Is Robinhood making the same ‘memecoin’ bet that made Solana a winner?

Can Robinhood play catch up with Solana and BNB Chain?

Written by Benjamin Njiri

Reviewed by Jibin Mathew George

Updated 02:00 EDT July 9, 2026

Is Robinhood making the same 'memecoin' bet that made Solana a winner?

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has sparked mixed community reactions after he pushed the newly launched Ethereum L2, Robinhood Chain, as a great option for memecoin activity. Initially positioned as focused on real-world assets (RWA) tokenization, his openness to trying memecoins was met with strong criticism and little support.

While we’re building Robinhood Chain to be the best chain for RWA … it works great for memes too.

Some venture capitalists in the sector slammed the move, questioning the viability of another Ethereum L2. Simon Dedic of Moonrock Capital retorted,

Just another L2 that offers no real value over the existing ones is exactly what we were missing. But hey, you can trade memes on it too. Someone tell Vlad it’s not 2024 anymore.

Some even drew comparisons to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, whose centralized platform has been slow to list memecoins. However, for Base, the L2 has been onboarding some memecoins.

For perspective, Solana became a key spotlight at the early stage of this current market cycle because of the memecoin mania, driven by PumpFun.

Unfortunately, retail investors incurred heavy losses, and some became scam victims. Memecoin issuers like Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial pocketed most of the gains. So, it’s understandable why some hate memecoins.

Can Robinhood L2 dominate memecoin activity?

Still, memecoins command blockchain activity. Besides, they are the best way to gain market share, especially for a new chain like Robinhood Chain.

For perspective, memecoin activity accounts for 40%-50% of the total trading volume across Solana and BNB Chain. Apart from Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain are some of the top chains by total value locked (TVL).

In fact, Base has also been ranking fourth in terms of memecoin dominance with less than a 2% market share.

In other words, Tenev may be betting on memecoins to catch up with his rivals and has been onboarding even new DEX platforms. Surprisingly, the hype seems to be working, at least after his post went viral.

For example – Cash Cat [CASHCAT] and 4663, two of the memecoins on Robinhoood Chain, have exploded by 1100% and 800% in the last 24 hours as traders rushed to bridge into the L2.

Amid the FOMO, the L2 saw its TVL grow 10x in less than a week from $10M to $105M. Similarly, DEX volumes increased from $10M to $52M, further underscoring the growing traction.