What has changed in 150 days of Binance Alpha?

Author: Kaori

Binance Alpha has formed a consensus on value among multiple circles, including project parties, the money-making circle, and retail investors. Project parties "supply" to Alpha, and the money-making party conducts KYC in batches to start a new round of money-making journey, while retail investors make profits by swinging between point limits, lucky tail numbers, and transaction wear and tear.

From the very beginning, Alpha was the best exit window for meme coins, to the earliest rounds of "violent money delivery" of Alpha2.0, to the introduction of a point system to screen users, and token issuers queuing up to launch Alpha, Binance has gradually regained the flow and pricing power of the on-chain market. Behind all this, Binance's ambition to reorganize the ecosystem through liquidity discourse power on the asset side after being left behind by OKX on the product side is expressed.

150 days have passed, and Binance Alpha has evolved from a wallet function to the most influential structural mechanism in the entire crypto market.

What has Alpha done in 5 months?

In 2024, the crypto market ushered in a bull market boom under the dual stimulation of the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF and the meme craze. However, under the appearance of liquidity recovery, a deeper problem is that the pricing mechanism between the primary market and the secondary market is gradually failing. VC project valuations are inflated, the project party's coin issuance cycle has been repeatedly extended, the user participation threshold has been continuously raised, and the final listing window often becomes the end point for the project party and early investors to collectively cash out, leaving retail investors with only a mess.

It was in this context that Binance launched Binance Alpha on December 17, 2024. At first, it was just an experimental function in Binance Web3 wallet for discovering high-quality projects, but it quickly evolved into a core tool for Binance to reconstruct pricing power in the on-chain market.

In a Space responding to community disputes, Binance co-founder He Yi admitted that Binance's listing of coins had the problem of "peaking at the opening", and frankly stated that the traditional listing mechanism is no longer sustainable under the current volume and regulatory constraints. Binance has also made mechanisms such as voting for listing and Dutch auctions to constrain the price performance of new coins after listing, but the effect has always been unsatisfactory.

So Alpha listing became a strategic alternative within the controllable range of Binance at that stage.

"Put these hot projects in Binance Alpha. Projects entering the observation area cannot guarantee listing on Binance. A project can only have income and profit when it is beneficial to society, and it may share the benefits with users." In Space, He Yi made such a promise.

On December 18, Binance Alpha announced the first batch of project lists. Until February 13, Binance Alpha had launched more than 80 tokens from ecosystems such as BSC, Solana, and Base, mainly meme and AI tokens. However, the market did not reduce the crusade against VC coins that fell at the opening as expected by Binance, and the launch of Alpha became the expected last stop for meme coins.

It was not until early February 2025 that the BSC ecosystem opened the channel between Alpha and traffic, starting with the test coin TST. It was also from that period that Alpha began to launch non-meme tokens, such as ONDO, MORPHO, AERO, etc.

In March, due to the closure of OKX DEX, Binance Wallet launched Binance Alpha2.0 at this point in time. By integrating Binance Alpha directly into CEX, users can directly use the funds in the exchange to trade Alpha tokens. As a result, Binance Wallet's trading volume and active users surpassed in one fell swoop, accounting for 80% of the trading volume of crypto wallets, becoming the steepest part of the wallet product growth curve.

At the same time, Binance's screening criteria for Alpha users are also constantly evolving. Since the initial "task-doing points system" is no longer sufficient to form an effective distinction, the platform soon introduced lucky tail numbers, points consumption and other systems to stimulate more frequent interactive behaviors. This mechanism takes into account the continuity and differentiation of user participation, and also provides project parties with a relatively accurate airdrop target group.

Project parties are no longer hesitant

Since the launch of the Alpha mechanism, the choice questions of project parties have changed.

Faced with the high uncertainty of the main site listing window, the cashing pressure of the on-chain community, and the inverted valuation of VC books, more and more teams have begun to realize that if they want to gain market attention and liquidity support, it may not be enough to just tell stories, maintain communities, or wait for the traditional listing process.

