Ethereum rose roughly 66% during the third quarter of 2026, supported by more than $10 billion in ETF inflows, corporate ETH purchases exceeding $15 billion and renewed activity in DeFi (decentralized financial applications and markets). Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum Layer-2 (scaling network processing transactions off-chain) that launched its public mainnet on July 1, 2026, became a major focus of retail activity. Although the network was built to connect traditional finance with tokenized real-world assets, meme coin trading dominated its early transactions. CASHCAT reached a market capitalization of $150 million to $200 million shortly after launch and later rose to around $220 million. The chain’s daily decentralized exchange volume peaked above $800 million, while total value locked climbed into the hundreds of millions. CoinMarketCap research lead Alice Liu said in a September 4, 2026, interview with Cointelegraph that Bitcoin’s rise and Ethereum’s DeFi resurgence were connected, with Robinhood Chain’s meme-driven attention indicating where retail capital was flowing. DeFi total value locked across related chains reached approximately $88 billion during the quarter.