Author: Penny, BlockBeats
As the founder and largest shareholder of Binance, CZ's every word and action can potentially impact market sentiment and trends. Recently, CZ has been constantly "standing up" for the BNB Chain on Twitter, listing BSC meme coins on Binance, emphasizing the technical advantages and ecosystem potential of the BNB Chain, and outlining the 2025 development blueprint, which has attracted widespread market attention. Driven by CZ, the BNB Chain ecosystem tokens have seen a general rise, hitting new highs for the year.
Every time CZ speaks, it's like a "depth charge" that ripples through the crypto market. From the "BNB Chain has been confined for too long, it's time to break free" to the change in attitude towards meme coins, CZ's return has undoubtedly injected a strong stimulus into the BNB Chain. But is this ecosystem boom triggered by the "CZ effect" a fleeting phenomenon, or the starting point for the BNB Chain to regain its peak?
CZ's return, the BNB Chain's heat returns
To trace the origins of this round of BNB Chain heat, we have to mention TST. TST, Test Token, was originally just a token used in a video demonstrating how to issue meme on the Four platform, but the video inadvertently exposed the contract address of TST, allowing everyone to quickly capture a glimpse of the opportunity. Soon, TST transformed from an obscure test coin into the focus of speculation, and its market attention skyrocketed. When CZ issued a statement on social media clarifying that TST was not an official project supported by Binance, it should have been a cooling-off moment, but instead it became a catalyst for TST to explode again, making TST even more renowned in the community. On February 6, its market cap was only $500,000, but CZ's response to the TST token caused its market cap to briefly exceed $50 million. Then, on February 9, Binance announced the listing of TST, and the TST market cap soared, breaking through $500 million, a surge of over 100 times in just 3 days.
With the active promotion of TST to drive the BNB Chain, on February 11, CZ tweeted that "the BNB Chain has been confined for too long, it's time to break free", and on the 12th he released the target areas for the BNB Chain build in 2025, triggering strong market expectations for ecosystem upgrades. On the 11th, BNB broke through $640, with a 24-hour increase of 5.75%, and today's highest price reached $725, with the market heat significantly rebounding.
After the listing of TST on Binance, the BNB Chain ecosystem tokens began to rise across the board, occupying the top positions on the trading volume charts of major exchanges. Here are some of the hot projects worth noting.
Cake
PancakeSwap is one of the most popular AMM protocols on the BNB Chain, and is also a widely used DEX in the entire DeFi industry, with CAKE being the native token of the PancakeSwap platform. PancakeSwap has low transaction fees (0.2% transaction fee) and rich features (such as farm, lottery, NFT market, etc.), with trading volume and user activity continuously leading the industry. At noon on the 13th, Cake's market cap reached a high of $7 billion, and as of the time of writing, the 24h increase has reached 38%.
Bake
BakerySwap is an automated market maker with liquidity mining on the Binance Smart Chain, and BAKE is the native BEP-20 governance token of the platform. BakerySwap is an iteration of Uniswap, similar to Uniswap but faster and cheaper. In addition, BakerySwap also has a powerful NFT supermarket, including digital art NFTs, gamified NFTs, and the latest featured artist series. The Bake token suddenly surged on the evening of the 12th, with its market cap rising from around $110 million to a high of $232.48 million in just 2 hours, an increase of over 100%.
THE
Thena is a decentralized trading and liquidity protocol on the BNB Chain, and is the first project launched by Binance after CZ's release. Benefiting from the technical support of the BNB Chain, Thena's advantages lie in its low transaction fees and high performance, and the platform also supports liquidity pools for various token pairs, and attracts users to participate through dynamic yield adjustment strategies. The THE token also surged rapidly on the evening of the 12th, with its market cap reaching a high of $256.67 million, a 24-hour increase of up to 115%.
BNX
BNX is the token of BinaryX, a Web3 gaming platform that combines decentralized finance (DeFi) with gaming, allowing players to earn cryptocurrencies through a play-to-earn mechanism. Its potential stems from the growing popularity of NFT games, combined with a strong community and innovative gameplay, allowing users to generate real-world income while enjoying an immersive gaming experience. BNX has shown a relatively strong upward trend since the evening of the 8th, achieving around a 4-fold increase in 4 days, with its market cap once exceeding $700 million at its peak.
The CZ effect continues to drive, with a sudden "fake dog" meme outbreak in the early morning
In the early morning of February 13, Twitter user @theveeman asked in the comments if CZ had a pet dog, and CZ replied that he was raising a "Belgian Malinois" rather than a Shiba Inu.
