The founder of Solana criticized the company over the weekend. What is he anxious about?

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

Last weekend, Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder and Solana co-founder Toly clashed over Robinhood Chain's fee model, arguing about whether a 10% commission should be charged, and whether the sorting mechanism fee constitutes a disguised MEV protection fee.

This debate occurred against the backdrop of Robinhood Chain's daily transaction fees surging to $6 million, and infrastructure providers such as HOOD, ARB, and UNI also experiencing significant price increases. Toly initiated the debate, his tone tinged with a hint of resentment, which is difficult to explain solely by a technical disagreement; it seems more like an outward expression of his own anxiety.

Several KOLs have also lamented that Solana's biggest loss in this round is the lack of its own leading exchange, putting it in a somewhat awkward position. Regardless of who is right or wrong in this controversy, for token holders and potential investors, does Solana still have a solid reason to go long? Why did Robinhood Chain choose Arbitrum? How does this work? According to market news, Robinhood evaluated Solana and Arbitrum during the project initiation phase and ultimately chose Arbitrum, which allows for independent chain deployment. Under the Arbitrum architecture, Robinhood can retain approximately 90% of its gas revenue; with Solana, the retention rate is 0, and the company has to subsidize its own gas fees. According to Arbitrum's official AEP terms, the Orbit chain is required to transfer 10% of its protocol's net revenue to the Arbitrum Foundation. Of this, 8% goes into the DAO treasury, 2% goes to the developer guild, and there are no automatic dividends, buybacks, or cash distributions to ARB holders. Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder summarized this choice in one sentence: be a landlord, not a tenant. Solana co-founder Toly questioned the profitability of this landlord model. He stated on X that Arbitrum's 10% cut from Robinhood's transaction fees, in his estimation, is enough to cover four times the total transaction fees across the Solana network. If Robinhood were deployed on Solana, it could achieve a near-zero gas fee experience, while still collecting revenue at the application's front end. He provided a reference figure of 50 to 80 basis points in fees collected at the front end. According to data from Blockworks, the average transaction fee on Robinhood Chain once surged to $0.40, more than 100 times that of Solana and more than twice that of Ethereum. Toly believes that charging based on network congestion is not a healthy business model. On September 6th, Steven posted that comparing transaction fees alone is insufficient. He argued that Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain proactively prevent front-running and most harmful MEV attacks. He claimed that some chains boasting low fees actually incur higher costs for retail investors due to front-running and sandwich attacks. He preferred to pay a clear fee upfront rather than bear hidden losses for lower on-paper fees. Toly responded that Arbitrum's current bid-ask spreads are already worse, and its fees are higher. He estimated that the 10% commission taken from transaction fees, converted to basis points, already exceeds ten times the cost of a sandwich attack, not even considering the impact of the spread. This MEV debate also drew technical criticism from peers. Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov believes that early access to security shouldn't be a problem for the infrastructure layer to solve. Toly responded that competition is the only way to ensure that infrastructure provides the quality of service that applications truly need and reduces the unwanted portion of MEV (Mean Equivalent Value). The Meme token strategy has been copied. After Pons, a token launched on the Robinhood Chain platform, was compared to Pump.fun on Solana, many people have been comparing it. According to public data, Pons tokens have increased more than 20 times in the past month, and the average daily trading volume of meme tokens in September has exceeded that of Pump.fun, reaching approximately $500 million. Recently, the trend of pairing memes with stocks has become even more popular. Long.xyz, launched on Robinhood Chain on July 14th, pairs community tokens with stock ticker tokens for trading, such as AI/NVDA, SPACEHOOD/SPCX, and BONER/HIMS. It doesn't have its own platform token, and holding the paired community tokens doesn't represent equity in the corresponding companies. Bankr, an AI-driven token creation platform, followed suit, supporting over 90 stock and ETF ticker symbols as pricing assets, such as LEVE/AAPL and SPX690/SPY. Its own token, BNKR, launched with only a $50,000 liquidity pool, serving as a proof-of-concept for this model. BSC also has a similar product, Flap, which also links meme tokens to stock ticker symbols, distributing stock-related rewards to holders. Solana's corresponding product is StonkFun, also known as LaunchOnSF, which allows users to create tokens that pair with other assets, including tokenized stocks and ETFs. For example, STONK is paired with SPYx, a tokenized product that tracks the S&P 500 index. On September 4th, Solana's official X account replied to StonkFun's post, expressing support for the Stonk token. STONK's market capitalization rose to approximately $140 million that day, a 24-hour increase of over 250%. However, StonkFun's transaction fee revenue over the past 30 days was only $1.23 million, less than Pons' daily revenue. Market analysis points out that ordinary meme and USD token pairings are no longer attracting speculative funds; only narrative and stock ticker pairings can re-enter this user base. If Pump.fun doesn't follow suit with this feature, StoneFun's current leading position may be difficult to maintain. Crypto KOL Haotian believes that Solana's advantage lies in its capital efficiency and high load capacity. New