Author: Mr. Z, 168X
Robinhood is turning stocks into composable assets: issuance rights, liquidity, and routing rights are being revalued simultaneously. $AI and $PONS are only the first stage; the real big opportunity lies in RWA DeFi.
September 30, 2026, Wednesday, 7 PM. The Crypto bull market is warming up again, and 168X is starting to shift more attention back on-chain. In this cycle, the first ecosystem we are focusing on is Robinhood Chain. It has only been on mainnet for a few months, yet it has rapidly grown from a simple "stock token" into Launchpad, coin-stock pairing, LP, Treasury, Agent, Meme, DeFi, and various new liquidity mechanisms.
In this episode, 168X invites independent on-chain researcher Alu (@alu1337). He has been tracking the ecosystem since day one of Robinhood Chain's launch, participated early in DELTA, HOOKR, PROLOGUE, and later positioned early in STONK on Solana. In this episode, we start with why Robinhood might challenge the top 3 mainstream public chains, then break down the two completely different Launchpad models of LONG and PONS, and dive deep into $AI, $SHROOM, $OPEN, $BUN, $PAID (Solana ecosystem), $UBIK, $HOOKR, $ZZZ, and the RWA + DeFi that could truly open up valuation space in the next stage.
Alu's judgment is: Putting stocks on-chain is only the first step; the real big opportunity is turning stocks into Crypto Native composable assets. In the future, whoever controls issuance, liquidity, routing, and rules will truly control the value of Robinhood Chain.
- 1. Why Robinhood is worth heavy research: it simultaneously possesses 3 advantages others cannot buy
- 2. The real innovation is not putting stocks on-chain: it is making stocks a Crypto Native quote leg
- 3. LONG vs PONS: one internalizes value, the other outsources innovation to the ecosystem
- 4. Why $AI might be LONG's true platform token: the market has not fully priced it yet
- 5. PONS does not need to eat LONG: what it really wants to be is the toll booth for "issuing everything"
- 6. $SHROOM: early Infra for cross-stock liquidity, if it succeeds it could be valued at over $100 million
- 7. $HOOKR: whoever controls Uniswap v4 Hook controls the issuance rules
- 8. $BUN / Mosh: not a Meme, but a new issuance mechanism for Agentic Market Making
- 9. Why $PAID is only suitable for Event Trade: Creator Fee is sexy, but Attention is hard to sustain
- 10. $UBIK: Agent's World Memory Layer, what you are buying now is the team and narrative
- 11. $OPEN vs $SHROOM: doing the same thing, but a doxxed team determines the valuation ceiling
- 12. $ZZZ, $AGI: the most worth watching this cycle is old Devs starting a second venture with new mechanisms
- 13. STONK's biggest lesson: after the Thesis is right, don't sell the Winner too early due to PVP path dependency
- 14. Robinhood's next baton is not more Memes: it is lending, options, Collateral, and RWA DeFi
- 15. How to screen projects in early bull: old Devs, real products, new mechanisms, and when you see "Just for Fun" immediately raise your guard
1. Why Robinhood is worth heavy research: it simultaneously possesses 3 advantages others cannot buy
Mr. Z: First, please give a complete rundown of Robinhood Chain. It has only been on mainnet for a few months, and you already think many core metrics have a chance to reach Top 3 in the future. What is your logic for being so Bullish?
Alu: I have been following Robinhood Chain since day one. At first, I did not assume it would definitely succeed. I looked at Bridge TVL, DeFi TVL, Stablecoin Market Cap, and developer migration speed. If these things did not grow, it would likely become a ghost chain shortly after launch, just like many previous Layer2s.
Alu: But by mid-September, I saw several data points already rapidly entering the top ranks of mainstream public chains. For a new chain less than 3 months old, this speed is exaggerated. If there is no obvious decay later, I think it is not impossible for many metrics to challenge Top 3.
Mr. Z: But fast data should not be the only reason you are most Bullish?
Alu: Right. The core reason that truly makes me Bullish is that Robinhood simultaneously possesses 3 things that are hard for others to have together. The first is compliant entry plus retail Distribution. It is itself a brokerage, with its own App, Wallet, and a huge user base. These users cannot be bought by ordinary Layer2s with money.
Alu: The second is RWA as a quote leg. People have put stocks on-chain before, but using real-world assets directly as quote assets and liquidity assets in Crypto, I think only truly began to scale after Robinhood.