This reply quickly sparked a frenzy of speculation in the community, with a large number of users asking about the dog's name and photos, in an attempt to be the first to create related Meme coins. After multiple interactions with the comment section, CZ posted that "I now know the answer. The way things work is very interesting, and I will consider it for about a day, just like I normally do for major decisions. Should I respect its privacy, or make this dog public for the sake of the business? I might even interact with a few meme coins on the BNB Chain."
In order to uncover the real information about the dog, the netizens launched a "carpet search". Some people found the three dogs and one cat that Binance's official layer had posted in 2020, which were the pets of Binance members, and guessed that one of them might be CZ's. Some people also made a picture of a dog named Perry wearing a Binance shirt, hinting that it was closely related to Binance and was likely CZ's dog... Until now, there are still countless self-proclaimed "CZ's dog" meme coins being issued, some of which have a market cap of over a million dollars in a short period of time.
If CZ really wants to launch a Meme based on his pet dog, he may be able to replicate the explosive growth of $TRUMP, further attracting capital inflows to the BNB Chain. The uproar of the "fake dog" event reflects the core driving force of Meme coins: celebrity effect + community consensus. Even without official endorsement, users can still drive token prices up by hyping the "legitimacy narrative".
Inventory of potential projects on the BNB Chain
Four.Meme
With CZ and the BNB Chain official gradually embracing meme, and mentioning meme in the 2025 plan, Four.Meme, which is benchmarked against Pump.fun on Solana, will see a large number of meme coins launched on it in the future, so keeping a close eye on the latest hot developments on Four.Meme will be a good investment direction. Currently, Four.Meme launches 1k-2k meme coins per day on average, with a launch rate of about 5%, i.e. 50-100 successful launches to the external market.
It is worth mentioning that the Four.Meme official also provides exposure and liquidity support for some excellent projects, so keeping an eye on the Alpha Boost on the official website is also a way to screen for quality meme targets.
AICell
AICell is the first AI Agent token and AI Meme on the BSC, with nearly 10 times the rebound from the low point to the present. The current market value is $20 million, and you can wait for the right opportunity to enter the market. As BNB Chain takes both AI and meme as the future direction, AICell will be a worthy target to watch.
Emerging Meme and Community Coins
BOB: Meme Coin with BNB Mascot Theme
BOB (Build on BNB) is a Meme coin with the theme of the "BNB Mascot", and its image design is closely integrated with the BNB brand, with strong recognition. BOB has a high community activity, has forwarded CZ and BNB Chain Official Twitter's articles many times, and is suspected to be propagated by the Official Twitter. BOB's current market value is about $8.5 million, the scale is relatively small, but the activity of the community provides a good liquidity foundation for it. The investment value of BOB is mainly reflected in its close connection with the BNB brand and the activity of the community. And with the "Build" concept being widely hyped, BOB may see growth.
Cheems: Binance-related Meme Coin
Cheems is a community-strong Meme coin on the BSC, which is popular for its cute image and widespread community dissemination. Cheems has an active community support and was listed on the Binance exchange, further enhancing its liquidity and market attention. Its success is partly due to its strong marketing strategy and community promotion activities. The investment value of Cheems lies in its strong community foundation and the support of the Binance exchange, so it is more suitable for secondary trading players on the CEX as an investment choice.
Koma: Emerging Meme Coin on BSC
Koma combines the current popular Meme culture and technical trends, such as AI or community cultural memes, to attract incremental user groups. Koma's current market value is about $40 million, and it is a well-known and consensual meme on the BSC, with the possibility of further listing on the Binance exchange in the future.
The Base chain, backed by Coinbase's background and low-cost advantages, has quickly become a star project in the Ethereum Layer2. However, the BNB Chain has recently rivaled Base chain in terms of transaction volume and user activity, especially in the outbreak of Meme coins and DeFi projects. Meme coins (such as FOUR, BinanceDog) on the BNB Chain have attracted a large amount of retail capital, driving the surge in on-chain Gas fees and transaction volume; projects like PancakeSwap and Thena have further consolidated the position of the BNB Chain in the DeFi field by introducing MEV protection and liquidity incentive mechanisms.
Solana, with its high throughput and low fees, has become one of the brightest-performing public chains in 2024, but its ecosystem is overly dependent on Meme coins, and network stability issues have occurred frequently. If the BNB Chain can achieve sub-second block time in 2025 and attract users and capital with a richer ecosystem of applications (such as DeFi, GameFi, AI), it may surpass Solana in terms of throughput and fees, and rise to become a more Top-tier public chain.
With CZ's return, the BNB Chain has regained market attention through technology upgrades, ecosystem openness, and the Meme craze. In the short term, the speculative frenzy of Meme coins may bring volatility, but in the long run, the BNB Chain, with its "high throughput, low fees, and compliance" combination, is expected to stand out in the multi-chain competition and become a core force in the next-generation public chain ecosystem.
