Author: Luke, Mars Finance
What is Binance Alpha?
As one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world, Binance 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, a brand new listing mechanism that undoubtedly reflects a profound insight and response to the current situation 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 listing doubts. Unlike its traditional listing process, the Alpha market allows users to participate in '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 into the price discovery process of tokens through a 'crowdfunding' approach. Each period, Binance will introduce several potential tokens for users to trade, and the growth in trading volume is directly related to the price fluctuations of the tokens — the platform filters the most promising projects based on trading volume, pushing these projects into the mainstream market.
This mechanism has a very high sense of participation, just like a large horse racing track, where users are like bettors, placing bets on Binance Alpha, guessing which tokens will become the future stars. This 'speculation and betting' operation immediately attracted a large number of active users to the platform, especially against the backdrop of a sluggish market, this method brought about a surge in trading volume in the short term.
Alpha? Drama!
Today at noon, Binance Alpha hosted a Space event called 'Rebirth of Binance Wallet - National Review Conference'. He introduced the future innovation plan to everyone, and mentioned in the Space that a Telegram group related to Binance Alpha would be established, allowing community members to report potential 'Rug Pull' projects in a timely manner. This action is clearly aimed at bringing more community interaction and transparency to Binance Wallet; however, the host immediately replied, 'Actually, this group already exists.' Soon after, Binance's official Twitter posted a group link in the comments section, seemingly presenting it as the 'official platform' related to Binance Alpha.
At this moment, thousands of investors quickly flocked into the group chat, yet who would have thought that this simple link would turn into a 'Waterloo' in the following minutes. Within this Telegram group, the official first batch of projects launched on Binance Alpha was announced, namely: $MONKY, $HAPPY, $RIF, $ZRC, $ELIZA.
Once the information was released, the market reacted quickly and violently: the token prices of these five projects soared, especially ELIZA, which skyrocketed several times within just a few minutes. This seemingly miraculous opportunity swiftly 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, 'Great, it's Binance, we are saved,' but just then, Binance officially released a clarification statement stating that the Telegram group was not officially released. At this moment, the previously skyrocketing token prices quickly faced a heavy blow, and the prices of all projects began to plummet rapidly, especially ELIZA, which rapidly declined from its peak just a few minutes ago. The original 'lucky investors' began to incur losses, and market sentiment instantly shifted from exuberance to panic. Investors' confidence quickly collapsed, and Binance clearly became the fuse of this chaos.
At this moment, the truth of the event surfaced. Binance officials stated that the mistakenly published Telegram group link was indeed released by the official Binance Wallet but was accidentally sent incorrectly. Subsequently, a new Telegram group link emerged, which quickly became a heated topic of discussion among investors and formed a new 'rights protection front'.
In this group, users expressed dissatisfaction and anger towards the official operations, accusing Binance Wallet of being hasty and irresponsible. Some even described this incident as a 'makeshift production', harshly criticizing the capabilities of the Binance team.
A release conference that should have been a highlight of the market quickly turned into a public relations disaster about trust and transparency within a few hours, and Binance Wallet and Binance Alpha were thus severely questioned.
There are quite a few victims of this blunder, but the funniest one is the person below:
This unfortunate soul, after the news was released, sold 1.76 million $arc (about 170,000 USD) to buy 1.42 million $ELIZA, at a cost of $0.1376.
Later, he realized that ai16z eliza was the lowercase $eliza, and he sold all his tokens for $0.09567 to buy $eliza, incurring a loss of 59,600 USD. Finally, after the official announcement of the mishap, $eliza also subsequently dropped, and he again painfully sold at a loss of 43,000 USD (cost price $0.01693, selling price $0.01157), with an overall loss of 52.5%.
This 'official misfire' farce, though 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 Binance Alpha projects experienced varying degrees of price fluctuations.
The first batch of Binance Alpha projects includes: 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 be the 'loyal guardian of BNB'. The KOMA project team is experienced, having successfully incubated multiple crypto projects with a market cap of over 100 million USD, laying a solid foundation for KOMA's development. The project promotes the continuous growth and evolution of the BNB ecosystem by consolidating community consensus.
Cheems
Cheems is a meme project built around the classic internet meme 'Cheems'. This small and adorable Shiba Inu is hailed as the 'King of Memes', embodying the humor and emotions of global internet culture. It has successfully permeated from Web 2.0 into the crypto world, becoming a model for community-driven projects. The Cheems project not only attracts a large fan base with its powerful IP endorsement but also aims to create a truly community-centric, fully decentralized cultural symbol within the meme ecosystem.
The development history of Cheems is full of drama and reversal. Since its first issuance on ZKSync in 2023, it has jumped to become one of the most popular meme projects in the ecosystem due to its soaring popularity. Despite facing setbacks such as contract FUD and near-zero experiences along the way, Cheems did not sink but instead leveraged the team's resilience and community support to change contracts, complete migration, and even reach exclusive collaboration with ZKSync's mainstream DApp Syncswap. In 2024, Cheems successfully migrated to BNB Chain and quickly attracted more users, with community activity continuously rising.