Alu: The third is that in a very short time, besides the traditional DeFi trio, it has also grown a whole set of composable玩法 including Launchpad, coin-stock pairing, Uniswap Hooks, Agent, cross-stock LP, and more.I rarely see a chain that has just launched for a few months grow so many native innovations so quickly.
II. True innovation is not putting stocks on-chain: it is making stocks a Crypto Native quote leg
Mr. Z: So many people still understand Robinhood as "putting stocks on-chain," but what really matters is actually not Tokenized Stock itself?
Alu: Right. I think simply putting stocks on-chain is actually not particularly new. What is truly worth watching is that it is starting to turn stocks from a "certificate" into an asset within Crypto that can participate in other forms of play.
Alu: For example, stocks can be paired with Meme, can be used for LP, can be routed for liquidity, and later can even continue expanding into lending, collateral, options, and various DeFi products.
Alu: A lot of things are actually just beginning now. If later the official side really gradually adds rights such as dividend rights and voting rights to Tokenized Stock, then you will need an entire DeFi Infrastructure even more to "put these assets to use."
Alu: The real big opportunity of RWA is not moving a stock certificate onto the chain, but making stocks, like ETH and USDC, become on-chain native assets that can be freely combined.
III. LONG vs PONS: One internalizes value, the other outsources innovation to the ecosystem
Mr. Z: Right now Robinhood's two most important Launchpads should be LONG and PONS. You previously defined them as "internalization" and "externalization." Can you explain that in plain language?
Alu: I think LONG and PONS are actually not necessarily in direct competition, and it is not that in the end one must necessarily eat the other. PONS is more like wanting to build an issuance machine that "issues everything," while LONG is more focused on RWA and stock liquidity.
Alu: I would define LONG as an internalization model. It splits fees into its own pools and Treasury, controls inventory, LP, and the treasury itself, and then continues to build various products around this set of balance sheet. For example, coin-stock pairing, index products, leveraged packaging, LONG 500, all of these things are within the same system.
Alu: The advantage is that the cost of copying becomes higher and higher. As TVL and liquidity become deeper and deeper, it is hard for others to copy from scratch a set of things exactly the same as it. But the disadvantage is also obvious, which is that all innovation has to be done by itself.
Alu: PONS is the opposite. I call it an externalization model. It focuses on doing well its issuance entry, order flow, fees, and buybacks, and leaves LP compounding, Hook, AI market making, cross-stock liquidity, Inference Capital Markets, and these things to external vertical teams to do.
Alu: LONG keeps value as much as possible within its own balance sheet, while PONS lets the entire ecosystem innovate for it. One wins on integration, the other wins on division of labor.
IV. Why $AI may be LONG's real platform coin: the market has not yet fully priced it
Mr. Z: So if you yourself had to choose, you actually lean more toward LONG, and you have a very high opinion of $AI?
Alu: Right. On the one hand, I think RWA is the main line within the main line this cycle, and LONG has an obvious positioning advantage in this direction. On the other hand, looking purely at odds, I think $AI's odds are better than $PONS.
Alu: LONG currently does not have a separate platform coin, but it is building deep liquidity around $AI, hoping to gradually make $AI into the liquidity hub for the entire Tokenized Stock. Ideally, in the future many stock trades on Robinhood will be routed through pools composed of $AI and stocks.
Mr. Z: Why has the market not fully Price In yet?
Alu: The simplest reason is that LONG has never clearly said "$AI is our platform coin." So the market does not have a very clear pricing path.
Alu: PONS is simple, it is itself called PONS, and you can directly value it based on Launchpad, fees, and buybacks. But $AI does not have this clear identity, and the market has no way to directly map LONG's value onto it.
Alu: I myself actually regard $AI as LONG's de facto platform coin, but the market has not yet fully priced it in this way. This is where I think the odds still are.
V. PONS does not need to eat LONG: what it really wants to be is the toll booth for "issuing everything"
Mr. Z: Then where exactly is PONS's value? Why do you think it does not need to compete with LONG for a win or loss?
Alu: Because what PONS wants to do is the largest issuance entry. You can understand it as a toll booth. Projects issue from me, I take fees, use a portion to buy back PONS, and then around my issuance layer other vertical services grow.
