors, on the other hand, keep it simple and straightforward, focusing solely on "how well the company is performing," thus often showing more resilience in the face of macro shocks.
When discussing the positioning of Robinhood Chain, he used stablecoins and asset tokenization for comparison: the former solves the issue of global users accessing USD easily, while the latter addresses the concern of global users holding US stocks conveniently. This is also why the first phase aims to support about 2,000 US-listed stocks, covering over 120 countries and regions. What this chain truly seeks to solve has never been merely "adding another trading venue on chain," but rather pushing the entry barrier of the US capital market as far towards the global scene as possible.
This narrative of "returning power to retail investors" can, to some extent, explain the official ambiguous stance on the on-chain speculative frenzy—as long as it’s the retail investors playing and choosing, it aligns with his consistent values, even if the methods of play become increasingly dangerous.
From Data Frenzy to Security Alerts
Looking at the sequence of events that occurred over the past two weeks, the rhythm is actually quite clear:
In the first week, a cat named CASHCAT, leveraging a real company history, achieved a textbook-level cold launch for this new chain, with users and funds beginning to flow in genuinely.
In the second week, institutional endorsements came—Bernstein certified the top five chains, Tom Lee defined it as "the biggest success story of the year," and on-chain data surged overall. However, at the same time, scam tokens, suspicious tokens highly concentrated in a small number of addresses, and hacker attacks manipulating prices using leaked information emerged one after another, even involving the founder himself.
This chain currently holds two report cards simultaneously: one showcasing impressive trading volume and user growth, the other reflecting a substantial number of scams and manipulation cases. Two weeks is still far from enough to answer the truly important question—can this heat generated by meme coins and indistinguishable rumors solidify into what the officials truly desire: an infrastructure that is consistently used by institutions and real assets?
*This content is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice. The market has risks and investments should be made cautiously.
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