Author: Golem, Odaily
Recently, the leading crypto exchange platform Binance has once again become the focus of market discussion - with a series of measures, Binance has won unanimous praise from the crypto community.
Firstly, the Altcoin RedStone (RED) was listed on Binance's pre-market, and it was announced that 10% of the total supply would be airdropped to the community, but ultimately betrayed the users, with only more than 4,000 people eligible for the airdrop. After Binance discovered the market sentiment, it decisively stood on the side of the community users and suspended the RED token. In the end, the project party had to "soften" to the community, reallocating 2% of the total supply from the "ecosystem and data providers" to the community members who were initially omitted from the airdrop.
It is not uncommon that it is not just RedStone that wants to harvest the community and retail investors. On March 4, GoPlusSecurity (GPS) was listed on Binance, and the daily line directly entered a downward trend, no matter where the retail investors bought, they became the bag holders, and the price was directly halved.
Just as the community thought they were once again the exit liquidity, and could only vent their anger through ineffective complaints, Binance stepped in. On March 7, Binance found that the GPS market maker was continuously selling the tokens without placing any buy orders, and temporarily froze the market maker's account.
On March 9, Binance officially issued another announcement, stating that in the investigation of a market maker (hereinafter referred to as the "market maker") of the GoPlus Security (GPS) project, Binance found that the same market maker was also responsible for the market making activities of the MyShell (SHELL) project. In order to better protect Binance users, Binance has taken the following additional measures against the misconduct of the market maker: The market maker has been delisted and prohibited from any further market making activities on Binance; The relevant profits of the market maker have been confiscated and will be used to compensate the users of the GPS and SHELL projects (the specific compensation plan will be decided and announced by the relevant project teams).
The above actions have earned Binance unanimous praise from the community, and many users sighed that Binance, the "terminator of crypto market liquidity", has finally stood on the side of the community. Binance co-founder He Yi also played popular memes on the X platform, expressing that the projects should truly fear, revere and respect the community.
Sometimes, Binance's overly approachable behavior has caused the project parties to lose the fear, reverence and respect they should have for Binance.
Binance's actions for the community are not "occasional good deeds"
As a big tree attracts wind, since the crypto community started collectively denouncing VCs and Altcoins in 2024, Binance, as the center of liquidity, has also been rumored to be colluding with project parties and VCs to harvest the community's "leeks". Negative news such as the "girlfriend coin" rumor, external or internal interest transfers that allow junk projects to obtain listing qualifications, has repeatedly forced Binance to come out and prove how much "porridge it has eaten".
When a company grows large enough, problems like big company disease and corruption are inevitable. Even as powerful as Web2's ByteDance, it had 353 employees dismissed for violations in 2024. In the Web3 industry, which is closer to users and more directly related to money, there will inevitably be more evil groups. The market maker involved in the GPS incident is rumored to be the one who claims to "pass Binance in a year" through the broker pipeline, constantly harvesting the retail investors on Binance. There may be similar evil groups lurking underwater, but Binance's handling of the GPS incident has clearly shown that it stands on the side of the community and retail investors, which is also a slap in the face of the previous conspiracy theories about "Binance harvesting the community's leeks".
But Binance's "good deeds" for the community are not just occasional appeasement when its reputation is collapsing, Binance has always valued the voice of the community and has long regarded it as an important driving force in its development.
Binance co-founder He Yi has long referred to himself as the "first customer service of Binance", frequently active on social media platforms like X, handling problems for Binance users, collecting suggestions for Binance's Web3 wallet products, and responding to criticisms about Binance. As the founder, she could have stayed behind the scenes, but she still chose to use herself as an example to express Binance's intention to hear more voices from the community and hope more people will participate in Binance's construction.
On March 7, Binance announced that it will optimize the token listing mechanism, introducing "community voting for listing" and "community voting for delisting" as two community governance models, aiming to give users more decision-making power. Community voting for listing means that users with a minimum holding of 0.01 BNB can vote to support their favorite projects, and high-voted projects that pass due diligence will be listed on Binance; community voting for delisting means that users with a minimum holding of 0.01 BNB can vote to express their intention to delist projects already in the "Monitoring Zone".
Previously, users' complaints about VC-backed tokens were mainly because there was no room for growth in the secondary market after the high-priced tokens were listed, and the retail investors became the bag holders of the VCs. The second half of 2024 was the peak period of the crypto community's denunciation of VC tokens and Binance, as well as the peak period of the Solana Meme token craze. Binance successfully met the community's speculative needs by listing Meme tokens with a community foundation and relatively low market cap, achieving a win-win situation for itself and the community.
Now, as the Meme token craze has subsided, some of the capital's attention has also returned to certain "value tokens", and users' needs have also shifted back to the need for sufficient left-side trading space. At this time, Binance's focus has shifted to maintaining the community's protection from "malicious harvesting" while providing users with enough left-side trading space for new tokens through innovative mechanisms.
Everything Binance does may not be entirely right, but it is definitely what the market and the community need.
The greater the capability, the greater the responsibility
Since ancient times, due to the differences in division of labor and influence within the industry, the community and retail investors, who are the end users but at the downstream of the crypto industry, have long been isolated from information, not only losing their voice but sometimes even being "harvested" by the upstream VCs, project parties, exchanges and market makers in the industry, such as VC's massive low-price holdings unlocking and dumping, project parties' airdrop old-timer warehouses secretly selling tokens, exchanges charging listing fees in exchange for community exit liquidity, and so on.
The trust relationship between the upstream and downstream of the crypto industry is collapsing rapidly. Gradually, not touching VC and Altcoins, cashing out airdrops immediately, shorting new tokens upon listing, etc. have become the helpless consensus of the community and retail investors in the face of the industry's wrongdoings that they cannot punish.
"The greater the capability, the greater the responsibility". Crypto exchanges still play a pivotal role in the entire crypto industry, as one of the rule makers and executors of the market, and should therefore bear the important responsibility of promoting fair competition in the industry and protecting the interests of users.
Binance is fulfilling this responsibility, whether it is standing with the community to counter the unfair airdrop rules of the project parties, or freezing the accounts of malicious market makers, Binance is proving with its actions that it is no longer the "good guy" of the projects, but has become the guardian of the industry ecology. In the future, the industry needs more "Binances" like this, to make a fair, transparent and sustainable market environment the cornerstone of the crypto industry.
