Pons vs pump.fun: the short answer
Pons vs pump.fun comes down to chain and fee design. pump.fun runs on Solana, charges 1.25% per trade on its bonding curve and moves graduated coins to PumpSwap with the LP tokens burnt. The Pons launchpad runs on Robinhood Chain, charges 1% per curve trade and moves a token into a locked Uniswap v4 pool once its curve holds 4.2 ETH. Both graduate roughly 1% of launches, so the odds for a random new token are similar, and poor.
Neither launchpad is safer by design. The same bundling and insider patterns show up on both, and both are unavailable in the United Kingdom. NAVI is independent and not affiliated with Pons, pump.fun or Robinhood.
Pons vs pump.fun side by side
Pons figures are from NAVI's on-chain reads of the Pons V2 factory on 30 September 2026. pump.fun figures are from pump.fun's public docs on GitHub, because its website docs are geo-blocked from the UK.
- Chain: Pons on Robinhood Chain (an Ethereum layer 2 on the Arbitrum stack); pump.fun on Solana
- Gas token: Pons pays gas in ETH; pump.fun in SOL
- Typical network cost: a sample of 13 Robinhood Chain swaps NAVI measured on 30 September had a median cost of about 0.0000039 ETH, roughly one US cent. On Solana the base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature, and GMGN's docs suggest a total of 0.002 to 0.005 SOL per trade with priority fees, about $0.24 to $0.59 at a SOL price of about $118
- Launch cost: Pons 0.0005 ETH (press put this at about $1); we did not verify a pump.fun launch cost from its docs
- Curve trade fee: Pons 1%; pump.fun 1.25% (0.30% creator, 0.95% protocol)
- Creator share on the curve: pump.fun 0.30% of volume; Pons 70% of the 1% fee according to Datawallet's summary of Pons's docs (secondary, confirm in the Pons app), plus an optional creator tax of up to 10%
- Graduation trigger: Pons at 4.2 ETH in the curve for ETH-quoted tokens (other quote assets have their own threshold); pump.fun when the curve's real token reserves sell out
- Where liquidity goes: Pons to a Uniswap v4 pool with the Pons hook; pump.fun to PumpSwap
- LP treatment: Pons LP held by the Pons launch locker (locked); pump.fun LP tokens burnt
- Fees after graduation: the Pons hook keeps taking a fee, reported as 1%; PumpSwap canonical pools use market-cap tiers from 1.25% under about $85K to 0.30% above about $20M, and pump.fun can change those tiers
- Quote assets: Pons ETH, USDG and Stock Tokens; pump.fun SOL, USDC and other quote assets
- Graduation rate: Pons about 1.1% in NAVI's count for 23 to 30 September; pump.fun historically reported at around 1%
- UK availability: neither is available in the UK
On Stock Tokens: they are information only on NAVI. NAVI never trades them or routes a swap through one, so Pons curves priced in a Stock Token cannot be traded on NAVI.
The fee race: one big day vs 30 days
The headline that put Pons on the map came from CoinDesk. Over 24 hours on 2 to 3 September, Pons made $5.95M in fees. That ranked it fourth on DefiLlama, behind Tether, Uniswap and Circle, and ahead of pump.fun at $4.64M and Hyperliquid at about $2M. Pons handled $544M of volume that day.
A longer window tells a closer story. On DefiLlama's 30-day fees to 30 September 2026, Pons was at about $140M and Pump (pump.fun plus PumpSwap) at about $165M. These numbers move every day, so treat them as a snapshot.
Remember who pays those fees: traders. A launchpad topping the fee charts is a sign of heavy volume, not a sign that trading there is cheaper.
Update, 5 October 2026: the lead has since flipped. In the week to 4 October DefiLlama shows Pons at about $9.5M in fees, down 36% on the week, against about $47.7M for pump.fun plus PumpSwap, up 15%. Pons was ahead in the first two weeks of September and pump.fun has led since the week of 14 to 20 September. Week by week figures are in Robinhood Chain volume and fees after free gas ended.
Robinhood Chain vs Solana memecoins: what changes for traders
Volume is in the same range. On 30 September 2026, DefiLlama put Solana's 24-hour DEX volume at about $2.53B and Robinhood Chain's at about $1.64B, with Base at about $1.38B.
The differences that matter day to day:
- Speed: Robinhood Chain blocks average about 0.1 seconds, per Blockscout stats
- Gas: cheap on both. Robinhood Chain gas includes a small L1 data fee that rises when Ethereum is busy. A gas subsidy for Robinhood Wallet users reportedly ended around 29 September; third-party wallets always paid
- Stablecoins: Robinhood Chain's main stablecoin is USDG from Paxos; there is no Circle-native USDC there
- Chain design: L2BEAT flags that Robinhood Chain has no delay on code upgrades and no guaranteed way to get transactions included if its sequencer fails
- Screeners: DexScreener did not return pre-graduation Pons curves in NAVI's check of its API, while GeckoTerminal does index them
Our Robinhood Chain vs Solana vs Base post covers the chains in more depth.
Risk patterns on each launchpad
Cheap, permissionless launches attract the same abuse on any chain. The tools differ a little.
On Pons, the pattern to know is the anti-bot tax exemption. Pons V2 charges a 99% snipe tax at launch, but creators can exempt chosen wallets. Wazz's investigation, reported by CryptoTimes, found one group took at least $18.43M across 53 launches, exempting 15 to 25 wallets per launch and buying 82% to 86% of supply in the opening transactions. Our rug ring breakdown covers it in detail.
On pump.fun, bundled dev buys, insider wallets and fast dumps after migration are the familiar risks. Our guides to spotting Solana rug pulls and pump.fun on-chain signals walk through them.
The checks are the same on both: who bought first, how concentrated the holders are, and whether the contract address matches the one the creator posted.
Which is the best memecoin launchpad for you
There is no single best memecoin launchpad. It depends on what you hold and what you are doing.
- If your funds are in SOL: pump.fun keeps you on one chain, with no bridge step
- If your funds are in ETH on an EVM chain: Pons is the shorter route, with a lower curve fee (1% vs 1.25%)
- If you create tokens: the fee share differs a lot by stage. We model it in pump.fun vs Pons creator fees
- If you are in the UK: neither is available, and you should not try to get around the block
Graduation odds do not decide it either. At about 1% on both, almost every token on either launchpad never reaches its pool.
Verdict: trade both from one place
Pons and pump.fun are two versions of the same market, on two chains. Watching both usually means two wallets, two screeners and two sets of risk tools. NAVI's aim is one place for both.
NAVI covers pump.fun now: pump.fun token analysis with bonding status and charts, rug checks, bubble maps and Solana swaps. NAVI is non-custodial, so your own wallet signs every trade.
For Pons, NAVI shows curve progress to 4.2 ETH and a Low, Medium or High risk level on every token in the Robinhood Chain token scanner. Move funds between the two with NAVI's Solana to Robinhood Chain bridge.
Also on NAVI: the Pons launchpad page for bonding status and curve progress, the new Pons launches list for fresh curves, the honeypot checker for a standalone sell test and token analytics for charts, pools and holders.
For fresh Robinhood Chain data, see how many Pons launches survive and this week's top memecoins and risk levels.
Trading Solana as well? See the memecoin risk checklist and best Solana memecoins today.
Trading on NAVI is not available in every region. Pons curve trading is not offered to users in the United Kingdom, Stock Tokens are information only on NAVI, and you should never use a VPN to get around a regional block.
Not financial advice. Most launches go to zero. Only trade what you can afford to lose.