Written by: Luke, Mars Finance
What is Binance Alpha?
As one of the world's largest cryptocurrency trading platforms, Binance has always been at the forefront of the market, constantly adjusting its strategies to adapt to the rapidly changing industry environment. Recently, Binance launched Binance Alpha, a new coin listing mechanism that is undoubtedly a profound insight and response to the current situation of the crypto market. Its main purpose is to provide a stage for these projects by screening and promoting potential tokens that have not yet been widely circulated, while also providing more investment opportunities for platform users.
Binance Alpha is essentially an innovative mechanism proposed by Binance to address the doubts about listing coins. Unlike its traditional listing process, the Alpha market allows users to participate in "voting" and trading new coins in a more open and speculative way. This is not only an improvement in the liquidity of the Binance platform itself, but also a "crowdfunding" approach to attract more investors to participate in the price discovery process of coins. In each issue, Binance will launch several potential coins for users to participate in trading, and the growth of trading volume is directly related to the price fluctuations of the coins - the platform screens the most promising projects through trading volume and promotes these projects into the mainstream market.
This mechanism has a high sense of participation, just like a large racetrack, users are like gamblers, betting on Binance Alpha, guessing which currencies will become future stars. This "speculation and betting" operation immediately attracted a large number of active users to the platform, especially in the context of the sluggish market, this method brought a surge in trading volume in the short term.
Alpha ？ drama！
At noon today, a Space titled "Binance Wallet Rebirth National Review Conference" was held at Binance Alpha. He Yi introduced future innovation plans to everyone. In the Space, she mentioned that a Telegram group related to Binance Alpha would be established to allow community members to report potential "Rug Pull" projects in a timely manner. This move is obviously intended to bring more community interaction and transparency to Binance Wallet, but the host immediately said: "In fact, this group already exists." Immediately afterwards, Binance's official Twitter account posted a group link in the comment section, which seemed to be the "official platform" related to Binance Alpha.
At this time, thousands of investors quickly poured into the group chat. However, who would have thought that this simple link would turn into a "Waterloo" in the next few minutes. In this Telegram group, the official announced the first batch of projects to be launched on binance Alpha, namely: $MONKY, $HAPPY, $RIF, $ZRC, $ELIZA.
Once the information was released, the market reacted quickly and violently: the token prices of these five projects skyrocketed, especially ELIZA, which soared several times in just a few minutes. This seemingly pie-in-the-sky opportunity quickly attracted a large number of short-term speculators, and almost everyone felt that they had caught a great trading opportunity.
Holders who were mentioned in the project cheered, "Great, it's Binance, we are saved", but at this time, Binance officially issued a rumor statement, saying that the Telegram group was not officially released. At this time, the once soaring coin prices soon suffered a heavy blow, and the prices of all projects began to fall rapidly, especially ELIZA, which fell sharply from the high point a few minutes ago. The original "lucky investors" began to suffer losses, and market sentiment instantly turned from excitement to panic. Investors' confidence collapsed rapidly, and Binance obviously became the fuse of this chaos.
At this time, the truth of the incident surfaced. Binance officials said: The Telegram group link that was mistakenly released was indeed released by Binance Wallet, but it was accidentally sent to the wrong person. A new Telegram group link followed, which was quickly hotly discussed by investors and formed a new "rights protection position."
In this group, users expressed their dissatisfaction and anger with the official operation, accusing Binance Wallet of being careless and irresponsible. Some even described the matter as a "grassroots team" and mercilessly criticized the ability of the Binance team.
A press conference that should have been a highlight of the market turned into a public relations disaster about trust and transparency in just a few hours, and Binance Wallet and Binance Alpha were also questioned.
There were many victims of this farce, but the funniest one was the following:
After the news and false information were released, this unlucky guy sold 1.76 million $arc (about 170,000 US dollars) and bought 1.42 million $ELIZA at a cost of $0.0.1376.
Later, he realized that ai16zeliza was lowercase $eliza, and sold all his tokens at $0.09567 and exchanged them for $eliza, losing $59,600. Finally, after the official announcement of the mistake, $eliza also fell, and he again reluctantly sold his tokens at a loss of $43,000 (cost price $0.01693, selling price $0.01157), with an overall loss of 52.5%.
