Ethereum experienced a significant growth in Q3 2026, with its price rising by approximately 66%. This performance was supported by over $10 billion in ETF inflows and corporate ETH purchases exceeding $15 billion. Additionally, the total value locked in DeFi across related chains reached about $88 billion during the same period.
The Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer-2 network, launched its public mainnet on July 1, 2026. While originally intended for tokenized real-world assets, the network saw a surge in meme coin trading. The chain features 100-millisecond block processing and integrates services from Uniswap and Morpho.
The flagship meme token on the network, CASHCAT, reached a market capitalization of $220 million. At its peak, the Robinhood Chain recorded over $800 million in daily decentralized exchange volume, with total value locked growing into the hundreds of millions.
Alice Liu, research lead at CoinMarketCap, identified the activity on the Robinhood Chain as a key indicator of retail capital flow. She noted a correlation between the rise of Bitcoin and the resurgence of Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem during the current market cycle.