Written by: Haotian
$ZKJ and $KOGE were both manipulated and sharply declined, causing many retail investors who were trading volume on Binance Alpha platform to wake up from their dream. Originally planning to earn an airdrop "interest" by trading volume, they ended up losing even their principal. What exactly happened behind this? Who should be held responsible for this disaster? Let me try to analyze it in depth:
1) First, let's understand what happened: Binance launched an Alpha platform airdrop activity for trading volume. ZKJ and KOGE, as popular projects, were listed on Alpha, and many retail investors began frantically trading to chase the airdrop expectations.
However, just as the Alpha activity was in full swing and retail investor funds were pouring in, a large investor withdrew about $3.6 million worth of tokens from OKX and directly dumped them on the market. ZKJ collapsed first, and due to the high correlation with the Koge pool, KOGE passively followed the decline. Seeing the sharp drop, retail investors began panic selling, further accelerating the collapse cycle. Ultimately, users who had been diligently trading on Binance Alpha for airdrops not only failed to receive any benefits but also lost all their principal.
2) Who should be held responsible in this "malicious process"?
The project team could say: We didn't ask the large investor to dump the tokens, this is a market behavior. But for a project valued at $2B, it's unbelievable that liquidity can be controlled by an individual large investor;
The dumping large investor could say: It's my money and I can do what I want, those who lose money deserve it. But with such a precise timing that knowingly would cause a chain collapse, what are their true intentions?
Binance Alpha platform could say, we're just providing a trading platform, and users bear their own risks. But without Binance's platform endorsement, how would users dare to invest heavily? Now that something has happened, how can they distance themselves?
You see, all stakeholders in this chain seem to have reasons to shirk responsibility, while retail investors are left bewildered: How did this hot Alpha Summer end before it even began? Where is my principal?
3) Where exactly is the problem? In my view, what appears to be an accidental market risk is actually a premeditated systematic harvesting:
The project team "designed" a correlation trap, large investors chose a precise strike "timing", Binance provided a "legal" harvesting platform, and retail investors bore all the losses.
Specifically:
Binance Alpha made a strategic mistake under competitive anxiety. Seeing OKX advancing in Web3 DEX and wallet domains and eroding their on-chain trading share, they became anxious. Alpha was originally well-designed—providing a testing period for project teams, an observation period for users, and a risk control period for themselves.
However, Binance clearly overestimated its risk control capabilities and underestimated the "malice" of market participants. To quickly reclaim market share, they forcibly transformed Alpha from an "observation platform" to a "main battlefield". Put simply, was Alpha originally not meant to create a better Binance, but to build a new on-chain "Binance"?
More critically, Binance was too idealistic about the market environment when designing the Alpha mechanism. Binance's envisioned "win-win-win" model sounds beautiful: project teams test the market through Alpha, users earn by trading volume, and the platform earns transaction fees? This logic sounds great but is built on a fatal assumption—that everyone will "follow the script". But reality? In this market with fragile liquidity, any artificially created heat is false prosperity, easily punctured.
Binance seems to have forgotten that while the Alpha platform provides convenience, it also creates a perfect "hunting ground" for malicious operators—after all, with Binance's endorsement increasing credibility, incentive mechanisms gathering retail investor funds, and sufficient liquidity for harvesting, everything is set.
Under this combination, Alpha—originally an area for "risk isolation"—has been forcibly transformed into a breeding ground for large investors' "precise harvesting".
Ultimately, this event exposed structural defects in the current market ecosystem, with each participant pursuing short-term profit maximization: project teams wanting to quickly exit liquidity, large investors seeking precise arbitrage, trading platforms wanting to increase trading volume and income, and retail investors always wanting to grab excess returns. Everyone is playing their own small calculations, ultimately creating a "perfect" multi-party game failure.
But this happened on Binance's platform, the world's largest exchange, which should have been the "stabilizing needle" of the entire industry, but instead became the main stage of this harvesting drama.
Binance's Alpha strategy this time essentially used its brand reputation to guarantee others' harvesting actions. Wanting market share, trading volume, and transaction fee income, the result is lifting a stone only to drop it on their own feet.
Alas, if even "top players" act so recklessly, with no one responsible for maintaining order, when will the industry truly mature? The answer is probably more distant than we imagine.