Instead of continuing to spend time on a route where the results cannot be measured, it is better to actively adapt to the new paradigm brought by Alpha. In the Alpha system, the flow of tokens, airdrop quotas, and trading activity can all be directly reflected as observable data on the platform. These data are likely to be the pre-tickets to Binance's official launch, and listing on Alpha can also gain market attention with almost no negative impact.

For this reason, project owners began to quickly adjust their strategies, no longer hesitating between multiple tugs of war over whether to launch, whether to list, and when to list, but tailored a set of "low-cost listing on Binance" execution models for the Alpha mechanism.

Backstabbing the community has become the norm

Binance Alpha currently has two options for listing, either a circulating project or an uncirculated new project, and there are different detailed indicators around these two main lines. This makes Alpha an entry point with a clear system and clear standards.

At the execution level, Binance Alpha's pace of leading to the main site spot is extremely restrained, and the number of spot places in the past five months is far lower than Binance's previous spot listing rhythm. This limited and scarce design has built a typical Web2-style growth flywheel - spending money to obtain traffic, setting thresholds to screen users, and continuously optimizing internal rules, ultimately achieving user retention and ecological structural strengthening.

To enter this system, project parties usually need to make significant adjustments, including but not limited to deploying or mapping tokens to BSC, redesigning incentive structures, and sacrificing part of the community's original airdrop quota. To some extent, Alpha is not just a wallet product, but more like a lightweight, centralized on-chain coin issuance protocol that meets the data selection and risk hedging needs of the Binance platform.

After Zora of the Base ecosystem announced its first launch on Binance Alpha, someone in the group said, "Don't have too high expectations. Maybe after working hard for several years, you might as well play Alpha with others." Unexpectedly, his words came true. Binance Alpha users who met the requirements received 4,276 ZORA tokens, worth nearly 90U; and many users in the community who have been paying attention to Zora and participating in ecological activities since its launch reported that they only received 30U airdrops, or even single-digit tokens.

Screenshot of airdrop income posted by Zora ecosystem users in the community; Source: @zkgoudan

This situation of bypassing the original community and directly serving Alpha users is not uncommon in Alpha's already launched projects.

Take PRAI as an example. According to feedback from users who participated in its KOL round, "VC and KOL rounds are losses." On the one hand, the project adopts a lock-up policy for community users to restrict the circulation of tokens; on the other hand, Alpha users do not need to bear the cost of early participation or fund lock-up, and can obtain token airdrops worth nearly $100 with wallet points and interaction records. This obvious incentive contrast has broken the original "ecosystem internal fairness" of the project.

Depositors who have participated in the Sui ecological lending protocol Haedal told BlockBeats that Haedal's airdrop quota spans a wide range, almost ignoring the participation costs of early depositors, leaving only significant returns for Alpha users.

Before MilkyWay, the Celestia liquidity pledge derivative protocol on Osmosis, went online on Alpha, community users not only endured the decline in TIA, but the project allocated very little to early users, who not only had to lock positions but also had to complete tasks to unlock. Those who only hold NFTs but are not bound to the points system will not receive airdrops, and the window period is also very short, and the income is far lower than that of Alpha users.

Although this practice of deviating from the original support group of the project and redirecting resources to Alpha users has sparked widespread discussion, it is a realistic choice for most project parties: given limited resources, prioritizing the allocation of resources to paths that can bring secondary liquidity and platform exposure is a strategy to maximize efficiency.

After Alpha is launched

The core indicator of Binance Alpha's listing is how many chips it can provide, which is consistent with the concept of "embracing the Binance ecosystem and BNB chain."