Although this farce of "official mistake" ended with a simple explanation of "the link was sent to the wrong person", its impact is far from over. With the launch of Binance Alpha, the impact of "the wolf is coming" seems to continue.
Binance Alpha's first batch of projects saw mixed growth
The first batch of projects on Binance Alpha are: KOMA Cheems APX ai16z AIXBT
COMING
Koma Inu (KOMA) is a dog-themed MEME coin inspired by Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB), and is committed to becoming a "loyal guardian of BNB". The KOMA project team is experienced and has successfully incubated multiple crypto projects with a market value of more than $100 million, laying a solid foundation for the development of KOMA. The project promotes the continuous growth and evolution of the BNB ecosystem by building community consensus.
Cheems
Cheems is a meme project built around the classic Internet meme "Cheems". This small and cute Shiba Inu, known as the "king of memes", carries the humor and emotions of global Internet culture. Now it has successfully penetrated from Web2.0 to the crypto world and has become a model of community-driven projects. The Cheems project not only attracts a large number of fans with its strong IP endorsement, but also strives to create a truly community-centric and completely decentralized cultural symbol in the Meme ecosystem.
The development of Cheems is full of drama and counterattack. Since its first release on ZKSync in 2023, it has become one of the hottest meme projects in the ecosystem with its high popularity. Despite the setbacks such as contract FUD and near zero, Cheems did not sink. Instead, it relied on the team's resilience and community support to replace contracts, complete migration, and even reached an exclusive cooperation with ZKSync's mainstream Dapp Syncswap. In 2024, Cheems successfully migrated to BNB Chain and quickly attracted more users, and the community activity continued to rise.
APX
APX (apollox.finance) is a decentralized derivatives DEX that supports multiple chains. APX received investment from Binance Labs in 2022 and supports BNB Chain, Arbitrum, opBNB, zksync, Manta Network, and Base Chain. As of now, APX's TVL has reached more than US$350 million.
The main advantages of APX that attract users are:
The classic perpetual contract can reach 250 times leverage, and the Degen mode can provide up to 1001 times leverage;
Low slippage, as low as 0.01% slippage, and 0 slippage in V2 Degen mode;
High transaction performance, used by more than 30 partners including pancakeswap;
Position isolation, if one position is closed, it will not affect other positions.
ai16z
ai16z is a decentralized AI trading fund based on the Solana blockchain. As an "AI investment DAO", the core of ai16z is to use AI agents to obtain market information, analyze community consensus, and automatically trade tokens on and off the chain. This new model aims to combine AI trading strategies and decentralized governance through tokenized operations to provide investors with more transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities. In addition, the project has been "supported" by Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z. Marc posted a message on his official Twitter account, retweeting the concept image of ai16z and the official Twitter link.
AIXBT
aixbt is a project created on Virtuals Protocol, an AI agent creation platform, focusing on cryptocurrency native agents for discussion and token analysis.
Ironically, the trend of Binance's own projects has been turning from positive to negative, with ups and downs, while the AI Agent projects on other chains have firmly taken advantage of this wave of positive news and are moving steadily upward.
A quick look at the second batch of projects
At 8 pm, the second batch of Binance Alpha projects were also announced, namely:
BNBChain: CKP；
Ethereum: GEAR, SD, SYRUP;
Solana: FARTCOIN
CKP
Cakepie was launched by Magpie to specifically support the long-term development of PancakeSwap. The main goal of Cakepie is to accumulate CAKE tokens and lock them into veCAKE to gain enhanced returns and governance power within the platform.
Cakepie provides CAKE holders with an opportunity to earn enhanced CAKE rewards as passive income. It also provides cost-effective voting power to PancakeSwap voters and allows liquidity providers to enjoy higher annualized interest rate percentages (APR%) without locking any CAKE tokens into veCAKE.
GEAR
Gearbox is a leveraged protocol on Ethereum that enables leveraged lending and composability by introducing CreditAccounts to promote capital efficiency in the DeFi world. Users can obtain leveraged lending funds on the protocol and enter mainstream DeFi protocols. Credit accounts are independent smart contracts with specific whitelisted operations and assets, ensuring a higher degree of security for user funds and borrowed funds for each account.