APX
APX (apollox.finance) is a multi-chain decentralized derivatives DEX. APX received investment from Binance Labs in 2022 and supports chains such as BNB Chain, Arbitrum, op BNB, zksync, Manta Network, and Base Chain. As of now, APX's TVL has exceeded 350 million USD.
The main advantages of APX in attracting users are:
Classic perpetual contracts can achieve up to 250 times leverage, and in Degen mode, it can offer up to 1001 times leverage;
Low slippage, with slippage as low as 0.01%, and 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 obtain market information, analyze community consensus both on-chain and off-chain, and automatically conduct token trading. This new model aims to combine AI trading strategies with decentralized governance through tokenization, providing investors with more transparent and trustworthy investment opportunities. Moreover, the project received endorsement from a16z founder Marc Andreessen, who shared the concept image and the official Twitter link on his official Twitter account.
AIXBT
aixbt is a project created on the AI agent creation platform Virtuals Protocol, focusing on discussions and token analysis in cryptocurrency.
Ironically, the trend of Binance's own projects is all about turning positive into negative, with sharp fluctuations, while other AI Agent projects on other chains have solidly received this wave of good news and are trending steadily upwards.
Overview of the second batch of projects
At 8 PM, the second batch of projects for Binance Alpha was also announced, namely:
BNBChain: CKP;
Ethereum: GEAR, SD, SYRUP;
Solana: FARTCOIN
CKP
Cakepie is launched by Magpie, aimed specifically at supporting the long-term development of PancakeSwap. The main goal of Cakepie is to accumulate CAKE tokens and lock them as ve CAKE to obtain 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 offers cost-effective voting power for PancakeSwap voters and allows liquidity providers to enjoy higher annual percentage rates (APR%) without needing to lock any CAKE tokens as ve CAKE.
GEAR
Gearbox is a leverage protocol on Ethereum that achieves leveraged lending and composability by introducing Credit Accounts to promote capital efficiency in the DeFi world. Users can access leveraged lending funds on this 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 in 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 has developed a liquid staking solution that allows users to pool their assets without meeting all staking requirements while minting tokens representing the staked assets, whose value increases with staking rewards. 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. $SYRUP is the key to transforming the institutional lending market by Maple Finance. Users can convert existing MPL tokens into staked SYRUP at a ratio of 1 MPL : 100 SYRUP, thus 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
Fart coin belongs to the AI meme concept. During a user interaction event held by Truth Terminal, the platform asked the public about the 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 added fart sound effects to its software, further promoting the spread of this cultural phenomenon. In this context, Fart coin was born. It is not only referred to as 'the best $GOAT beta' but also an experiment on the future potential of AI technology. Fart coin pushes Fart Jokes onto the blockchain with a cynical attitude, combining technology and entertainment with a light, humorous, and ironic cultural stance, becoming a unique representation of modern internet culture.
Future Outlook
The launch of Binance Alpha reflects Binance's concerns about its market position. On one hand, OKX's web3 wallet shone brightly during the previous Bitcoin ecosystem boom, attracting a large number of users, while Binance's own wallet has remained relatively quiet; on the other hand, the recent transparent listing strategies and discussions of 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 the past few years, Binance's listing strategy has revolved around two main lines: one is to select high-risk but potentially high-reward VC coins (tokens with venture capital backgrounds), while 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 tend to show a downward trend after a high opening, and market speculation has gradually cooled down. On the other hand, Binance still has not found a truly stable breakthrough in the selection and launch process of such tokens.
Thus, Binance chose the second path: listing low-market-cap tokens that already had a certain circulation on the market. Project parties and communities competed for listing opportunities in the Binance Alpha market, indirectly driving up the trading volume of these tokens on the Binance platform. For example, the recent MEME launched on the Solana chain and CAT launched on the BNB chain are typical representatives of this strategy. Through the introduction of these tokens, Binance hopes to create more trading pairs and attract more users to participate in trading.
However, this strategy also brought some significant challenges. On one hand, Binance faced a game between VC coins and low-market-cap tokens. While the selection of low-market-cap tokens might 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 weakness once they encounter price declines after being overly hyped. On the other hand, the introduction of high-market-cap tokens, while able to attract a large number of investors at one point, still faced significant price volatility due to the market not having recovered to the liquidity levels of its peak period, often resulting in 'high openings and low closings', 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 weakening, this high-frequency token selection and trading push may lead to investor fatigue. Additionally, this strategy by Binance may force project parties to pay more attention to 'boosting trading volume' and community mobilization. To gain Binance's favor, project parties will have to adopt a series of aggressive measures to increase trading volume, including boosting trading volume, community voting, holding events, etc., which could lead to a vicious cycle in the market ecosystem. Some low-quality projects or 'air coins' may ride the wave of hype for a moment, while truly promising projects could be drowned out in the noise.
In summary, Binance Alpha is a bold attempt, but whether its effect is to 'lead the trend' or merely a 'flash in the pan' remains to be seen over time. 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 lead to unexpected outcomes.