Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange, announced on January 24 that its venture capital and incubation department, Binance Labs, will undergo a brand rebranding. Not only will the name be changed to YZi Labs, but the management team will also be replaced, inviting Ella Zhang, the co-founder of Binance Labs, to return to YZi Labs as the person in charge, while Binance founder CZ will participate in key decision-making, intending to completely separate it from the Binance brand:
Binance Labs today announced that it will be rebranded as YZi Labs. This brand repositioning is a natural evolution for the company. For years, Binance Labs has operated under the Binance brand, but has actually been operating independently.
Now, with CZ's departure from Binance, it is only natural for YZi to undergo a transformation.
Project party accuses Binance Labs of too deep a scandal
The rebranding of Binance Labs initially seemed to be a proactive move by Binance to separate its investment and listing businesses. However, on the same day, January 24, an anonymous representative, who appears to have previously cooperated with Binance Labs and a project party, published a lengthy article detailing and accusing Binance Labs and its related management of scandals.
As the incident continued to unfold, it attracted high attention and discussion from the community, temporarily pushing Binance to the forefront, causing co-founder He Yi to also come forward twice to explain. The following article will help you quickly summarize the entire incident.
First, the anonymous author stated that within Binance Labs, with Dana as the core, they openly operated so-called investment backdoors, making demands on project parties in exchange for personal benefits, causing the project parties to be oppressed:
Throughout the process, whether it was being rudely questioned and contemptuously treated in meetings by Dana, or being repeatedly belittled and even ignored in subsequent communications, Dana's attitude as the head of Binance Labs did not reflect any interest in the project itself, but rather a suppressive and insulting attitude from a superior position.
As I communicated with more and more other project parties, I gradually recognized the truth - it turns out that you can go through white-glove agents to get the so-called backdoor. Other project parties also clearly mentioned that Dovey and Chris are among the representatives.
Here, I decide to come forward and disclose the solid facts and evidence I have mastered, because if the entire industry turns a blind eye to these people and projects' behind-the-scenes operations, interest transfers, and extortion, Web3 will ultimately deviate from its original intention, and the ultimate victims will be every team and user who truly loves blockchain and Web3.
Regarding the relevant individuals involved, the author summarized and disclosed their related scandals:
1. Dana: Female, currently residing in Hong Kong
After being fired from Kuaishou, she met Dovey and entered the Web3 industry, serving as He Yi's assistant. Dana wields a lot of power in Binance Labs, not only claiming that she can represent Binance Labs, but also promoting projects she is interested in to obtain Binance investment and listing opportunities, amassing billions of dollars in wealth.
2. Dovey: Female, globally nomadic, self-proclaimed best friend of He Yi
Dovey is the chief white-glove agent of Binance Labs, and together with Dana, she has built a complete chain of interests. Her standard practice is: first to obtain free priority unlocked advisor tokens (1%), then demand that the project be listed on Binance after the investment, and through her inside information at Binance, contact the project parties before Binance's investment or listing to demand investment, her personal wealth has already reached the point where she can support her Primitive fund to invest without relying on external capital.
3. Nicola: Female, currently residing in Hong Kong
She is Dana's subordinate, collaborating with Dana in her work.
4. Chris: Female, currently residing in Shanghai
She used to work at Sequoia China, but was later eliminated. She is closely related to Dana, Nicola and others, helping some projects without any technical or application value to get listed on Binance through hype.
A specific example is that in the Hooked, Sleepless AI and Catizen projects, Chris assisted the project parties in communicating with Dana and Nicola, arranging a series of interest transfer activities.
5. Claudia: Female, currently residing in Hong Kong
The person in charge of Binance's listing, the extent to which a project is listed on Binance is largely dependent on her interpretation.
The author introduced that under the collaboration of the above several people, they frantically amassed wealth in five major projects: Hooked Protocol, Sleepless AI, Catizen, Altlayer and Cheems, but ultimately made the investors who believed in Binance pay the bill, accumulating five core problems:
- Need to grease the palms of white-glove agents and core internal members. Usually starting from 1%, and require immediate unlocking upon listing.
- When accepting Labs investment, they must bear huge valuation discounts and dilution.
- In the process of negotiating Listing, if it is a first-issued project, they need to provide 4%-8% of the tokens to participate in Launchpool or Megadrop, airdropping to Binance users.
- In addition to the airdrop, they also need to pay a 5-10% total circulating token consulting fee, which is directly given to Binance and is usually not disclosed externally. This is a common practice in Chinese projects, but not for overseas projects like Fantom.
- Mandatory collection of listing deposits of up to millions of dollars, which will not be refunded if the agreed market value drops below a certain level.
How did He Yi respond?
In response to these allegations, Binance co-founder He Yi issued a lengthy article on February 2 in an attempt to clarify. She first emphasized that the former Binance Labs has been renamed YZi Labs and operates independently, with Ella Zhang as the head of YZi Labs and CZ directly managing the Labs. She stated that since its inception, Labs has operated completely independently from Binance, with each making independent decisions, and out of thousands of investment projects, only an extremely small percentage have ultimately been listed on Binance.
