PONS Perp Jumps to $0.79: OI +46% to $113M, Hyperliquid 70%
PONS, the native token of the Pons launchpad on Robinhood Chain, is trading at $0.79 on perpetual venues, up about 19% in 24 hours and sitting at the top of its daily range. The move is not just a spot pop. Open interest across exchanges jumped 46% to $113 million, and Hyperliquid alone carries 70% of that book. Leveraged traders are piling in while the token trades near its highs.
Perp pushes to $0.79 as venues agree on the move
Per-venue prints line up closely. Bybit shows $0.7902, up 19.1% in its 24-hour window, Gate reads $0.7899 at +18.2%, Bitget $0.7910 at +18.3% and KuCoin $0.7910 at +19.5%. OKX, which lists the token with a different window, shows $0.7924 at +12.3%, while Hyperliquid sits at $0.7917, up 16.2%. PONS is not listed on Binance, so OKX is the reference among the two largest exchanges. The narrow spread between venues, roughly two-tenths of a cent, points to real spot buying rather than one thin order book being pushed around. Combined 24-hour volume across the fourteen venues with positive flow is above $400 million, with Bybit and Hyperliquid each printing over $125 million.
Open interest jumps to $113M, Hyperliquid carries 70%
Total open interest is $113.4 million, up 45.8% over 24 hours. Hyperliquid leads with $79 million, a 52.2% increase in a day, and its 4-hour flow is still climbing at +15.4%. Bybit holds $14.3 million, up 28.4%, Bitget added 78.3% to $4.8 million, and KuCoin grew 110% from a small base. Gate is the laggard among majors, up just 10.7% to $5.7 million. The pattern is consistent: new leveraged longs are opening on Hyperliquid first, and the CEX books are following. When open interest rises this fast while price holds near the high of the range, the trade is crowded in one direction, which raises the risk of a sharp unwind if momentum stalls.
Funding splits: longs pay on most venues, Gate turns negative
Funding rates tell a mixed story. Bybit charges 0.225% and MEXC 0.221%, meaning leveraged longs pay a real premium to stay on. Bitget sits at 0.086% and Hyperliquid at 0.033%. Gate is the outlier at negative 0.106%, where shorts are the ones paying. A negative rate on one major venue while others run positive is a warning sign. It usually means some traders see the rally as overextended and are willing to pay to hold the short side. For anyone in a PONS long, the divergence is the number to watch. If Gate funding flips positive, the squeeze broadens. If Bybit and MEXC funding compresses toward zero, the leveraged bid is fading.
What to watch next
The token is a launchpad play tied to launches on Robinhood Chain, and its positioning as a home for memestocks drew attention after the team put treasury liquidity behind tokenized real-world assets in late August. That makes it a story-driven small cap, so derivatives data matters more than usual. Three signals stand out. First, whether open interest keeps growing on any pullback, which would show dip-buyers using leverage. Second, whether Gate funding turns positive, which would confirm the squeeze is broadening instead of splitting. Third, the spread between Hyperliquid and CEX prices during fast moves, since HL carries most of the leverage and can lead the tape. A token at $0.79 with $113 million in open interest and $400 million in daily volume can move fast in both directions, so position sizing deserves more care than usual.
Data as of 16:12 Beijing time on Sep 5, covering OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Bitget, Gate, KuCoin, MEXC and other major exchanges.