Original author: Kaori, BlockBeats
Reprinted: Oliver, Mars Finance
Binance Alpha has formed a value consensus among project parties, profit-seekers, and retail investors across multiple layers; project parties supply to Alpha, profit-seekers batch KYC to start a new round of profit-seeking, while retail investors navigate the profit maze between point restrictions, lucky last digits, and trading wear.
From the very start, launching on Alpha has been the best exit window for meme coins, through the earliest rounds of 'aggressive airdrops' in Alpha 2.0, to the introduction of a point-based user screening system and the queueing of token issuers for Alpha listings. Binance has progressively regained the flow and pricing power in the on-chain market. Behind all this is Binance's ambition to reorganize the ecosystem through liquidity authority after being outpaced by OKX on the product side.
After 150 days, Binance Alpha has evolved from a wallet function into the most authoritative structural mechanism in the entire crypto market.
What has Alpha done in 5 months?
In 2024, the crypto market experienced a bull market boom under the dual stimulus of Bitcoin spot ETF approval and meme frenzy. However, beneath the surface of recovering liquidity lies a deeper issue: the pricing mechanism between the primary and secondary markets is gradually failing. VC project valuations are excessively high, the token issuance cycles are being repeatedly extended, and user participation thresholds are continuously rising, while the ultimate listing window often becomes the endpoint for project teams and early investors to cash out, leaving retail investors with nothing but a mess.
It is against this backdrop that Binance launched Binance Alpha on December 17, 2024. Initially, it was just an experimental function in the Binance Web3 wallet for discovering quality projects, but it quickly evolved into Binance's core tool for reconstructing pricing power in the on-chain market.
Binance co-founder He Yi acknowledged in a Space responding to community disputes that there is a problem of 'peak at opening' in Binance's listing process, admitting that traditional listing mechanisms have become unsustainable under current scale and regulatory constraints. Binance has also implemented mechanisms such as voting for listings and Dutch auctions to regulate the price performance of new tokens after they go live, but the results have been consistently disappointing.
Therefore, listing on Alpha has become a strategic alternative within Binance's controllable range during that phase.
‘Putting these hot projects on the market into Binance Alpha, projects entering the observation zone cannot guarantee a listing on Binance; a project can only have income and profit when it is beneficial to society, and only then may it share profits with users.’ He Yi made such a commitment in the Space.
On December 18, Binance Alpha announced the first batch of project lists; by February 13, Binance Alpha had launched over 80 tokens across ecosystems like BSC, Solana, and Base, mainly focusing on meme and AI tokens. However, the market did not respond as Binance had expected, reducing the onslaught against VC coins that drop immediately after listing; instead, launching on Alpha became the final stop for meme coin expectations.
Not until early February 2025 did the BSC ecosystem, starting from the test token TST, open the channel between Alpha and traffic, and from that period onwards, Alpha began to list non-meme tokens such as ONDO, MORPHO, AERO, etc.
In March, due to the shutdown of OKX DEX, Binance Wallet launched Binance Alpha 2.0 at this time, allowing users to directly use funds within the wallet for Alpha token trading by integrating Binance Alpha into CEX. As a result, Binance Wallet's trading volume and active users surged, capturing 80% of the crypto wallet trading volume, becoming the steepest segment in the wallet product growth curve.
At the same time, Binance's selection criteria for Alpha users are constantly evolving; the initial 'task point system' is no longer sufficient to form effective differentiation. The platform quickly introduced lucky last digits, point consumption, and other systems to stimulate more frequent interaction. This mechanism balances the continuity and differentiation of user participation, while also providing project parties with a relatively precise target group for airdrops.
The project team no longer hesitates.
From the very beginning of the Alpha mechanism's launch, the choices for project parties have already changed.
Faced with the high uncertainty of the main site listing window, the pressure for on-chain community realization, and the inverted valuation on the VC balance sheets, more and more teams are beginning to realize: to gain market attention and liquidity support, relying solely on storytelling, maintaining communities, or waiting for traditional listing processes may not be enough.