Here is the English translation:He Yi stated that Binance has set up multiple firewalls to isolate the coin listing process, and while they are willing to airdrop a certain amount of coins to Binance users as a reference indicator, any behavior involving bribery or insider trading is completely against the rules.
He also emphasized that if any Binance employee or Binance-affiliated staff demands money, shares, or tokens from any project or partner, "we will definitely send them to jail and let them be disgraced." He called on the market to publicly supervise all investment and cooperation information, and all reports can be directly reflected to CZ or Ella.
Regarding the various rumors circulating in the market about "He Yi's girlfriend" enjoying special privileges, He Yi also clarified that anyone claiming to have a personal relationship with He Yi is merely using this claim to seek personal gain. In fact, Binance Labs has always welcomed any other investment institutions to recommend projects, and welcomes any institution or project party to become a "friend of Labs."
Regarding the current market environment, He Yi believes that the recent market uptrend is mainly driven by traditional financial institutions and ETFs, while the crypto industry is facing a shortage of quality assets. In the past, the industry was mainly focused on infrastructure, but now the development of applications is constrained by regulatory policies, leading to generally low project valuations.
He Yi pointed out that while blockchain has the potential to revolutionize production relations, most current projects have not created real value. Speculative airdrops and "XX to Earn" models without real economic support are unsustainable, and quality assets should be based on long-term value rather than just issuing tokens for cash.
He Yi Opens AMA for the Second Time to Clarify
After the previous (2nd) day's post to clarify, in order to further communicate with the community, He Yi held another AMA on the social platform X yesterday (3rd), and invited the parties accused in this article to come forward and clarify. In the AMA, He Yi first expressed his emphasis on internal employee audits, as the community has the most doubts about Binance regarding "internal staff embezzlement." He stated that Binance currently has two law enforcement coordinators in the US, and has conducted over 120 internal audits in the past two years:
More than 60 people have been fired for violations, and a total of $30 million in illegal proceeds have been recovered, with two lawsuits and prosecution cases currently underway.
In addition, regarding the community's frequent discussions about "coin listing doubts," He Yi used the previously hot AI project Ai16z as an example, stating:
When the token was considered for listing, the market cap was already quite large, and Binance's internal discussions on listing were concerned about the possibility of "peaking upon listing." Therefore, there were divergent internal opinions.
In addition, some meme coins are issued by token issuance groups, and Binance will also be cautious about listing such projects.
Meanwhile, Jason, the founder of Hooked Protocol, which has been rumored in the market as a "Binance girlfriend project," also stated in today's AMA that he and Dovey Wan, the co-founder of Primitive Ventures and a core figure of Binance Labs, used to be a couple, but he also denied that there were any violations in the Binance listing process.
Community Reaction
Although He Yi and relevant Binance representatives actively came forward to clarify the recent public opinion, the community did not seem to buy it after listening to the AMA, and the controversy has not yet ended.
For example, community KOL @ZKSgu tweeted that this Binance AMA was a joke, for the following reasons:
- They caught 60 corrupt employees without public disclosure, and recovered $30 million without returning it to users
- Labs operates independently, but the topic is about listing, and then everyone who comes up says they don't know
- As for the listing project Sleepless AI, what is its actual application? This Space session sounds like AI-generated content
- The Hooked Protocol speaker finished their advertisement and then left, without even having the patience to listen to the rest of the AMA
Additionally, community KOL @Phyrex_Ni also tweeted using the metaphor of an emperor to describe He Yi's status at Binance, and reminded He Yi not to be blinded by his subordinates' schemes:
Just now I heard the sister choke up, and I was still quite touched. After all, just like an emperor, no one wants their kingdom to have problems, and everyone wants to be a good group leader. But the subordinate ministers must all have their own little schemes. However, I don't think what everyone is concerned about is these things, but why so many coins drop after they are listed.
After the sister finished speaking, it was basically just all kinds of brand promotion, either high academic qualifications or strong backgrounds, or hardworking Labs partners for many years. But these are not the focus of today at all! No one expects to get any substantive verification in this public Space, after all, they can't talk badly about themselves, but at least they could express an attitude, right? Talk about the reasons for your coin selection, talk about the reasons you are optimistic, talk about the reasons for the decline, that's what people really want to hear!
Okay, after the brand promotion is over, it should be the time for the project party to save themselves, but it turned into the project party doing advertising, which is a bit outrageous. Don't they know the status of their own project? Reading scripts and doing advertising in this kind of occasion, do you think this is a good idea? Have you lost your mind?
Also, sister, you're a bit naive. The Zhengde Emperor had the Eastern Depot, the Western Depot, and the Inner Depot, but he was still blinded for five years, right?
Community KOL @xixi_kawayi even directly attached multiple charts of Binance's new coin declines, stating that Binance's price manipulation is the best response:
Actually, if you can't speak, you can just not open the Space.
The best way for Binance to counterattack now is to allow the newly listed coins to create a wealth effect in the secondary market and drive market sentiment, rather than playing the sympathy card in the Space. This is not what a harvester should do! You open the Space and ramble on, but what about us retail investors who are losing money?