Robinhood Chain keeps $1 billion in deposits as daily transactions fall 42%
Robinhood Chain's daily transactions have fallen more than 40% since mid-September, barely three months after the network went live. Robinhood paid customers' swap fees through the whole slide, so the money users still keep parked on the chain is the better test of it.
The Investor · Invest desk
Robinhood Chain averaged 10.8 million daily transactions during Sept. 10-16 and 6.2 million during Oct. 2-8, a drop of 42%.
| Measure | Value | As of | Claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily average, Sept. 10-16 | 10,800,000 transactions | 1 | |
| Daily average, Oct. 2-8 | 6,200,000 transactions | 1 |
What happened
- Daily active addresses on the chain averaged about 322,000 in the Oct. 2-8 week, 31% fewer than in mid-September, by CoinDesk's count.
- Weekly spot trading on the chain fell 21% to $7.45 billion, with Uniswap handling about 77% of it.
- Deposits in the chain's lending and trading apps rose about 2% over the week to $1.04 billion.
- Perpetual futures volume rose 26% to about $7.35 billion on DefiLlama's rolling seven-day figure.
- Robinhood pushed its fee promotion past its Sept. 29 expiry and will now cover wallet swaps over 50 cents until Dec. 31.
Why it matters
- What it limits constraint With wallet swaps over 50 cents already free, Robinhood has no fee cut left to offer, so reviving spot trading falls to incentives such as the extra reward points Arcus began paying on Oct. 1 for stock-token swaps.
- Who has to decide decision Robinhood has to choose at year-end between extending the fee promotion a second time and learning what its traders will actually pay to swap on the chain.
- What doesn't add up contradiction Crypto Briefing called user retention stable with no visible move to Solana, a claim CoinDesk's falling address count contradicts unless, as CoinDesk notes, single traders are running many addresses.
Next story · Invest · Oct 6
Robinhood Chain's memecoin pairs shed 96% of a $443 million-a-day tradeConfirmed2 publishers
Fees broke before trading did. When CoinDesk reported a 97% fee collapse on Sept. 19, transactions were still near their highs [9]. Since then the count has fallen from 10.8 million a day in mid-September to 6.2 million in the Oct. 2-8 week [1], including a 20% drop from the week before [3]. Crypto Briefing put both the boom and the bust down to memecoin trading. Launches on platforms such as Pons drove heavy gas spending in August and early September, and weekly memecoin volume on Pons has fallen 37% [16].
The fee line shows how much of the chain's income came from that wave. Daily fees were about $230,000 by Sept. 16, according to Crypto Briefing [7], and about $65,000 in the Oct. 2-8 week by CoinDesk's count [13]. That is a further fall of about 72% [18], to under 1% of the $8 million the chain collected on its busiest day [19]. Spread across 6.2 million daily transactions, it comes to about a cent each [20]. A Bernstein note cited by CoinDesk said Robinhood keeps roughly nine-tenths of network fees [14]. At that share, the chain now earns Robinhood about $58,500 a day [21], or roughly $21 million a year if October's rate held [22].
The same share makes the subsidy a puzzle. If Bernstein's nine-tenths also applies to the fees Robinhood covers on customer swaps, most of each payment comes back to Robinhood as the chain's owner, and its net outlay is closer to a tenth of the fees it covers [26]. CoinDesk did not report how the covered fees are booked.
The money has held. Weekly spot volume is now about 7.2 times the deposit base [23]. CoinDesk wrote that "the same pile of money is simply being traded less, with traders keeping their funds on Robinhood Chain and waiting" [8]. Futures are the part that is growing. On windows that overlap but do not match, perpetual futures volume now runs at roughly 99% of spot [24].
This could go three ways. The parked money could start trading again, most plausibly through the round-the-clock trading of tokens tied to stocks and funds that Robinhood planned at launch [4]. Futures could keep growing into the chain's main use [12]. Or deposits could leave once wallet swaps stop being free in January [15].
We think the transaction count mostly measured a memecoin cycle, and we'd expect the deposits to outlast free swaps. The counter-case is that leaving money in a lending app costs nothing whether or not swaps are free, so a steady balance shows only that users have not yet found a better home for it. A deposit base below $1 billion in the weeks after Dec. 31 would prove our view wrong [6].