platforms like Pump, GMGN, and FOMO are new entry points for Solana. The lack of a leading exchange at the exit end isn't a key issue, because by the time a market cycle reaches the point where it needs to rely solely on CEXs for monetization, the cycle is often nearing its end. He believes the real amplifiers of capital in this cycle are new super-entry points like FOMO, Pump, and Robinhood Wallet. For a CEX to become an entry point, it must have the ability to handle the fermentation of on-chain narratives, something Base and BSC have already verified over a full cycle. The fermentation of new narratives always occurs on-chain. Some users also believe that rather than Solana lacking its own exchange, it will ultimately become a place where various exchanges compete for traffic. Stablecoins, payments, prediction markets—are key components missing? The fact that Meme's approach has been copied is merely a surface phenomenon. A deeper issue is that public chains like Robinhood Chain, built by giants themselves, are gradually taking back control of aspects that previously relied on Solana. Public information shows that Circle's own public chain, Arc, plans to launch its mainnet on September 16th. When USDC settles on Ethereum or Solana, the fees go to the validators and searchers of those chains; Circle itself doesn't receive this revenue. After Arc launches, USDC becomes a native gas token, and only then will the money go into Circle's account. Currently, Arc has secured founding validators from Blackstone, DTCC, Visa, and other institutions, raising $222 million and achieving a valuation of $3 billion. Robinhood is launching its own blockchain, and Circle is also launching its own. These giants are no longer satisfied with simply placing assets and traffic on other chains; instead, they are choosing to control the settlement layer themselves. Looking at several major crypto sectors, Solana's chain doesn't lack products, but rather settlement, issuance, and access—whether these are still under its control. This is the more fundamental source of anxiety behind Toly's deliberate provocation of this controversy. According to DefiLlama data, Solana's DEX trading volume in the past 24 hours was approximately $1.961 billion, and its cumulative trading volume over 30 days was approximately $65.028 billion, ranking first among all chains. Ethereum's trading volume during the same period was approximately $837 million, and Base's was approximately $567 million. However, Robinhood Chain, launched only two months ago, has already reached $1.613 billion in 24-hour DEX trading volume, ranking third after Solana and BSC, with the gap between it and Solana not far off. Regarding exchanges, Backpack, which holds a Dubai VARA license, offers stock tokens and perpetual products on Solana, but its scale is far from that of Binance, Robinhood, and Coinbase. Robinhood Chain has proven that retail investors are concentrated in brokerage apps, not on the official blockchain website. Solana doesn't receive a share of the sorting revenue and therefore doesn't have a significant user base. Crypto KOL Christine stated that surviving L2 blockchains are often backed by exchanges, and newcomers who have learned Solana's meme strategy have stronger backgrounds. The current hot sector—prediction market valuations and narratives—hasn't flowed back to SOL. Polymarket is deployed on Polygon, and Kalshi is a licensed fiat currency platform. Solana's own product, Forecast, launched on Jupiter on June 4th, has a cumulative trading volume of approximately $17 million, a significant difference in scale. The ecosystem's derivatives protocol, Drift, experienced a $285 million security incident in April of this year. In terms of payments, Visa, PayPal, and Western Union all use Solana for settlement. PayPal has designated Solana as the default network for PYUSD, citing faster settlement and lower fees. However, Ethereum still accounts for approximately 73.74% of the current PYUSD supply, while Solana accounts for approximately 20.76%. The default network designation has not yet translated into a leading position in terms of supply. x402 was originally proposed by Coinbase and later governed by the Linux Foundation. Solana is one of the access chains, but there has been no evidence of separate revenue or burning back to SOL. Regarding stablecoin supply, USDC, USDT, and PYUSD all run on the Solana chain, but the issuance rights are held by Circle, PayPal, and Western Union, with fees going to the issuers. According to data from Visa Onchain Analytics, in July this year, Solana and Base had almost identical monthly settlement volumes, both around $286 billion. However, in August, Base's share surged to 29.67%, while Solana dropped to 7.05%, quickly falling behind within a month. In terms of outstanding settlements, Solana's cumulative USDC settlement volume over the past 12 months was still $2.6 trillion, higher than Base's $2.1 trillion, but the trend has reversed in the past month. However, in terms of the number of transactions, Solana had 47.29 million transactions in August, accounting for 20.43%, ranking third after BNB Chain and Tron. Base only had 12.11 million transactions, lagging behind in terms of transaction amount but having the more transactions. This indicates that Solana mainly consists of high-frequency, small-amount transactions, which have not been converted into a share of settlement amount. Last week, Lily Liu, chairwoman of the Solana Foundation, published an article proposing that the internet capital market will become the world's largest capital market. She stated that combining stablecoins, institutional asset migration, blockchain infrastructure, and AI is the narrative supporting Solana's long-term value proposition. However, in comparison, despite Solana's comprehensive on-chain product offerings and even leading DEX trading volume, it consistently lacks issuance rights, settlement rights, and an entry point. In current popular narratives, a closed loop that allows SOL to directly appreciate in value seems to be missing.