Alu: For example, Hook design can be handed toHOOKR, AI market making can be handed toMosh, cross-stock liquidity can be handed toSHROOM, and Inference Capital Markets can be handed toORBIO. It doesn't need to do everything itself.
Alu: This has a big advantage: the valuation can be split apart. Each vertical project can grow to $100 million or even higher on its own, but it won't dilute the story of PONS itself as issuance infrastructure, because these things are still issued from PONS at the underlying level.
Alu: So I don't think LONG and PONS necessarily have to have a winner and a loser.If PONS ultimately becomes Robinhood's largest asset issuance layer, it only needs to firmly control issuance rights and order flow.
Six, $SHROOM: Early Infra for cross-stock liquidity, if it takes off it can be valued at over $100 million
Mr. Z: Let's talk directly about Ticker. $SHROOM is building a cross-stock liquidity network. How do you see it?
Alu: SHROOM's positioning is relatively clear: it captures mispricing and volatility between different stock pairs and turns these into returns that LPs can capture. I would still position it as an independent Infra.
Alu: One risk it currently has is that if a large amount of order flow is sucked away by the LONG ecosystem's$AI in the future, then SHROOM may be marginalized. But I think$AI is more about routing within LONG, while SHROOM is more like a product within the PONS ecosystem that independently captures cross-stock structures. The two sides don't necessarily completely conflict.
Alu: Right now it's about $15 million to $20 millionmarket cap, and you can understand it as early Infra pricing. If it really becomes the Default Venue for multi-stock LPs in the future, I think over $100 million is not particularly exaggerated.
Alu: The data that really matters is the number of cross-stock pools, liquidity depth, the proportion of fees automatically reinvested into LPs, and how much routing weight it can ultimately get. It's not just about the story.
Seven, $HOOKR: Whoever controls Uniswap v4 Hook controls the issuance rules
Mr. Z: HOOKR is also a project you've mentioned since early on. Why do you think Uniswap v4 Hook is so important on Robinhood?
Alu: I think HOOKR is still an undervalued target. Uniswap v4 Hook can essentially be understood as arules market.
Alu: For example, when a project issues on PONS, it can choose different Hooks to determine anti-sniping, dynamic fees, fee flow, and different liquidity rules. Whoever controls these rules will actually begin to influence the quality of project issuance.
Alu: Previously Uniswap established a partnership with PONS, and at the time I kept thinking about how these two things would ultimately combine. I think a very natural direction is that in the future the PONS issuance layer will directly integrate rules markets like HOOKR.
Alu: Then in the future a project won't simply "issue a coin"; at issuance it can choose the liquidity rules it wants.
Alu:Launchpad determines who can issue coins, Hook determines how the coin is traded. The latter may be much more important in the long run than everyone currently understands.
Eight, $BUN / Mosh: Not a Meme, but a new issuance mechanism for Agentic Market Making
Mr. Z: I've also looked at Mosh's$BUN myself. Its circulating market cap is about $20 million and FDV is over $90 million. How do you see it?
Alu: I think the core issue is not whether it's a Meme, but that Mosh proposed a new issuance primitive.
Alu: Before issuance, it first crowdfunds a Bundle, then locks a large portion of the tokens into a non-withdrawable Vault, and then uses an Agent Swarm to use these tokens for two-sided market making. Right now about 70% of the tokens are locked inside, so you see a very high FDV, but the truly circulating portion is actually not that large.
Alu: Why did this suddenly attract market attention? On one hand, the mechanism is new; on the other hand, some Web3 VCs have indeed begun discussing and spreading the concept of Agentic Market Making.
Alu: But I think it's still far from being possible to say the mechanism has already succeeded. Its Agent Swarm market-making algorithm is still relatively rudimentary. What matters most going forward is whether market making can consistently make money, and whether fees from things like ALF (Agentic Liquid Fund) actually flow in and are used to buy back$BUN.
Alu:The market is currently pricing the new issuance mechanism of "AI Agent market making," not pricing a mature business model.
9. Why $PAID is only suitable for Event Trade: Creator Fee is sexy, but Attention is hard to sustain
Mr. Z: $PAID has also been very hot these days. Creator Fee is directly paid to celebrities through X Money. What do you think of this setup?
Alu: I'm quite clear about it. I would define PAID as Event Trade, not a long-term holding type project.
