State of the Trenches, 2026-W42: fees −21.0% week over week

Fees and creator earnings

The covered launchpad fee subtotal for 2026-W42 (Oct 12, 2026 to Oct 18, 2026, UTC) was $23.96M across 14 non-overlapping venues, −21.0% against 2026-W41 on the same venues. 5 venues that share a fee stream with another venue are reported individually and never added.^1,2

Creator earnings — fees paid to coin creators and, depending on the venue's own definition, holders, referrers or traders — were $12.25M across 15 venues that define them, −24.8% week over week.^3,4

By share of the subtotal, pump.fun gained the most (+3.6 points) and LaunchLab lost the most (-1.6 points). A share shift says where fees moved, not why.¹¹

Narratives

Trading in the coins of the tracked narratives totalled $397.88M for the week, counting a coin once when it belongs to more than one narrative (the per-narrative totals add up to $413.61M). This is the volume of identified coins across their indexed pools, not of the whole market.^12,13

Perpetual-futures coins carried the most volume among narratives collected during the week: $128.07M (partial: some member-days were not observed). It was first observed this week, so no week-over-week change is reported.^14,15

First observed this week: Perpetual-futures coins, Flying Tesla Roadster coins, Coins paired with tokenized stocks, Creator fees routed to people, AI credits for holders. A narrative's first week has no meaningful prior week, so no change is reported for it.^{16,17,18,19,20}

Collection paused during the week: AI credits for holders, Launchpad coins with on-chain rules, Tokenized stocks and RWA coins, Agency living tokens, Post-quantum coins. Their members stay members; their totals after the pause are partial, not zero.^{21,22,23,24,25}

• Perpetual-futures coins: $128.07M (partial), 6 members, first observed this week.²⁶
• Flying Tesla Roadster coins: $84.31M (partial), 9 members, first observed this week.²⁷
• Coins paired with tokenized stocks: $63.61M, 4 members, first observed this week.²⁸
• Super Intelligence coins: $55.72M (partial), 20 members, −53.2% on the comparable basket.²⁹
• Creator fees routed to people: $20.13M, 7 members, first observed this week.³⁰
• AI credits for holders: $16.22M (partial), 5 members, first observed this week.³¹
• AI influencer characters: $11.96M (partial), 5 members, change withheld.³²
• Launchpad coins with on-chain rules: $11.37M (partial), 5 members, change withheld.³³
• Tokenized stocks and RWA coins: $6.49M (partial), 12 members, change withheld.³⁴
• Agency living tokens: no member-day observed, 3 members, change withheld.³⁵
• Post-quantum coins: no member-day observed, 7 members, change withheld.³⁶

Breadth

1 of the 17 tracked coins with prices at both ends of the week rose. The five most traded coins accounted for 64.0% of deduplicated narrative volume.^37,38

What to watch

• Paper base:0x85f3…2b07 (Perpetual-futures coins): Last day's volume $99 is under $1,000; a second observation archives it.³⁹
• Paper robinhood:0x58ff…eb07 (Perpetual-futures coins): Last day's volume $103 is under $1,000; a second observation archives it.⁴⁰

What cuts against this

• The week-over-week change is withheld for 5 collected narrative(s) because too few members were fully observed in both weeks: AI influencer characters, Launchpad coins with on-chain rules, Tokenized stocks and RWA coins, Agency living tokens, Post-quantum coins.^{41,42,43,44,45}
• 9 narrative total(s) are partial: some member-days were not observed, so those totals are lower bounds.^{46,47,48,49,50}
• Only 1 of 17 priced coins rose over the week; gains were narrow.^37,51
• Five coins carried 64.0% of narrative volume; a few names drive the totals.³⁸

Edition status: complete (revision 2, method weekly-v1.2.1). fees: pass; runs: pass; financial-anchor: pass.