Robinhood Chain's daily transactions drop 42% in three weeks, and fees fall from an $8 million peak to $65,000 a day

Activity on Robinhood's blockchain has dropped sharply since September. The network averaged 6.2 million transactions a day between October 2 and 8, down 42% from 10.8 million a day in mid-September and 20% below the week before, CoinDesk reported on Saturday, using data from growthepie. Active addresses fell 31% over the same stretch, to about 322,000 a day.

Trading followed. Spot volume on the chain's exchanges was $7.45 billion for the week, down 21% from $9.46 billion, according to DefiLlama figures cited by CoinDesk, with Uniswap handling about 77% of it. Network fees averaged about $65,000 a day. On the busiest day in early September they reached $8 million. That matters to Robinhood, which keeps roughly nine-tenths of the chain's fees, according to a Bernstein note cited by CoinDesk.

The money has not left, CoinDesk found. Deposits in lending and trading apps rose about 2% to $1.04 billion, stablecoin supply edged up to about $1.10 billion, and perpetual futures volume rose 26% to about $7.35 billion. growthepie's page on Saturday showed 5.6 million transactions and about 266,000 active addresses for its latest day, both below the weekly averages.

Robinhood launched the chain in July. It is paying network fees on wallet swaps above 50 cents until December 31, after extending a promotion that was due to end on September 29.

What to watch: what activity looks like once users have to pay their own fees.