Alu: Its innovation point is easy to understand: it directly converts Creator Fee into real USD through X Money and sends it to celebrity accounts. Compared to similar Bags models in the past, this path is smoother, so it has strong virality.
Alu: But its biggest problem is also the biggest problem this model has always had: you must continuously rely on celebrity interaction and attention.
Alu: A celebrity with millions of followers might interact once out of novelty, but you can't expect him to keep shilling for you and keep participating in Build. Moreover, for truly big celebrities, Creator Fee may not even be money worth long-term effort.
Alu: When there is Attention, you can trade, but once Attention leaves, fundamentals will find it hard to support the price. So I won't hold it long term.
10. $UBIK: Agent's World Memory Layer, what you're buying now is the team and narrative
Mr. Z: Another one you quite like is UBIK, the so-called World Memory Layer of Agents. Why does this Make Sense?
Alu: Actually, you don't need to think about Agents first. Think about how we use AI ourselves now. When you use ChatGPT, Claude, or other models, your context, personal preferences, and historical Tool Calling are all scattered across different model vendors, with no permanent Memory.
Alu: If there are a large number of Agents in the future, they will need an independent Memory Layer even more. What UBIK wants to do is turn memory into infrastructure that can be permanently stored and jointly called and interacted with by different Agents.
Alu: I think this direction Makes Sense, and the team is related to aixbt, which is also why I'm willing to give it higher attention.
Alu: But one thing must be clear now: it hasn't really delivered a product yet. So the current pricing of about 20 million to 25 million USD seems reasonable to me. Essentially, you're still buying narrative plus team.
Alu: Later, if the product really comes out, then look at data, Distribution, and Network Effect, and only then is there reason to give it a higher valuation.
11. $OPEN vs $SHROOM: doing the same thing, but a doxxed team determines the valuation ceiling
Mr. Z: OPEN and SHROOM both seem to be doing Liquidity Layer. Why do you think OPEN's ceiling may actually be lower?
Alu: The two things are indeed very similar, just in different camps. OPEN leans more LONG, SHROOM leans more PONS. The core is all about pool count, depth, Fee, and how to get more order flow.
Alu: OPEN has also recently made its own custom Hook, hoping to increase Fee revenue. If $AI or the LONG ecosystem takes off, I think an asset like OPEN, currently relatively low-valued, will of course have opportunities for correlated revaluation.
Alu: But I still think SHROOM's ceiling is probably higher, and one very simple reason is team identity.
Alu: OPEN is an anonymous team, while SHROOM shows old developers who have done DeFi before. Of course, many anonymous teams in Crypto can also succeed, but a doxxed Dev who has done successful projects has a Reputation Cost in itself.
Alu: In the early bull market, I'm increasingly willing to pay a premium for "this person has really built things before." Because when the product hasn't fully landed yet, the team itself is one of the most important assets.
12. $ZZZ, $AGI: The most worth watching this cycle is old Devs starting a second venture with new mechanisms
Mr. Z: You just talked about "old Devs." So are things like ZZZ and AGI this logic?
Alu: Right. One very important highlight of ZZZ is that developers related to GMX came out to build it. Right now their product path isn't especially clear yet. My own understanding is that it wants to be an AI Coordination Layer on top of Robinhood plus a community-gated Token.
Alu: You first have to hold the Token to enter the community, then hand your Idea to the Agent, and let the Agent execute, collaborate, and deliver. It's still quite early right now, and even a lot of things are fairly vague, but because of the developers' background, I'll keep watching.
Alu: AGI is similar. The team that did Launchpad last cycle is now coming out to build Clank, and the Runner that has clearly emerged so far is AGI. The team hasn't 100% explicitly acknowledged the entire long-term plan yet, but if it's later confirmed that it's the original team doing it, and Clank will continue to Build downward, I think there will be opportunity.
Alu: This cycle I'll pay special attention to one kind of project: Devs who already proved last cycle that they could Build, now starting up again this cycle with new mechanisms. At the very least, it has an extra layer of safety cushion compared with a completely anonymous project that only relies on Meme to get off the ground.
Thirteen, STONK's biggest lesson: after getting the Thesis right, don't sell the Winner too early because of PVP path dependence
Mr. Z: STONK should count as a very classic case this cycle of you "getting it right but selling too early." What's the biggest lesson this time?
