What is Pons and why has it soared 400% in a week?

Scrolling through the CoinMarketCap top 100 right now, one genuine outlier stands out: a small cryptocurrency called Pons is up a striking 400% in a single week. What is Pons, and what lies behind the sharp rally?

Tokens

Pons is a new app that allows anyone to create and trade a crypto token on Robinhood’s new blockchain. The app is hugely popular because of its low cost, with users paying roughly $1 to mint a new token and get it trading. Over the past day, users paid nearly $6 million to create and trade tokens through Pons. Because Pons earns a transaction fee on every token created, investors can see the app is generating solid revenue, which explains why the small cryptocurrency is rising so quickly.

On 2 September, for example, just days after launch, nearly 25,000 new tokens were launched through Pons, generating 24-hour trading volume of around $544 million. Data shows that the platform has produced approximately 646,000 tokens since July, coming from more than 167,000 unique creator addresses. That points to enormous popularity for Pons among crypto fans.

The tokens most commonly created through the app are those based on cartoons and popular memes.