The series wrap-up: launchpads grow as arenas (more traders) or foundations (used by others). Four growth paths on Robinhood Chain — Pons, pools.trade, PAIR, par — and 12 public-data metrics for tracking any launchpad, with par's October 12 readings as a baseline.

Robinhood Chain at 100 days: daily transactions fell from ~11.06M in early August to 6.21M in early October, while stablecoins grew ~4.6x and TVL ranks ninth. Split early data into a speculation curve and an infrastructure curve, plus four rules for reading a new chain.

Messari sold for ~$10M in June 2026 — down 97% from a $300M valuation — while free, ad-less DefiLlama became the industry's default data standard. The lesson for any "sell the shovels" business: when the raw material is free, charging for it has its ceiling built in from day one.