According to crypto KOL AB Kuai.Dong, Puffer launched Alpha seven months after the coin was issued. According to the on-chain data, the project team mapped about 3.16% of the tokens to the BNB chain, of which 1.24% were directly allocated to the Alpha user airdrop pool, and nearly 500,000 USDC liquidity was injected into PancakeSwap. According to comprehensive estimates, the total cost paid by Puffer for this Alpha airdrop is close to 3 million US dollars.

As AB said, "the cost is not small, but the benefits are also obvious." Through the Alpha function entrance, the Binance CEX trading channel was directly obtained. Before the futures or main site listing, the liquidity preheating and market awareness preparation have been completed in advance.

A similar path can also be seen in the star project Polyhedra in the ZK track. Its token ZKJ entered Alpha without being listed on the Binance main site, becoming the first top 100 market value token to be included in this mechanism. In order to support the price of the currency, the project party has successively launched a staking income of up to 150% and a points competition to attract users to increase trading behavior and accumulate wallet activity. Strategically speaking, perhaps the project party wants to use Alpha's internal indicators to accumulate influence and ultimately promote the realization of Binance's listing decision.

ZKJ has been at the top of the Alpha trading volume list recently; Source: Panda Jackson (@pandajackson42)

This closed loop of on-chain behavior - point rewards - platform inclusion has reconstructed the game structure between Binance and the project party: in the past, "market value + community" determined whether it could be listed, but now it is "on-chain data + Alpha performance" that dominates the pace of listing.

The strategy of new projects is more radical. Since Stakestone was launched on Binance Alpha in mid-April, it has adopted an extremely proactive market strategy. First, it distributed 5% of tokens through the wallet IDO, then covered Alpha users with 1.5% airdrops, and released nearly 4% incentives to old community users, with a cumulative distribution of more than 10% of the total.

At the same time, the project party directly invested part of the financing funds in the secondary market to guide the currency price to remain stable in the early stage of public circulation. This series of operations eventually exchanged for the launch channel of Binance main site. As an industry insider familiar with the process said: "After the change of Binance's listing standards, projects no longer need to tell stories, but need to show data and control."

Retail investor psychology

Compared with the project party's well-calculated and well-planned strategies, the role of retail investors appears complex and ambiguous.

In the traditional logic of new listings, retail investors can obtain primary arbitrage opportunities with their information acumen and capital agility. However, under the points system built by Alpha, the profit path of retail investors has been institutionalized and transparent, and has also become highly involuted. Alpha does not activate the imagination of currency price growth, but the on-chain conversion mechanism of "points - airdrops - springboard to listing".

For some users, this mechanism does reconstruct the concept of fairness. Small and medium-sized users who have remained in their wallets for a long time, if they can remain active, will still have the opportunity to obtain returns from Alpha that far exceed the cost even if the amount of funds is not large. Since Alpha started the points system, according to BlockBeats statistics, if ordinary users participate in every Alpha airdrop and wallet new listing activities, they will get nearly 1,700U of income.

However, the other side of high returns is a highly structured screening system. This point game, which seems to be open to everyone, actually sets implicit thresholds and places considerable demands on the user's behavior path, transaction frequency, and even the continuity of participation.

Binance itself does not directly issue airdrops, but provides infrastructure such as point distribution, data screening, and user classification. The airdrops are borne by the project party, but who they are issued to and based on what criteria are determined by the mechanism of Binance Alpha. The core of this system design is not "rewards" but "screening". Whoever can be identified as a "high-value user" can continue to receive airdrops. Doubts followed, with some users pointing out that there was a deviation between the transaction volume on Alpha and actual user demand, "no points and airdrops, no transactions", which led to inflated project data and superficial user retention, "What is the difference between this incentive method and the ghost chain and pseudo-game airdrops that no one uses after TGE?". According to statistics from crypto KOL Guhe, in the statistical sample, only 22% of users can get enough points to get airdrops through normal transactions every day, while the rest need to repeat transactions or give up participation because they can't keep up with the rhythm of points.

