DeFi’s Big Robinhood Chain Winners

If you sort the top 100 cryptocurrencies by 7-day gains right now, a handful of DeFi heavyweights jump out. Indeed, among the biggest risers on the week were Lighter (LIT +16%), Morpho (MORPHO +15%), Arbitrum L2Arbitrum is a popular ETH L2.View Profile” class=”stubHighlight”> Arbitrum (ARB +13%), and Uniswap DEXUniswap is a decentralized exchange for trading cryptocurrencies efficiently.View Profile” class=”stubHighlight”> Uniswap (UNI +9%).

These projects are in different verticals, of course, but they share an obvious tactical throughline regarding their momentum, namely that each of them has factored, in a big way, into Robinhood Chain’s explosive launch.

That said, you might recall in my Wednesday piece on Robinhood Chain’s meme meta that I noted how the L2 arrived with major ambitions around tokenized assets, and yet its early traction has been overwhelmingly meme-driven a la CASHCAT.

Robinhood Chain’s Unexpected Meme Meta on Bankless

Robinhood built its L2 for serious onchain finance, but degens had other plans.

In other words, it’s been a speculative frenzy unfolding, which is nothing we haven’t seen before onchain. However, what’s notable and what’s changed over the past 48 hours is the scale of that activity, which has increased rapidly.

For instance, over just the past couple of days Robinhood Chain’s TVL (i.e. total value locked) doubled from $46M to $96M per DefiLlama, and the network’s stablecoin market cap is now upwards of $270M. Also, the L2 has done ~$900M in DEX volume this week, with +$500M of that coming in the past 24 hours alone.

This early momentum suggests the makings of real staying power here, and the possibility that this speculative meme run could blossom out into other verticals, e.g. RWAs, perps, and so forth. That’s why more than a few traders spent the week doubling down on bets that could enjoy long-term tailwinds from the rise of Robinhood Chain.

Hence, then, the 7D outperformance of LIT, ARB, MORPHO, and UNI that we’ve just seen. All of these coins are now woven into this L2’s potential, at least for now. Specifically:

• Lighter — Can Lighter become the next Hyperliquid? We’ll see, but being tapped to be the default perpetuals platform for Robinhood Wallet is certainly an advance in that direction. Perps volume on Robinhood Chain is still modest this early on, though if it seriously ramps up, Lighter is primed for more revenue, which would translate into more LIT buy-and-burns.
• Arbitrum — Robinhood Chain is built on the Arbitrum Orbit stack, and 10% of the chain’s net protocol revenue flows back to Arbitrum’s ecosystem. How these flows would flow to ARB is a different question, but Robinhood’s early success has highlighted the prospects for more major companies deploying Orbit chains, and thus that much more revenue streaming to Arbitrum, which could be good for ARB.
• Morpho — The new Robinhood Earn product is now funneling USDG deposits into Morpho vaults for ~7% APY, which is why ~$65M of Robinhood Chain’s current $96M TVL is parked in Morpho at the moment. Like ARB, MORPHO is mainly a governance token today, so we’ll have to see how this new lending pipeline interplays with price. Still, MORPHO is a de facto proxy for betting on the success of Morpho’s engine, and Robinhood Earn is a catalyst for that engine.
• Uniswap — The DEX has facilitated ~$1B in total volume on Robinhood Chain in one week, and activity surges like this generate protocol fees that can be converted into UNI burns, thus Robinhood Chain’s continued success bodes well for UNI long-term if volume remains considerable. Plus, Uniswap serving as the network’s main DEX from day one signals to other companies that they can lean on the same playbook if they ever launch their own L2s.

Zooming back out, it’s true that Robinhood Chain’s flagship meme, CASHCAT, is up +5,000% on the week, which does blow these blue-chips’ 7D gains out of the water. Yet CASHCAT’s future prospects will be driven by vibes, and as we all know after the first big memecoin craze, vibes aren’t sustainable indefinitely.

What can be sustained is solid fundamentals and facilitating activity broadly. Accordingly, LIT, ARB, MORPHO, and UNI are now, one week in, avenues to underwrite the Robinhood Chain thesis without betting on any single meme sticking around and thriving. Now, let’s see how they continue to perform under this paradigm.