Circle’s Arc Network is set to open its public mainnet on September 16, and the question already circulating among analysts is whether it will see anything like the coin frenzy that hit Robinhood Chain right after its own launch.
SoSoValue’s analysis of Arc argues that the answer is no, because the same structural features designed to satisfy banks and regulators also remove the exact mechanisms that made Robinhood Chain’s boom possible in the first place.
Why the Robinhood Chain Playbook is not moving to Arc
SoSoValue sharp to four conditions that aligned for Robinhood Chain: the network operator earned revenue from and tolerated meme trading, an existing retail user base gave speculators an easy entry point, the buy-and-burn mechanism of a native token supported prices, and a fully public memory pool allowed bots to initiate trades first and sandwich for profit.
None of this fits Arc. Its set of validators includes Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, DTCC, Circle itself, and seven other regulated institutions, all of which have more to lose in reputation by hosting meme speculation than they would gain in fees.
Arc’s distribution channels are through card networks and asset managers rather than retail merchants. Additionally, the ARC token has not been launched, gas is paid in USDC, and there is no buyback mechanism to back anything.
Arc has also completely shut down its public memory pool, so the top-tier infrastructure that funds many launch pad activities elsewhere simply isn’t there.
Crypto analyst Adam Cochran put the underlying criticism quite bluntly, calling Arc a “private consortium chain with pre-approved validators” rather than a true layer 1.
But SoSoValue didn’t rule out this possibility outright, because Arc is EVM compatible and Uniswap v4 and Aerodrome launched there on day one, but it treats any meme rally on Arc as harder to start and easier to roll out than what happened on Robinhood Chain.
Robinhood Chain’s own boom is already cooling
The comparison is important because Robinhood Chain’s boom has already reversed, with daily revenue falling from a high of $4 million to $1.06 million late last week.
That’s an 83% drop that came as gas prices collapsed once meme congestion eased and a 90-day fee subsidy nears its September 29 expiration. CEO Vlad Tenev initially touted real-world token assets as the channel’s intended focus, then, once the meme business took over the network, he said it was “good for memes too.”
As CryptoPotato reported that Robinhood had already become the largest blockchain by number of RWA holders within weeks of its July 1 launch, and the network continued to expand its offering in the UK, introducing fee-free crypto trading in August.
Article Can Circle’s Arc Repeat Robinhood Chain’s Meme Coin Boom? appeared first on CryptoPotato.