Robinhood surpasses Hyperliquid in 24-hour DEX volume, powered by memecoins and a brand-new Layer 2
Robinhood Chain recorded up to $570 million in daily DEX volume just one week after launch, fueled by a memecoin called Cash Cat that nobody saw coming.
One week. That’s all it took for Robinhood’s new Ethereum Layer-2 network to dethrone Hyperliquid as the top decentralized exchange by 24-hour trading volume. On July 8, Robinhood Chain posted between $560 million and $570 million in daily DEX volume, eclipsing what had been the dominant perps-and-spot platform in DeFi.
The catalyst wasn’t some blue-chip DeFi protocol or a revolutionary new trading primitive. It was a memecoin called Cash Cat.
A chain launch turbocharged by a cat token
Robinhood Chain went live on July 1 as a permissionless Ethereum Layer-2 network built on the Arbitrum stack. It integrates Uniswap for trading, Chainlink for oracles, and Morpho for lending.
CASHCAT, a memecoin trading on Uniswap WETH pairs on the new chain, surged to an all-time high above $0.14. Its market cap ballooned to somewhere between $100 million and $150 million in a single day. The token alone accounted for roughly $98 million in 24-hour trading volume, acting as the rocket fuel that pushed Robinhood Chain’s total DEX numbers past Hyperliquid’s.
The numbers behind the surge
Daily active addresses on Robinhood Chain approached 200,000, with more than 140,000 of those being first-time users.
The chain’s total value locked crossed $100 million within its first week, driven primarily by Morpho lending activity.
For context on what Robinhood Chain was up against: Hyperliquid had accumulated $330.8 billion in combined spot and perpetual trading volume by July 2025. Robinhood’s overall crypto trading volume sat at $237.8 billion over the same period.
Traditional finance meets permissionless chaos
Robinhood Chain is built on the Arbitrum stack, integrating Uniswap for trading interfaces, Chainlink for price feeds, and Morpho for lending. The permissionless nature of the chain means anyone can deploy tokens and create trading pairs, which is how Cash Cat emerged organically rather than through a corporate partnership announcement.
What this means for investors
Trading volumes on Robinhood Chain have already begun to stabilize at lower levels since the July 8 peak. The $100 million-plus in TVL from Morpho lending is a distinct signal: lending activity suggests users are deploying capital for yield, not just flipping tokens.