What to watch
- Weekly spot volume through December: a further fall while swaps over 50 cents are free would show cost was never what held traders back.
- Whether perpetual futures volume overtakes spot volume on Robinhood Chain in the coming weeks.
Information, not investment advice. This story is general information about companies and markets, drawn from cited reporting. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security; check the cited sources before acting.
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- [1]
Robinhood Chain averaged 6.2 million daily transactions during Oct. 2-8, down 42% from 10.8 million during Sept. 10-16, according to CoinDesk calculations using growthepie data.
- [2]
Crypto Briefing, citing CoinDesk, reported that Robinhood Chain transactions fell more than 40%, a reversal for a chain that went live on July 1, 2026.
- [3]
Robinhood Chain activity fell 20% from the preceding week alone.
- [4]
Robinhood launched the chain in July to let people trade tokens, borrow and lend through applications connected to Ethereum, with plans for round-the-clock trading of tokens tied to stocks and funds.
- [5]
Spot exchanges on Robinhood Chain handled $7.45 billion during Oct. 2-8, down 21% from $9.46 billion the week before, according to CoinDesk calculations using DefiLlama; Uniswap handled roughly 77% of that.
- [6]
Deposits in Robinhood Chain's lending and trading apps rose about 2% over the week to $1.04 billion.
- [7]
Daily fees on Robinhood Chain peaked at approximately $8 million in early September and had collapsed 97% to about $230,000 by Sept. 16.
- [8]
"That means the same pile of money is simply being traded less, with traders keeping their funds on Robinhood Chain and waiting."
- [9]
When CoinDesk reported on Sept. 19 that fees had collapsed 97%, transactions were still near their highs and weekly trading volume was growing.
- [10]
Daily active addresses on Robinhood Chain averaged about 322,000 in the latest week, down 31% from mid-September.
- [11]
CoinDesk said the drop is likely smaller in human terms than the raw number implies, since one trader can run many addresses and a single automated program can account for thousands of transactions.
- [12]
DefiLlama's rolling seven-day figures on Friday showed about $7.35 billion in perpetual futures volume on Robinhood Chain, up 26%.
- [13]
Users paid about $65,000 a day in network fees during Oct. 2-8, down 39% from the week before, a fraction of the $8 million the chain collected on its busiest day in early September.
- [14]
Robinhood keeps roughly nine-tenths of the network fees on its chain, according to a Bernstein note last month cited by CoinDesk.
- [15]
Robinhood pushed back the end of its fee promotion, which was due to expire Sept. 29, and will now pay the network fees on any swap over 50 cents made through Robinhood Wallet until Dec. 31.
- [16]
Memecoin trading drove both the boom and the bust on Robinhood Chain; launches on platforms such as Pons generated heavy gas spending in August and early September, and weekly memecoin volume on Pons fell 37%.
- [17]
Trading platform Arcus started handing out extra reward points on Oct. 1 for stock-token swaps made through Robinhood Wallet.
- [18]
Daily fees fell a further 72% or so between Sept. 16 and the Oct. 2-8 week.
- [19]
Current daily fees are under 1% of the busiest day's $8 million.
- [20]
Network fees work out to about one cent per transaction in the Oct. 2-8 week.
- [21]
At Bernstein's nine-tenths share, Robinhood's take from network fees is about $58,500 a day.
- [22]
At the October rate, Robinhood's fee take would be roughly $21 million a year.
- [23]
Weekly spot volume is about 7.2 times the chain's deposit base.
- [24]
Perpetual futures volume is roughly 99% of weekly spot volume, on overlapping but not identical windows.
- [25]
There was no visible mass migration from Robinhood Chain to rival networks such as Solana, with user retention appearing stable.
- [26]
If Bernstein's nine-tenths share applies to the fees Robinhood covers on customer swaps, its net outlay on the subsidy is about one-tenth of the fees covered.
Sources
2 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- coindesk.comRobinhood Chain slowdown spreads from fees to trading as transactions fall more than 40%
1 article · October 9, 2026
- crypto.newsRobinhood Chain transactions drop 42%: What’s next?
1 article · October 11, 2026
- cryptobriefing.comRobinhood Chain transactions fall more than 40% as memecoin trading cools
1 article · October 9, 2026