Instead of continuing to exhaust resources on paths with unpredictable outcomes, it is better to proactively 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. And this data may very well be the pre-entry ticket to Binance's official listing, and launching on Alpha can also gain market attention with almost no negative impact.
For this reason, project parties are rapidly adjusting strategies, no longer hesitating over whether to release tokens, when to launch, or how to navigate multiple pulls, but rather targeting the Alpha mechanism with a tailored execution model for 'low-cost listings on Binance.'
Betraying the community has become the norm.
Currently, Binance Alpha offers two listing options: either already circulating projects or new projects that are not yet circulating, with different detailed metrics to measure around these two main lines. This makes Alpha a clearly defined entry point with established standards.
In terms of execution, the rhythm from Binance Alpha to the main site spot trading is extremely restrained, with the spot quotas over the past five months far below Binance's previous pace of spot listings. This limited scarcity design constructs a typical Web2-style growth flywheel—spending money to gain traffic, setting thresholds to screen users, continuously optimizing competitive rules, ultimately achieving user retention and structural reinforcement of the ecosystem.
To enter this system, project parties typically need to make significant adjustments, including but not limited to deploying or mapping tokens to BSC, redesigning incentive structures, and sacrificing some originally planned airdrop quotas. To some extent, Alpha is not just a wallet product but resembles a lightweight, centralized on-chain token issuance protocol, complementing Binance's data selection and risk hedging needs.
After the Zora of the Base ecosystem announced its debut on Binance Alpha, someone in the profit-seeking group said, 'Don’t expect too much; it might take years of hard work to get what others get from Alpha in a short time.' Unexpectedly, it became prophetic, as eligible Binance Alpha users received 4276 ZORA tokens, worth nearly 90U; meanwhile, many users who had followed and participated in community activities since Zora's launch reported only receiving 30U in airdrops, and some received only single-digit tokens.
Screenshots of airdrop earnings shared by Zora ecosystem users in the community; Image source: @zkgoudan
This situation of bypassing the original community to directly serve Alpha users is not uncommon among projects that have already launched Alpha.
Taking PRAI as an example, feedback from users who participated in its KOL round indicates that 'receiving from VC and KOL rounds is a loss'; on one hand, the project implements a lock-up policy for community users, restricting token circulation; on the other hand, Alpha users do not need to bear the costs of early participation or locked funds, and can obtain token airdrops worth nearly a hundred dollars solely based on wallet points and interaction records. This stark contrast in incentives disrupts the original 'internal fairness' of the ecosystem.
Users who participated in the Sui ecosystem lending protocol Haedal told BlockBeats that Haedal's airdrop quotas vary greatly, almost ignoring the participation costs of early depositors, leaving significant returns only for Alpha users.
Before MilkyWay, the liquidity staking derivative protocol on Celestia launched on Osmosis Alpha, community users not only bore the decline of TIA but also received very limited shares allocated to early users, needing to lock up funds and complete tasks for unlocking. Those merely holding NFTs but without binding the points system received no airdrops, and the window period was also very short, with returns far below those of Alpha users.
This practice of diverging from the original supportive community and reallocating resources to Alpha users, though it has sparked widespread discussion, is a realistic choice for most project parties: under the premise of limited resources, prioritizing investment in paths that can bring secondary liquidity and platform exposure is a strategy for maximizing efficiency.
After launching Alpha
The core indicator for listing on Binance Alpha is how many chips it can provide, which aligns with the concept of 'embracing the Binance ecosystem and BNB chain.'
According to statistics from crypto KOL AB Kuai.Dong, Puffer launched Alpha seven months after its token issuance; based on on-chain data, the project party mapped approximately 3.16% of its tokens to the BNB chain, with 1.24% directly allocated to the Alpha user airdrop pool, while also injecting nearly 500,000 USDC of liquidity into PancakeSwap. A comprehensive estimate indicates that Puffer's total cost for this Alpha airdrop is close to 3 million dollars.
