Written by: Luke, Mars Finance
What is Binance Alpha?
Binance, as one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world, has always been at the forefront of the market, continuously adjusting its strategies to adapt to the rapidly changing industry environment. Recently, Binance launched Binance Alpha, and this brand-new listing mechanism is undoubtedly a profound insight and response to the current state of the crypto market. Its main purpose is to filter and promote potential tokens that have not yet been widely circulated, providing a stage for these projects while also offering more investment opportunities for platform users.
Binance Alpha is essentially an innovative mechanism proposed by Binance to address doubts about token listings. Unlike traditional listing processes, the Alpha market allows users to participate in the 'voting' and trading of new tokens in a more open and speculative manner. This not only enhances the liquidity of the Binance platform itself but also attracts more investors to participate in the price discovery process of tokens through a 'crowdfunding' approach. Each period, Binance will launch several potential tokens for users to participate in trading, and the increase in trading volume is directly related to the price fluctuations of the tokens - the platform filters the most promising projects based on trading volume and pushes these projects into the mainstream market.
This mechanism has a high level of participation, just like a large racetrack, where users, like gamblers, place bets on Binance Alpha, speculating which coins would become future stars. This 'speculative and betting' operation immediately attracted a large number of active users to the platform, especially against the backdrop of a sluggish market, bringing a surge in trading volume in the short term.
Alpha? drama!
Today at noon, a Space named 'The Great Review Conference of the Binance Wallet Rebirth' was held on Binance Alpha. He introduced future innovation plans to everyone, and mentioned in the Space 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 clearly aimed at bringing more community interaction and transparency to the Binance wallet. However, the host immediately interjected, 'Actually, this group already exists.' Following that, Binance's official Twitter account posted a group link in the comments, seemingly this was the 'official platform' related to Binance Alpha.
At this moment, thousands of investors quickly flooded into the group chat. However, who would have thought that this simple link would turn into a 'Waterloo' in the following minutes? In this Telegram group, the official announcement revealed the first batch of projects launched on Binance Alpha, which are: $MONKY, $HAPPY, $RIF, $ZRC, $ELIZA.
Once the information was published, the market reacted quickly and violently: the token prices of these 5 projects soared, especially ELIZA, which skyrocketed several times in just a few minutes. This seemingly golden opportunity quickly attracted a large number of short-term speculators, with almost everyone feeling they had seized an excellent trading opportunity.
The holders of the mentioned projects cheered, saying, 'Great, it's Binance, we are saved,' but at that moment, Binance officials released a statement refuting, claiming that the Telegram group was not officially released. At this point, the once skyrocketing coin prices quickly suffered a heavy blow, and all project prices began to plummet, especially ELIZA, which sharply declined from the high point just a few minutes ago. The original 'lucky investors' began to experience losses, and market sentiment instantly shifted from excitement to panic. Investors' confidence rapidly collapsed, and Binance clearly became the fuse of this chaos.
At this point, the truth of the event surfaced. Binance officials stated that the incorrectly released Telegram group link was indeed officially released by the Binance wallet, but it was sent incorrectly. Subsequently, a new Telegram group link was provided, which quickly became a new 'rights protection front' fervently discussed by investors.
In this group, users expressed their dissatisfaction and anger towards the official operations, accusing the Binance wallet of being hasty and irresponsible. Some even described the situation as a 'shoddy production', mercilessly criticizing the capabilities of the Binance team.
A launch event that should have been a market highlight quickly turned into a public relations disaster concerning trust and transparency, with the Binance wallet and Binance Alpha facing severe scrutiny as a result.
There have been many victims of this blunder, but the most amusing is the one below:
This unfortunate person, after the news was released and false information was published, sold 1.76 million $arc (about 170,000 USD) to buy 1.42 million $ELIZA, with a cost of $0.0.1376.
Later, he realized that ai16zeliza was written in lowercase as $eliza, and sold all tokens at $0.09567, suffering a loss of 59,600 USD. After the official announcement of the blunder, $eliza also subsequently fell, and he again suffered a painful loss of 43,000 USD (cost price $0.01693, selling price $0.01157), with an overall loss of 52.5%.
