Author: TechFlow

"Red and black, it is the interweaving of ambition and reality, the collision of hope and cruelty." -- The Red and the Black

In the crypto market, the rise and fall of prices is an endless game of wits; and the success or failure of a project is more like a series of battles between trust and doubt.

As described in the classic novel The Red and the Black, red symbolizes passion and hope, while black represents shadows and crises.

When we turn our attention to the recent project RedStone that was launched on the Binance Launchpool, this "red and black" contrast is particularly striking:

As a representative of the new cross-chain oracle, RedStone has previously attracted market attention with its innovative multi-chain architecture and strong investment background (including Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain Capital).

Within the past week, this "red stone" has become a highlight in the sluggish market, with the price of its Token RED soaring on the Binance pre-market.

However, as the hype has heated up, issues such as the recent controversy over airdrops and price volatility in the pre-market have gradually surfaced, causing this "red stone" to gradually "blacken" in the eyes of some community members.

A battle of red and black, a test of community trust and market rules.

The Red Stone in the Price Limit Test

In the crypto market, innovation is often the key to attracting attention.

The "Price Cap Mechanism" launched by Binance for RedStone (RED) has undoubtedly become the biggest highlight of this experiment.

On February 25, 2025, Binance announced that it would test this mechanism in the pre-trading of Launchpool, aiming to control volatility by limiting the price increase, and avoid the familiar "Christmas tree" style of violent fluctuations in the early stage of token issuance.

Since the launch of RED in the pre-market, this mechanism has quickly ignited market enthusiasm.

In the three consecutive trading days, the price of RED repeatedly hit the price limit, and after the price limit was lifted, it even soared to $1.4, becoming the focus of the pre-market.

As of now, RED is currently priced at $0.83, with a market capitalization of $33 million and a fully diluted market capitalization of $830 million. For a project that just launched in a bear market, the initial performance is indeed eye-catching, giving people a sense that "the price limit can't contain the upward trend".

When people can make money, they naturally like it.

The price limit mechanism has indeed brought market heat to RED, but the applicability of this "red" still needs to be tested.

The continuous price increase has attracted a lot of attention, but it may also cover up potential problems that may ferment in the community.

The Black Spot in the Airdrop Controversy

The entanglement of interests, or the airdrop.

In the previous gameplay, RedStone launched three "exploration activities" through the Zealy and Discord platforms, requiring community members to complete different tasks, such as reading technical documents, writing analysis articles, creating image materials, and even continuously outputting content during the Spring Festival holiday.

These tasks were promoted as opportunities to "co-build the ecosystem", and community members could earn RSG points by completing the tasks, which RedStone promised would be the key credentials for future RED token airdrops.

To put it more bluntly, this wool-picking is a bit liver-damaging.

According to its token economics (RED Token Economics), RedStone plans to allocate 48.3% of the tokens to the ecosystem and community, of which 10% is for the initial community claim, which has been highly anticipated by community players.

However, on March 5, 2025, when RedStone announced the airdrop results, the community's enthusiasm quickly cooled down.

The official announced that only 2.19% of the community members (a total of 4,386 people) received RED token rewards, and the RSG points of the remaining large number of players were deemed invalid, leaving the hard-working players with nothing in the end.

Not being few, but being uneven, the liver-damaging tasks may yield nothing, but having an identity may be able to receive the airdrop.

According to RedStone's official post, the identity on Discord became the key to receiving the airdrop. Eligible roles include Vein Master, Deep Miner, Professor, and IRL (participated in offline activities). Public data shows that the proportion of people with the above roles in the project's Discord group is only 2%.

Therefore, based on the total community size of about 230,000, the number of people who can receive this airdrop is just over 4,000 as mentioned above.

As soon as the airdrop results were released, the dissatisfaction of community members began to spread across various social media.

Some netizens joked that if you didn't get the RED airdrop, don't worry, because you'll never walk alone.

And angrier players have started to accuse, with some sharp-tongued posts quickly circulating in Chinese and English communities, directly pointing out that RedStone has exploited the community users.

As a neutral observer, I cannot verify whether the accusations in these posts are all true; but the resentment of the community cannot be ignored, as the story of "water can carry a boat, and it can also capsize a boat" is frequently played out in the crypto world.

But at its core, the community's anger is simply "I worked hard but didn't qualify".

Many users, even if they have accumulated millions of points, are still excluded and seen as "invalid labor": the reward ratio of only 2.19% highlights the long-standing problem of "airdrop PUA" - the project guides users to labor through high-intensity tasks before the token launch, but does not fully deliver on its promises.

When the community members' efforts are gradually devalued as the "sacrificial victims" of "digital contract workers", the players in the middle naturally feel that they have been PUA'd and worked for free to promote the project, and the fruits of the revolution have been stolen by those with more identity.

The Abnormal Pre-market Price

Given the community members' dissatisfaction with the airdrop, if the token price also has abnormalities, it will obviously further deepen everyone's misunderstanding and distrust.

This afternoon, some community members shared screenshots showing that the price curve of RED in the pre-market was presenting an extremely erratic fluctuation, completely unlike a normal price trend.

Subsequently, the well-known KOL @_FORAB also discovered similar issues and speculated that there seemed to be problems with the market maker of RED, with a large number of orders being withdrawn, resulting in the appearance of high-price-difference large waves.

This situation also easily leads people to misunderstand that the market maker is playing a solo act, repeatedly pulling the price up and down without a proportional retail counterparty.

However, Stephen, the community manager of RedStone's Chinese community, later clarified in the comments that the problem was not caused by the market maker. RED has no market maker participation in the pre-market, and the price fluctuations are actually due to the trading rule design that limits each person to only 5,000 RED transactions.

Subsequently, Binance officially responded that the limit order function for the RED/USDT pair experienced a malfunction from 11:39 to 12:09 on March 6, 2025, but the market order function was normal, and the platform has now completed the repair.

In the end, although the issue was not caused by market maker manipulation, the violent price fluctuations have also allowed the "manipulation theory" to spread rapidly in the community, given the already unstable emotions of the RedStone community.

Although RedStone and Binance have both clarified the actual reasons for the issue, in the crypto market, retail investors are often more inclined to believe conspiracy theories rather than technical explanations. This public opinion effect has further exacerbated the community's distrust.

Summary

Profit-driven, the crypto industry has always had a delicate relationship between project parties and the community: they need each other, but sometimes they also feel they are hurting each other.

From its innovative multi-chain architecture to Binance's limit-up mechanism, to the airdrop controversy and price volatility, this project has experienced high market attention and severe tests of community trust in a short period of time.

The airdrop results of RedStone have left the vast majority of participants disappointed, even raising questions about "PUA-style exploitation". This sentiment is highly contagious in the crypto market, especially in an environment where the community is highly sensitive to fairness.

For RedStone, the challenge for the future is how to repair community relations and establish more transparent and robust mechanisms at the technical and operational levels.

Perhaps, from a broader perspective, what the crypto projects in this round need is not only technological innovation, but also a deep insight into community emotions and a comprehensive optimization of market rules.

Gain the community, gain the world.