Written by: Black Mario
In fact, Binance's layout in previous rounds of competition has been somewhat slow. For example, during the inscription period, OKX Wallet seized the initiative early (Binance Wallet only entered the inscription market in April 2024, and inscriptions cooled down within a few months). In the previous meme season and AI season, the Solana ecosystem was clearly the core of liquidity and wandering, especially with markets like PumpFun continuously becoming massive pumps, while the BNB Chain backed by Binance was lukewarm, with no standout coins or eye-catching trading markets.
On the other hand, the rise of on-chain derivatives markets is also impacting Binance, including the rise of platforms like HyperliquidX, which attracts users and funds on-chain. So under multiple impacts, Binance is actually quite troubled. Therefore, the launch of Binance Alpha in December last year actually reveals its intentions:
So I believe its strategic significance can be summarized in several points
1) Activate platform-wide user trading activity and liquidity
Binance CEX itself does not lack users (250 million registered) or funds, but what it lacks is the factor to fully mobilize these users' trading activity and fund liquidity, especially guiding these token-holding users into its own chain ecosystem. Therefore, Alpha 2.0 introduced a points mechanism and used TGE, Alpha airdrops, and IDO as catalysts, hoping to encourage more token-holding users to participate in Alpha zone trading, especially to bring liquidity to the Alpha zone.
We can see that after 2.0, especially after introducing the points system, the trading effect on the Binance Alpha trading zone is super obvious. Since the first TGE event with points threshold on the 25th, trading volume has surged dramatically, and the more competitive it becomes, the better the trading volume effect.
2) Bring traffic to BNB Chain, activate the ecosystem, and support more of its own chain projects
Binance Alpha's purpose of bringing traffic to BNB Chain, activating the ecosystem, and supporting more of its own chain projects is quite obvious. In the earliest 1.0 period, we could easily see that the proportion of BNB Chain coins on Alpha was quite high. Especially at this stage, over 70% of the 124 Alpha projects are BNB Chain tokens, with 38% being native BNB Chain projects in hot fields like AI, meme, and DeFi.
Trading volume leads: BSC tokens account for about 40% of Alpha's total trading volume, with weekly trading volume surging 122.5% and weekly trading amount rising 78%, highlighting the strong ecosystem momentum.
Additionally, many policies are tilted towards BNB Chain. For example, the double points policy launched on May 1st directly encourages users to trade on BNB Chain, hoping to bring further liquidity and user imports. According to Lookonchain's data on May 9th:
And the growth of Alpha asset trading data on BNB Chain also demonstrates this point.
3) Seize user traffic and liquidity from other chains
Alpha also aims to seize user traffic, liquidity, and attention from other chains, especially its "old rival" Solana. The proportion of Solana chain tokens listed on Alpha is also quite high, especially some popular Solana tokens like ai16z. Besides Solana, Ethereum and Base also have many quality assets worth paying attention to in meme and AI tracks. Therefore, the Alpha platform is expected to further snatch active users, attention, and liquidity from other chains (especially under the current situation of overall lack of hot spots and FOMO narratives).
4) Incremental users
Alpha point farming actually brings many new incremental users. On one hand, point farming is not difficult as long as you understand the rules, unlike the high-cost trading volume farming during the Layer 2 period. Many point farming users will bring friends and family into the market, providing a key opportunity for many users to reach the Binance platform and become crypto investors. Although there is no clear data showing how much trading volume this brings, you can see some clues from the new registered addresses on BNB Chain.
5) Reshape listing mechanism
Another point I think is related to reshaping Binance's listing mechanism. The previous listing controversy (the "sisterhood" controlling the listing process) was widely discussed. The top executive personally came out to clarify and stated that listing transparency and fairness would be strengthened. So now, Alpha is actually a good demonstration and provides many community-based, meme, and small-to-medium-sized crypto projects with a channel to reach a broader investor base and strive to be listed on Binance.
Of course, after Alpha 2.0 integrated the Alpha zone into the APP, trading Alpha zone tokens became more convenient. I even think that from the user perception perspective, there is not much difference between trading here and listing on the main site. So the previous Alpha zone effect was actually quite good and could bring significant volume to projects.
