Robinhood Chain daily transactions fall 42% from mid-September as memecoin trading cools

Activity on Robinhood Chain, the Ethereum layer-2 network backed by Robinhood (HOOD), kept falling into October. The chain averaged 6.2 million transactions per day from Oct 2-8, down 42% from 10.8 million per day in Sept 10-16, according to CoinDesk calculations using growthepie data. That is a count of transactions, not dollar volume. Activity also fell about 20% week on week, and daily active addresses dropped 31% from mid-September to about 322,000, though CoinDesk cautioned that one person can control many addresses and bots can generate large transaction counts.

The slowdown started with fees. Daily fees peaked at about $8 million in early September and fell 97% to about $230,000 by Sept 16, according to Crypto Briefing, and CoinDesk reported that collapse on Sept 19 while transactions were still near highs. Network fees now average about $65,000 a day, down 39% week on week. Crypto Briefing tied the cooling to memecoins, reporting that weekly memecoin volume on Pons fell 37%.

Trading is softer, not gone. Spot DEX volume was $7.45 billion for Oct 2-8, down 21% from $9.46 billion the prior week, with about 77% on Uniswap, while perpetual futures volume rose 26% to about $7.35 billion, per CoinDesk's DefiLlama figures. Deposits in lending and trading apps rose about 2% to $1.04 billion and stablecoin supply sits near $1.10 billion, which CoinDesk reads as users trading less but not leaving. Robinhood is still paying network fees on wallet swaps over 50 cents through Dec 31.

A separate Wall Street Journal feature, "At Robinhood's Mecca for Risk-Loving Traders, Everyone Has a Tale of Getting Rich", is about everyday retail stock traders and the record stock market, per its subtitle, not about Robinhood Chain. What to watch on the chain: whether daily transactions and fees stabilize from here, and whether deposits keep holding as the fee subsidy runs toward year-end.