However, it is undeniable that in the current context of scarce overall market liquidity and lack of continuous attention mechanisms for projects, Alpha is still one of the few channels that can get returns by doing something. Under the premise of the coexistence of income and certainty, this mechanism is still very attractive. Under this system, the logic of retail investors' participation has shifted from value judgment to mechanism game. Their income no longer depends on their judgment of the future of the project, but on their understanding of the Alpha mechanism and their ability to execute it.

Who are the real beneficiaries of Alpha?

Although retail investors and project parties have their own games in the Alpha mechanism, returning to the overall framework, what Alpha really reshapes is actually the underlying relationship between the trading platform and the assets.

In terms of product experience and tool ecology, Binance does not have a significant advantage over platforms such as OKX, but the liquidity entry mechanism built by Alpha still allows it to maintain a strong voice in the asset launch phase.

Even if the project is not first launched on Binance, the traffic screening and points path provided by Alpha are enough to allow a large number of new coins to complete a round of market preheating and pricing anchoring before they are connected to the main site trading pairs. It changes the starting point of coin issuance and extends the influence boundary of Binance on the asset side.

The blockchain game NXPC, which launched Alpha yesterday, is a good example. After the on-chain liquidity pool was opened, the Alpha airdrop was distributed to the points users at the same time soon, while the Binance contract and spot were delayed by nearly half an hour and several hours respectively, and there was also a certain price difference on other trading platforms such as Bybit and Upbit. The trading windows under different rhythms determine the profit of funds at each stage, and also strengthen the leading role of Alpha in the start of liquidity.

In the past, the listing of a project on Binance meant that the first-level pricing had been completed and it had reached the terminal. Now Alpha is the starting point for the project to be listed and the source of pricing. It has moved the cold start field that originally belonged to other trading platforms such as OKX and Bybit back to the Binance system. Once Alpha's projects rise, there will be a reason to connect to Binance contracts and spot. Naturally, the projects are willing to "supply" shares according to the rules, take out token shares and capital injections in exchange for platform exposure and liquidity. This is the closed loop of traffic feeding back to the platform.

This also allows Binance to no longer bear the public opinion burden of "listing coins is the peak" in the past. CZ once expressed the hope to eliminate the premium effect brought by Binance listing coins and let the market return to fundamentals. Alpha is actually his way to fulfill this sentence. It no longer directly uses "Binance listing" as the authority, but establishes a new liquidity screening mechanism through Alpha to level the starting line between projects, and then decides who can continue to move forward based on the on-chain data.

At present, this path seems to be successful. Alpha is no longer just a function in the Binance wallet. Behind this mechanism is Binance's new understanding of its own role. Its success does not lie in whether the product experience is extreme, but in the fact that it has pulled Binance's primary asset organization capabilities from behind the scenes to the chain, openly, and quantifiably.

Compared with OKX's product polishing route in the wallet field, Binance chooses to exchange points for traffic and airdrops for attention. Winson, head of Binance's wallet business, has publicly stated that Binance Wallet will not copy any competing product model, but will choose differentiated development, "The market does not need two identical wallets." He believes that it is better to reconstruct the scene than to redo the product.

Faced with industry problems such as airdrop volume and distorted transaction data, Binance does not try to eliminate these behaviors, but instead builds a mechanism to allow the project to prove its attractiveness first, and then observe whether it can form a stable user base and real transaction depth. The boundary between volume and real behavior is deferred in Alpha's scoring system and is also digitized.

But from another perspective, many people still believe that Binance Alpha has only successfully attracted the money-grabbing party, but has not attracted real trading volume. Users still do not choose the Binance wallet as their first choice when choosing on-chain behaviors.

The past cycle was to some extent "to VC", relying on storytelling to raise money, and now it is "to liquidity", and Alpha is the anchor for Binance to regain control of liquidity. In an era where VC is no longer reliable, the community has been lost, and product competition has fallen into homogeneity, Binance Alpha may not be the optimal solution for innovation, but it is the most effective way to take on the bubble.