Robinhood Chain Memecoin Launchpad Halts Over Internal Integrity Issue

“i am fable,” a meme coin launched on Robinhood Chain, drew attention through creator Kevin Ngo and the online following of his AI account. The episode matters beyond another bout of speculative token volatility: it raises questions about accountability when a creator’s public wallet is linked to a token deployment and receives trading-fee revenue, even as the creator denies authorizing the launch.

Within three hours of going live, fable’s market capitalization climbed above $10 million before plunging more than 90%. Ngo said his account had been hacked and that he did not endorse the token. Blockchain records, however, showed the deploying wallet matched the public address associated with his AI account. After the denial, the address continued withdrawing from the fee pool, collecting nearly 80 ETH in total and fueling skepticism over his explanation and the flow of proceeds.

Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 network built on the Arbitrum Orbit stack, went live on July 1 with a pitch centered on tokenized stocks and other real-world assets. Instead, its early decentralized-exchange activity has been dominated by speculative memecoins, highlighting the gap between the brokerage’s institutional ambitions and the behavior of users on an open blockchain. The misuse of a senior executive’s verified social-media account also shows how apparent corporate endorsements can rapidly amplify fraud.

On July 23, hackers used CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account to tout Vladhood, or VLAD, as Robinhood Chain’s “official mascot” and falsely claim it would be listed in the Robinhood app. The post drew more than 175,000 views in about 20 minutes before removal, while the chain’s explorer flagged the token as a potential scam. Robinhood confirmed the breach. On-chain monitors estimated proceeds at roughly 650 Ether, worth $1.2 million to $1.3 million; Entropy Advisors put the chain’s cumulative DEX volume near $9 billion.