SD
Stader Labs is focused on providing convenient staking solutions and maximizing users' staking returns. The platform leads the future direction of staking through its full suite of DeFi products, including a simplified one-click staking solution that allows users to easily invest in multiple validators. Stader has developed a liquid staking solution that allows users to pool assets without meeting full staking requirements, while minting tokens representing staked assets, which grow in value as staking rewards increase. In July this year, Coinbase announced that it would include Stader (SD) on its coin listing roadmap.
SYRUP
SYRUP is a lending platform launched by Maple Finance. $SYRUP is the key to Maple Finance's transformation of the institutional lending market. Users can convert existing MPL tokens into staked SYRUP at a ratio of 1 MPL: 100 SYRUP, thereby immediately participating in the governance and growth of Maple Finance. Staking SYRUP will provide participants with reward opportunities related to the performance of the ecosystem.
FARTCOIN
Fartcoin belongs to the AI meme concept. In a user interaction event held by Truth Terminal, the platform asked the public about the topics they wanted to follow, and its first response was to continue to generate endless Fart Jokes in tweets. This absurd and light-hearted humor quickly attracted a lot of attention, and even Tesla added fart sound effects to its software, further promoting the spread of this cultural phenomenon. In such a context, Fartcoin came into being. It is not only called "the best $GOAT beta", but also an experiment in the future potential of AI technology. Fartcoin uses a cynical attitude to push Fart Jokes to the blockchain, with a relaxed, humorous and ironic cultural attitude, combining technology with entertainment, and becoming a unique representative in modern network culture.
Future Outlook
The launch of Binance Alpha reflects Binance’s concerns about its market position. On the one hand, OKX’s web3 wallet shined in the previous Bitcoin ecosystem boom and attracted a large number of users, but Binance’s own wallet has always received mediocre response; on the other hand, HyperLiquid’s recent transparent listing strategy and public opinion discussions have also put Binance under considerable pressure, so it is not an exaggeration to say that Binance Alpha was launched at a time of defeat.
In the past few years, Binance's coin listing strategy has been centered around two main lines: one is to select VC coins (venture capital-backed tokens) with higher risks but huge potential, and the other is to list low-market-cap tokens that are already traded on other platforms. However, the effect of the first path is not ideal. Many VC coins tend to go down after opening high, and the market speculation sentiment gradually cools down. On the other hand, Binance still has not found a truly stable breakthrough in the process of screening and launching such coins.
Therefore, Binance chose the second path: listing low-market-cap tokens that already have a certain amount of circulation in the market. By competing for the opportunity to list tokens in the Binance Alpha market, the project owners and the community indirectly promoted a surge in the trading volume of these tokens on the Binance platform. For example, MEME, which was recently launched on the Solana chain, and CAT, which was launched on the BNB chain, are typical representatives of this strategy. By introducing these tokens, Binance hopes to create more trading pairs and attract more users to participate in transactions.
However, this strategy also brings some considerable challenges. On the one hand, Binance faces a game between the two routes of VC coins and low-market-cap tokens. Although the choice of low-market-cap tokens may attract more attention and participation, due to the relatively weak liquidity and carrying capacity of the market, these tokens will often fall into a weak market cycle once the price falls after the hype. Although the release of high-market-cap tokens was able to attract a large number of investors at one time, the price volatility of these tokens is still very large because the entire market has not returned to the liquidity of the peak period, and the situation of "opening high and closing low" often occurs, making it difficult for investors to gain sustained confidence.
The launch of Binance Alpha has undoubtedly increased the activity of the platform in the short term, but its sustainability is still questionable. With the weakening market, this high-frequency token screening and transaction push may make investors tired. In addition, Binance's strategy will also force project parties to pay more attention to "brushing" and community mobilization. In order to gain the favor of Binance, project parties will have to take a series of radical measures to increase trading volume, including brushing, community voting, and holding events, which may also lead to a vicious cycle in the market ecology. Some low-quality projects or "air coins" may take advantage of this mechanism to hype for a while, while truly potential projects are drowned in the hustle and bustle.
In short, Binance Alpha is a bold attempt, but whether its effect is "leading the trend" or "a flash in the pan" still needs time to verify. In this game, Binance is not only betting against the market, but also racing against time, trying to bring new vitality to the crypto industry. However, any game may have an unexpected ending.