This 'official misfire' farce, although concluded with a simple explanation 'the link was sent incorrectly', its impact is far from over. With the launch of Binance Alpha, the influence of 'the wolf is coming' seems to continue.
The first batch of projects on Binance Alpha has varied increases.
The first batch of projects on Binance Alpha are: KOMA Cheems APX ai16z AIXBT
KOMA
Koma Inu (KOMA) is a dog-themed MEME coin inspired by Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB), aiming to become the 'faithful guardian of BNB'. The KOMA project team is experienced, having successfully incubated multiple crypto projects with a market value exceeding 100 million USD, laying a solid foundation for KOMA's development. The project aims to consolidate community consensus and promote the continuous growth and evolution of the BNB ecosystem.
Cheems
Cheems is a meme project built around the classic internet meme 'Cheems'. This small and cute Shiba Inu is hailed as the 'King of Memes', carrying the humor and emotions of global internet culture. It has successfully penetrated from Web 2.0 into the crypto world, becoming a model of community-driven projects. The Cheems project not only attracts a large number of fans with its strong IP endorsement but also aims to create a truly community-centered and completely decentralized cultural symbol within the meme ecosystem.
The development of Cheems is full of drama and comeback colors. Since its first release on ZKSync in 2023, it has leaped to become one of the hottest meme projects in the ecosystem due to its soaring popularity. Despite experiencing contract FUD and near-zero setbacks along the way, Cheems did not sink but instead, with the resilience of its team and community support, changed contracts, completed migrations, and even reached an exclusive cooperation with ZKSync's mainstream Dapp Syncswap. In 2024, Cheems smoothly migrated to BNB Chain and quickly attracted more users, with community activity continuing to rise.
APX
APX (apollox.finance) is a multi-chain decentralized derivatives DEX. APX received investment from Binance Labs in 2022, supporting BNB Chain, Arbitrum, opBNB, zksync, Manta Network, and Base chains, and as of now, APX's TVL has exceeded 350 million USD.
The main advantages of APX in attracting users are:
Classic perpetual contracts can reach up to 250x, with a maximum leverage of up to 1001x in Degen mode;
Low slippage, as low as 0.01% slippage, with 0 slippage in V2 Degen mode;
High trading performance, used by over 30 partners including pancakeswap;
Position isolation, if one position is liquidated, 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 acquire market information and analyze community consensus on-chain and off-chain, and automatically conduct token trading. This new model aims to combine AI trading strategies and decentralized governance through tokenized operations, providing investors with transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities. Moreover, the project has been 'endorsed' by Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z, who shared the concept image of ai16z and the official Twitter link on his own account.
AIXBT
aixbt is a project created on the AI agent creation platform Virtuals Protocol, focusing on discussions and token analysis in the cryptocurrency space.
Ironically, the trends of Binance's own projects turned from bullish to bearish, with sharp fluctuations, while other AI Agent projects on different chains solidly took on this wave of good news, showing a steady upward trend.
Overview of the second batch of projects
At 8 PM, the second batch of projects for Binance Alpha was also announced, which are:
BNBChain: CKP;
Ethereum: GEAR, SD, SYRUP;
Solana: FARTCOIN
CKP
Cakepie is launched by Magpie, aimed specifically to support the long-term development of PancakeSwap. The main goal of Cakepie is to accumulate CAKE tokens and lock them as veCAKE to gain enhanced yield and governance power within the platform.
Cakepie provides CAKE holders with an opportunity to earn enhanced CAKE rewards as passive income. It also offers cost-effective voting rights to PancakeSwap voters and allows liquidity providers to enjoy higher annual percentage rates (APR%) without locking any CAKE tokens as veCAKE.
GEAR
Gearbox is a leverage protocol on Ethereum that facilitates leverage lending and composability by introducing CreditAccounts to enhance capital efficiency in the DeFi world. Users can obtain leveraged funds on this protocol and enter mainstream DeFi protocols. CreditAccounts are independent smart contracts with specific whitelisted operations and assets, ensuring a higher level of security for user funds and borrowed funds associated with each account.
