After the run from $9M all the way to ~$700M, quite a few of you have been DM me asking whether I’m still bullish on $PONS here Personally, I’m still bullish and still holding a small bag Not because the chart has already gone crazy, but because a lot of what I was waiting for in the original thesis has actually been shipped by the team Back then, my biggest concern was value accrual Pons could generate a ton of volume and fees, but the real question was : What do $PONS holders actually get from the growth of the launchpad? That part is much clearer now Supply burned has increased from around 20–22% to 30.19%, meaning more than 301M $PONS has already been burned Protocol revenue is now around $25.8M, creator earnings are at $93.5M, more than 694K tokens have been created by roughly 255K unique devs, and the holder count is approaching 89K The most important part is still the loop : volume => fees => buyback => burn Under the current policy, most of the protocol fees are used to buy back and burn $PONS This is exactly the missing piece I wanted to see from the beginning That said, one thing should be clear: the 80% buyback is currently a team policy, not an immutable onchain mechanism, and the recent peak fee days shouldn’t be treated as a long-term base rate either So from here, I care much more about whether fees and burn can remain sustainable over time The product has also come a long way V2 is live, tokens can graduate into Uniswap V4, LP is permanently locked, and Pons has expanded into USDG, cbBTC + tokenized stocks like NVDA, AAPL, HOOD, SNAP... That’s real expansion, although the core activity on Pons is still mostly meme-driven for now So I’m not rushing to call it a fully developed “issuance layer” yet If Pons can maintain its volume and market share after the gas subsidy ends on Sep 29, that thesis becomes much more convincing to me Market share is still very strong right now Recent snapshots show Pons capturing around 59–73% of launchpad volume on Robinhood Chain And this is also why I don’t care too much about the headline number of 694K tokens created Minting a lot of tokens isn’t hard Where Pons is actually winning is conversion, volume and fees compared with most of its competitors The Uniswap situation is pretty interesting too On one side, directly competes with Pons at the launch layer. On the other, Uniswap Labs bought $PONS citing “long-term alignment” I still see that as a pretty strong signal, while at the same time it’s a reminder that competition on the chain hasn’t disappeared Of course, $PONS at ~$700M is completely different from $PONS at $9M Fundamentals have caught up with a big part of the move: the product shipped, revenue grew, burns are running, and dominance has been proven But the market has also priced in a lot of this machine running at full speed during a period of high activity and cheap gas So yes, I’m still bullish, but I’m not looking to chase aggressively here From here, I’ll mainly be watching market share, 7–30D fees/revenue, burn rate, and especially activity after Sep 29 If the subsidy ends and Pons can still maintain its dominance, keep volume strong and continue the fees => buyback => burn loop, then I think the thesis enters a much stronger phase If volume drops hard, burns slow down and competitors start taking meaningful market share, that’s when I’ll reconsider For now, I’m still holding a little $PONS and letting that part of the bag run After a move this big, I don’t think it’s an easy bet anymore, but so far I haven’t seen the thesis break. If anything, most of what I was waiting for back in July is gradually being validated 0x39dBED3a2bd333467115dE45665cC57F813C4571