Alu: I judged very early on that the stock pairing Narrative wouldn't stop at Robinhood. Because many chains were already doing on-chain stocks, but the one that truly brought the stock pairing gameplay to life was Robinhood.
Alu: Since this mechanism holds, it was only natural for me to go to Solana and Base to look for narrative migration, so I bought STONK early.
Alu: But the problem is, I used to play a lot on Solana, so I have very strong PVP path dependence. A lot of things on Solana move too fast, so you develop a habit: take profit quickly once there's decent profit.
Alu: That's exactly what happened to me this time. The Thesis was right, the position was early enough, but I didn't give the Winner enough time.
Alu: One of the easiest mistakes to make in the early bull market is using the take-profit logic of a bear market and a PVP market to sell a Winner that is in the process of forming a long-term main line.
Fourteen, Robinhood's next baton isn't more Meme: it's lending, options, Collateral, and RWA DeFi
Mr. Z: If Robinhood really continues to grow in the next stage, what do you think is most worth looking forward to? More coin-stock Meme, or something else?
Alu: I think most Runners right now are still coin-stock pairing, Launchpad, plus some relatively early Infra, but if we really return to RWA + DeFi, these things are still far from enough.
Alu: Later I'll be looking forward to stock lending, collateral, options, hedging, brokerage-related gameplay, and all kinds of products that use Tokenized Stock as Collateral.
Alu: Especially if Robinhood later really gradually grants real-world rights such as dividend rights and voting rights to on-chain stocks, then you will definitely need DeFi Infrastructure to combine them.
Alu: Right now Uniswap is a DEX, Morpho does lending, and other mature DeFi can also migrate over. But what I look forward to more is Robinhood growing some new native DeFi projects of its own, rather than forever Copying things from Ethereum over.
Alu: The day Robinhood truly becomes an "on-chain capital market" is not when stocks can be traded 24 hours a day, but when stocks can be borrowed, used as collateral, used for LP, combined, and taken to create new financial products.
Fifteen, how to screen projects in the early bull market: old Devs, real products, new mechanisms, and raise your guard immediately when you see "Just for Fun"
Mr. Z: Finally, give everyone a relatively practical framework. There are so many projects on Robinhood now, what do you screen for first at a glance?
Alu: First I still want to emphasize that all these Tickers I'm talking about today are my personal views, not investment advice. I hope more that what everyone takes away from this is a method for how to look at projects.
Alu: At this stage, I'd be more willing to take projects where real-name developers are starting up a second time. First, they have Reputation Cost; second, they've made products before and have experience actually Building a project out; third, there's a relatively high probability they'll actually deliver something, rather than just hype.
Alu: Also, everyone must identify assembly-line projects. There are already some very obvious coin factories on Robinhood now, with the same Logo style, the same website UI, and the same template mass-produced. When you see this kind of thing, you have to be very careful.
Alu: There's another thing I've reminded people about before. If a Founder or team member comes out and says, "We're issuing a few Meme just for fun, Just for Fun," I would instead advise everyone to raise their guard.
Because this sentence is in many cases an advance disclaimer. He has already told you, I have no obligation to deliver, there is no next stage, there is no Value Accrual, it's just everyone playing together. You can treat it as pure speculation, but absolutely do not fill in a long-term Thesis for the project on your own.
Alu:This round isn't about not being able to buy Narrative, but rather you need to know what exactly you're buying. Old Devs, real products, and new mechanisms can be given time; but for wash trading schemes, anonymous copycats, and Just for Fun, don't invent fundamentals for them yourself.
Mr. Z: At the end of this episode, actually Robinhood's logic can be boiled down very simply: Robinhood's biggest Moat is its compliant entry point, retail Distribution, and RWA; LONG and PONS represent the two issuance routes of internalization and externalization respectively; projects like $AI, $SHROOM, $HOOKR, and $UBIK are competing for liquidity, rules, routing, and Agent Infrastructure. The bigger Alpha may not be in today's Memes, but rather in the RWA DeFi that grows after stocks truly become composable assets. In the early stages of a bull market, the most important thing is not to scan every new coin, but to find the few projects that can truly form a positive flywheel, and then give the Winners enough time. Thanks to Alu for coming to 168X for the first time today and breaking down the Robinhood ecosystem completely!