As AB said, 'the cost is not small, but the benefits are also evident.' By directly accessing the Binance CEX trading channel through the Alpha function, liquidity preheating and market recognition were completed in advance before obtaining futures or main site listings.
Similar paths can be seen in the star project of the ZK track, Polyhedra, whose token ZKJ entered Alpha without being listed on Binance's main site, becoming the first project among the top 100 market cap tokens to be included in this mechanism. To support the token price, the project party successively launched staking rewards of up to 150% and point competitions, attracting users to engage in trading activities and accumulate wallet activity. Strategically, the project party may aim to leverage internal Alpha indicators to build influence and ultimately drive Binance's listing decision.
Recently, ZKJ has consistently ranked first in Alpha trading volume; Image source: Panda Jackson (@pandajackson42)
This closed loop of on-chain behavior-point rewards-platform inclusion has reconstructed the game structure between Binance and project parties: in the past, 'market cap + community' determined whether a project could go live, whereas now it is 'on-chain data + Alpha performance' that dominates the rhythm of listings.
The strategy for new projects is much more aggressive. Stakestone, which went live on Binance Alpha in mid-April, adopted an extremely proactive market strategy, first distributing 5% of tokens through wallet IDO, then covering Alpha users with a 1.5% airdrop, and additionally releasing nearly 4% of incentives to long-time community users, cumulatively distributing more than 10% of the total amount.
At the same time, project parties have injected part of their financing directly into the secondary market, guiding the token price to maintain stability during the initial public circulation. This series of operations ultimately resulted in the launch channel for Binance's main site. As industry insiders familiar with the process say: 'After the change in Binance's listing standards, projects no longer need to tell stories but instead need to demonstrate data and control.'
Retail psychology
Compared with the meticulously calculated and well-laid strategies of project parties, the role of retail investors appears complex and ambiguous.
In traditional new token logic, retail investors can obtain primary arbitrage opportunities based on their information sensitivity and capital agility. But under the point system constructed by Alpha, the profit path for retail investors has been institutionalized and made transparent, and has also become highly competitive. What Alpha activates is not the imagination of rising coin prices, but a set of on-chain conversion mechanisms: 'points-airdrop-listing jumpboard.'
For some users, this mechanism does indeed reconstruct the concept of fairness. Small and medium-sized users who remain active in the wallet, even with limited funds, still have the opportunity to earn returns far exceeding their costs from Alpha. Since the introduction of the point system in Alpha, statistics from BlockBeats indicate that if ordinary users participate in every Alpha airdrop and wallet new token activity, they could earn nearly 1700U.
However, the other side of high returns is a highly structured screening system. This seemingly accessible points game actually sets implicit thresholds, placing significant requirements on users' behavioral paths, trading frequency, and even participation continuity.
Binance does not directly distribute airdrops but provides basic infrastructure such as point distribution, data screening, and user classification. Airdrops are borne by the project parties, but who receives them and based on what standards is determined by the Binance Alpha mechanism. The core of this institutional design is not 'reward' but 'screening.' Those who can be identified as 'high-value users' will continue to receive airdrops.
Questions have also arisen; some users pointed out that the trading volume on Alpha deviates from actual user demand, stating, 'Without points and airdrops, there are no trades,' leading to inflated data for project parties and superficial user retention, 'What is the difference between this incentive method and ghost chains or pseudo-game airdrops that no one uses after TGE?'
According to statistics from crypto KOL Guhe, among the sample size, only 22% of users who trade normally every day can earn enough points to receive airdrops, while the rest need to continuously repeat transactions or give up participation due to failing to keep up with the point rhythm.