SD
Stader Labs focuses on providing convenient staking solutions and maximizing user staking returns. The platform allows users to easily invest in multiple validators through its full suite of DeFi products, including a simplified one-click staking solution, leading the future direction of staking. Stader developed a liquid staking solution that allows users to concentrate assets without meeting all staking requirements while minting tokens that represent staked assets, the value of which increases as staking rewards grow. In July of this year, Coinbase announced that it would include Stader (SD) in its listing roadmap.
SYRUP
SYRUP is a lending platform launched by Maple Finance, with $SYRUP being the key to transforming the institutional lending market. Users can convert existing MPL tokens to 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 ecosystem's performance.
FARTCOIN
Fartcoin belongs to the AI meme concept. During a user interaction event held at Truth Terminal, the platform asked the public what themes they wanted to focus on, and its first response was to continue generating endless Fart Jokes in tweets. This absurd yet light-hearted humor quickly attracted a lot of attention, and even Tesla incorporated fart sound effects into its software, further promoting the spread of this cultural phenomenon. Against this backdrop, Fartcoin was born. It is not only known as 'the best $GOAT beta' but also an experiment on the future potential of AI technology. Fartcoin takes a cynical attitude, pushing Fart Jokes onto the blockchain, blending a relaxed, humorous, and ironic cultural stance, combining technology and entertainment, and becoming a unique representative in modern internet culture.
Future Outlook
The launch of Binance Alpha reflects Binance's concerns about its market position. On the one hand, OKX's web3 wallet shone brightly during the previous Bitcoin ecological boom, attracting a large number of users, while Binance's own wallet has been lukewarm; on the other hand, the recent transparent listing strategy and public discourse from HyperLiquid have also put considerable pressure on Binance. Therefore, saying that Binance Alpha is a response to a defeated army is not an exaggeration.
In recent years, Binance's listing strategy has revolved around two main lines: one is to choose high-risk but high-potential VC coins (tokens with venture capital background), and the other is to list low-market-cap tokens that are already traded on other platforms. However, the effectiveness of the first path has not been ideal, as many VC coins often show a downward trend after a high opening, and the market's speculative sentiment gradually cools. On the other hand, Binance's selection and launch process for these types of tokens still hasn't found a truly stable breakthrough.
Thus, Binance chose the second path: to list low-market-cap tokens that already have a certain circulation. Project parties and communities compete for the opportunity to list on the Binance Alpha market, indirectly driving the trading volume of these tokens on the Binance platform to surge. For example, the recently launched MEME on Solana and CAT on 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 trading.
However, this strategy also brings some significant challenges. On the one hand, Binance faces a game between VC coins and low-market-cap tokens. Although choosing low-market-cap tokens may attract more attention and participation, due to the relatively weak liquidity and absorption capacity of the market, these tokens often fall into a cycle of market fatigue once they encounter price drops after being hyped. On the other hand, the launch of high-market-cap tokens can temporarily attract a large number of investors, but since the overall market has not restored liquidity to its peak period, the price volatility of these tokens remains high, and they often exhibit a 'high open and low close' pattern, making it difficult for investors to gain sustained confidence.
The launch of Binance Alpha undoubtedly increased the platform's activity in the short term, but its sustainability remains questionable. With the market's fatigue, this high-frequency filtering and trading push of tokens may leave investors feeling exhausted. Additionally, this strategy from Binance may force project parties to pay more attention to 'volume manipulation' and community mobilization. To gain Binance's favor, project parties will have to adopt a series of aggressive measures to boost trading volume, including volume manipulation, community voting, hosting events, etc., which may also lead to a vicious cycle in the market ecology. Some low-quality projects or 'air coins' might ride the wave of hype under this mechanism, while truly promising projects could be drowned out in the noise.
In summary, 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 gambling with the market but also racing against time, trying to bring new vitality to the crypto industry. However, any game could bring unexpected outcomes.