Uniswap's New Launchpad Out-Launched Pons On Its First Day On Robinhood Chain

Uniswap Labs' launchpad passed Pons on daily token launches within a day of opening on Robinhood Chain, according to onchain data, taking the lead from a product that settles every trade on Uniswap's own automated market maker.

Uniswap now runs a product in the same category as applications built on top of it. Pons launched its first version on Uniswap v3, upgraded last week to a Uniswap v4 hook, and was named by Uniswap in its own launchpad aggregator six days before pools.trade opened. The move raises the debate on the relationship between protocols and the applications that build on top of them.

Zero Versus One Percent

Pools.trade went live shortly after 5 p.m. ET on Aug. 5 and Uniswap announced it at 6:49 p.m. ET. It charges no launchpad fee. Each token opens a Uniswap v4 pool with a 0.25% LP fee that autocompounds into liquidity the creator cannot withdraw, and creators can switch on an optional cut of 0.05% of that 25 basis points. Uniswap's post describes this as "a fraction of the standard ~1% on other launchpads."

Pons charges a 1% pool fee, splits it 70% to the creator and 30% to the protocol, and spends 80% of the protocol's share on automated PONS buybacks. It also takes a 0.0005 ETH launch fee, according to its documentation.

Pons recorded 7,210 token launches and $52.14 million in volume on Aug. 5, the last complete day, down 27% and 2% respectively from the day before, according to Pons' own Dune-sourced analytics page. All-time it has processed 266,130 launches, $1.86 billion in volume, $2.94 million in protocol revenue and $12.51 million in creator earnings across 87,381 unique developers.

Uniswap Pools launched 10,506 tokens on Aug. 5 and 11,610 more by roughly 16:40 UTC on Aug. 6, per The Defiant's count of successful transactions to its three launch contracts on Robinhood Chain's Blockscout explorer: the production LiquidityLauncher, the earlier version that minted FRONG, and a launch-and-buy router. It has created 23,248 tokens in total, of which 1,132 predate Aug. 5.

Part of that Aug. 5 total predates the product's public existence. At least 2,113 tokens went through Pools' production launch contract before the interface opened at 21:10 UTC, and a further 3,966 ran through an earlier version of the contract over the course of the day. Hayden Adams, founder and chief executive of Uniswap Labs, described it in the launch thread: "Degens discovered earlier versions of the smart contracts and traded over $150m in trading volume before the UI even went live."

Support Builders

Uniswap addressed the other launchpads within hours of the launch.

Adams argued that the 1% launchpad standard is where extraction happens.

"High spreads are how most launchpad extraction happens. The ultra high 1% pool fee (aka 2% spread) is the primary method of extraction," he wrote. "It also significantly worsens liquidity - as a token grows a 2% spread pool becomes useless, so the launch pool is wasted liquidity." He added that "in the case of launchpads, the LP is locked liquidity at a 0 cost basis. There is no risk to compensate."

Adams also replied to a user that "We want to support other teams building on Uniswap. Making our own launchpad [doesn’t] change that!"

Nicholas Kampouris, who works on Uniswap's communications and posts as @saintniko, wrote on Aug. 5: "it's important to know that pools doesn't change how we feel about other unsiwap launchpads and we have plans to support them *even more* in the future." He added: "i've spoken with @MEADGod and @0xnobi every single day for the last two weeks and there's no love lost." MEADGod is the developer behind Pons.

Uniswap Labs and Pons did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

The Trader Objection

Critics have been loud.

"They did pons dirty af," wrote rb3k, a pseudonymous trader posting as @rbthreek, on the afternoon of Aug. 5.

Another pseudonymous trader, coffee.xbt, wrote on Aug. 6: "you praise $pons and interact with them religiously and then decide '[f—] it. we're going to make our own launchpad'... you've now opened up @Uniswap to be attacked by other DEX's that want market share (@SushiSwap) and users that will be more apt to not use your platform."

Uniswap's Launches tab, an aggregator it shipped on Jul. 30 and which still runs, says: "Many launchpad builders like Bankr, Pons, Long, and more are choosing Uniswap as their trading infrastructure."

Eight Months Of Groundwork

Uniswap's work in the category predates Pons. Adams and eight co-authors published the Uniswap Liquidity Launchpad whitepaper in November 2025, describing "a modular framework for permissionless onchain market formation" whose first mechanism is a continuous clearing auction. That is the mechanism behind Pools' Crowd Launch format, and it was public eight months before Pons launched.

Tom Wan, head of data at Entropy Advisors, put Pools first on the chain by daily token deployment and read the launch as an attempt to move liquidity onto Uniswap's newest version: "I read Trade Pools as a strategic push to drive usage of Uniswap v4. Most launchpads today graduate tokens into v3, while Trade Pools routes directly into v4."

The volume data is consistent with that. Uniswap v4 volume on Robinhood Chain went from $86.2 million on Aug. 4 to $228.3 million on Aug. 5 and $315.7 million by 16:30 UTC on Aug. 6, when it passed Uniswap v3 on the chain for the first time, according to DefiLlama.

The People's Launchpad

Pons went live on Robinhood Chain on Jul. 13, built by a developer who goes by Ozzy and posts as MEADGod. "I built a launchpad for Robinhood Chain because the existing ones were extracting without taking care of their communities," he wrote at launch.

Its first version paired a fixed 1 billion supply against WETH in a Uniswap v3 pool. Version two, which the PonsV2LaunchFactory contract shows first ran on Aug. 3, replaced that with a bonding curve that graduates into a permanently locked Uniswap v4 pool through a shared Pons hook, and added pairs beyond ETH including USDG and tokenized stocks.

Pons peaked at 21,689 launches and $167.5 million of volume on Jul. 21, three times what it did on Aug. 5. On Aug. 6, its official account posted that "More than 250K tokens have now launched on Pons."

Down Half A Week

PONS traded at $0.0213 at 17:45 UTC on Aug. 6, down 21.7% over 24 hours and 49.1% over the week, with a $15.92 million market capitalization and $14.75 million in 24-hour volume, according to CoinGecko. It is about 68% below its Jul. 27 record of $0.0663.

UNI traded at $4.05, up 1.1% over 24 hours and down 5.8% on the week, with a $2.53 billion market capitalization. Uniswap switched on protocol fees for v4 pools on Jul. 27, nearly tripling protocol revenue.

FRONG, the frog memecoin minted six days before Pools opened and the platform's flagship token, traded at $0.00652 with a $6.52 million fully diluted valuation, down from $12.1 million within 24 hours of launch. The Defiant reported on the launch and FRONG's early minting on Aug. 5

Robinhood Chain held $433 million in total value locked and did $665.9 million in DEX volume by 16:30 UTC on Aug. 6. The chain has run on memecoins since it opened on Jul. 1.