But it cannot be denied that in the current context of overall market liquidity scarcity and projects lacking ongoing attention mechanisms, Alpha remains one of the few channels where doing something can potentially yield returns. Under the premise of coexistence between returns and certainty, this mechanism still possesses strong attractiveness. In such a system, the logic of retail participation shifts from value judgment to mechanism games, where their returns depend no longer on their judgment of the project's future but on their understanding of the Alpha mechanism and execution capacity.
Who are the true beneficiaries of Alpha?
Although retail investors and project parties each have their own games in the Alpha mechanism, returning to the overall framework, what Alpha truly reshapes is the underlying relationship between trading platforms and assets.
In terms of product experience and tool ecosystem, Binance does not possess significant advantages compared to platforms like OKX, but the liquidity entry mechanism constructed through Alpha still allows it to maintain strong authority during the asset launch phase.
Even if a project launches elsewhere, the traffic screening and point pathways provided by Alpha are sufficient to complete a round of market warm-up and price anchoring before a large number of new tokens are integrated into the main site trading pairs, changing the starting point for token issuance and extending Binance's influence on the asset side.
The recently launched Alpha chain game NXPC is a good example; after the on-chain liquidity pool opened, the Alpha airdrop was distributed shortly after to point users, while Binance's contracts and spot trading lagged by nearly half an hour to several hours, and there were also certain price discrepancies on other trading platforms like Bybit and Upbit. The trading windows at different rhythms determined the profits at various stages, reinforcing Alpha's preemptive role in launching liquidity.
In the past, listing on Binance meant completing initial pricing and reaching the final destination. Now, Alpha is the starting point for projects to go live and the source of pricing, bringing back the cold-start areas originally belonging to OKX, Bybit, and other trading platforms into the Binance system. Once a project rises, there is justification for accessing Binance contracts and spot trading, and the projects naturally are willing to 'supply' shares according to the rules, injecting token shares and funds in exchange for platform exposure and liquidity facilitation, completing the closed loop of traffic feeding back to the platform.
This also relieves Binance from the past burden of 'listing equals peak.' CZ has expressed a desire to eliminate the pricing effect caused by Binance listings, allowing the market to return to fundamentals. Alpha is essentially his pathway to fulfilling this statement, no longer directly considering 'Binance listings' as the authority, but establishing a new liquidity screening mechanism through Alpha, leveling the starting line between projects, and then deciding who can continue to move forward based on on-chain data.
Currently, this path seems successful; Alpha is no longer just a feature in the Binance wallet. Behind this mechanism is Binance's re-understanding of its own role. Its success does not hinge on whether the product experience is extreme but rather on its ability to organize Binance's primary asset capabilities, pulling them from behind the scenes to on-chain, public, and quantifiable.
Compared to OKX's route of refining products in the wallet field, Binance chooses to exchange points for traffic and airdrops for attention. Winson, head of Binance Wallet, has publicly stated that Binance Wallet will not replicate any competitor's model but will choose differentiated development, saying, 'The market does not need two identical wallets.' He believes that rather than redoing products, it is better to reconstruct scenarios.
Confronted with persistent industry issues such as airdrop volume manipulation and distorted trading data, Binance does not attempt to eliminate these behaviors but instead builds a mechanism that allows projects to first self-validate their appeal and then observe whether they can form a stable user base and genuine trading depth. The boundary between volume manipulation and genuine behavior is deferred for judgment within Alpha's point system and has been data-ified.
However, from another perspective, Binance Alpha has only successfully attracted profit-seekers but has not drawn real trading volume; users still do not consider the Binance wallet as their first choice when selecting on-chain behavior.
The past cycle was somewhat 'to VC', relying on storytelling to raise funds, now it is 'to liquidity', and Alpha is the anchor point for Binance to regain control over liquidity. In an era where VCs are no longer reliable, the community has lost its grip, and product competition has become homogenized, Binance Alpha may not be the optimal solution for innovation, but it is the most effective way to sustain the bubble.