Robinhood Stock Jumps 17% to Highest Level Since January as Chain Activity Breaks Records

Robinhood Markets shares surged roughly 17% on September 3, topping the S&P 500 and reaching their highest level since January 2026, as a confluence of forces lifted the stock: analyst upgrades from Piper Sandler and Scotiabank, a broad crypto rally that pushed Bitcoin above $79,000, and an explosion of on-chain activity on Robinhood Chain that is rewriting the company's revenue story.

Robinhood Chain, launched on Arbitrum in July, ranked first on DefiLlama's 24-hour chain-revenue table with $4.01 million on September 2. Gross network fees reached $4.45 million that day, surpassing Ethereum, Solana, and Tron combined, after the base fee rose 23 times off its 0.02 gwei floor. Gas fees on the network jumped 82-fold in just 11 days. Robinhood absorbs those costs inside its own wallet app until September 29. The chain also surpassed Polygon in DeFi total value locked and beat Tron in 24-hour revenue, milestones that came fewer than two months after launch.

A key engine of that activity is Pons, a memecoin launchpad token native to Robinhood Chain. PONS hit a new all-time high after securing a listing on Binance Alpha, and has gained more than 1,300% in the past month and roughly 18,000% since July, pushing its market cap to approximately $362 million and making it the 118th-largest cryptocurrency by market value. The protocol generated a record $5.95 million in single-day fees on September 3, placing it fourth among all crypto protocols by 24-hour fees and above the chain itself. Memecoin pairs trading against Robinhood's tokenized stocks generated $217 million in volume on September 2, exceeding the $127 million that moved through direct stock-token markets that day. Robinhood Chain now generates two thirds of all fees earned by Uniswap, which itself has seen its token price double since August 14.

Options activity in HOOD erupted alongside the equity move, with Robinhood ranking as the most-traded stock by options volume on Thursday. Transaction-based revenues at the company had already risen 44% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, and the chain's momentum adds a new on-chain revenue layer to that trend. The company's 862,000 tokenized-stock holders drove $3 billion in volume, with Uniswap accounting for an additional $1.4 billion.

On the regulatory front, Robinhood's prediction-markets ambitions face a legal test as New Jersey challenges Kalshi at the Supreme Court in a case that could affect the broader event-contracts industry. Separately, Piper Sandler expects volume on Rothera, Robinhood's joint venture with Susquehanna that holds CFTC approval for football win-and-spread contracts, to grow ahead of the start of football season next week. Trading terminals posted their first $1 billion day since January 2025 on September 2, with the GMGN terminal taking nearly half of that volume and settling 91% of its trades on Robinhood Chain.