If you’re not under a rock since the start of the year or you just hate crypto for whatever reason, there’s a vast possibility you’re aware of Binance Alpha.
Long story short, Binance Alpha is a token trading mini-market where you can trade early-stage projects or get early access to tokens before they hit the major exchanges.
Now a major controversy has rolled into the market after Binance announced the Wallet TGE & Alpha Airdrop based on Alpha Points, which left everyone perplexed. The unusual shift of constantly changing eligibility made people furious. So, we are taking guard and will share our unbiased overview on this topic.
What are Alpha Points?
If we’re clear on Binance Alpha, let’s talk about Binance Alpha Points. Binance Alpha Points are basically a trading volume-based point system where users can earn points for every buying volume they make on the Alpha Market.
Points Mechanism
Binance Alpha Points are calculated daily based on the sum of the two factors below:
Balance Points: Your total asset holdings on the Binance Exchange (Spot-listed tokens across all accounts and Binance Alpha account) and Binance Wallet (limited to Binance Alpha tokens and tokens available on the Binance Spot market only. Any tokens that are not supported in Binance Spot or Alpha trading, such as LSD tokens, are not considered eligible assets).Volume Points: Your Alpha token purchase volume through the Binance Exchange and Binance Keyless Wallet combined.
Selling Alpha tokens does not affect points.
Your total Binance Alpha Points = the sum of your daily points combining Balance Points and Volume Points over the past 15 days.
How are the Points Calculated?
Balance Points
$100 to <$1,000 = 1 point/day$1,000 to <$10,000 = 2 points/day$10,000 to <$100,000 = 3 points/day$100,000 and above = 4 points/day
Volume Points
Volume Points were also introduced alongside Balance. But there’s a tricky rule, the points are decided in this way: 2², 2³, 2⁴...
$2 → 1 point$4 → 2 points$8 → 3 points$16 → 4 points$32 → 5 pointsAnd so on...
So, What Went Wrong?
Since the start of the program, it never got the limelight. Mostly because of its unconventional nature, and it was traded through the Binance Web3 wallet, which required a certain level of on-chain expertise.
But once Binance announced Alpha 2.0, everything changed drastically. With Alpha 2.0, users can trade from the main exchange itself. There’s a separate tab for Alpha within the app, and users can buy directly using their Spot or Funding balance without worrying about which network they are interacting with. And that was a certain hit. People flooded in and started buying from there.
A major leap came when Binance announced the $PROMPT Airdrop for Alpha users. The airdrop was actually pretty big and certainly outperformed most airdrop farmers. The rule was simple: if you ever traded in Binance Alpha in the last 30 days, you’d get free 400 $PROMPT.
This airdrop meta attracted millions of people who are now actively trading on Binance Alpha. The team then announced a couple more Alpha Airdrops for its users, with a simple eligibility criteria: Alpha trading in the last 30 days or having $100 in volume. That’s it! This was the moment people went berserk. Binance Alpha became the new airdrop meta for everyone.
But apart from the shiny part, there’s also a dark side to the story. The place became overcrowded, and if the original eligibility criteria had stayed, people would have received only peanuts, because it already had hundreds of millions of users trading in Binance Alpha daily.
The Point System Controversy
One of the major highlights of this entire scene was the constant rule changes for eligibility in both Wallet Launchpad (TGE) and Alpha Airdrop. First, the rule was simple: if you ever traded in Alpha and traded a certain volume in a certain period, you'd be eligible. But with Alpha Points, it became harder to get in.
The core mechanism of Alpha Points was meant to reward users who:
Use Alpha daily and trade tokensShow consistency and have a good balance on the exchange
The balance part on the exchange didn't bother much, but the points system was very hard. It was a 15-day rolling cycle where every day your points would update, and the last day's points would get excluded. So the only way to get good points was to trade daily, which bothered many people.
The first airdrop was given to people with 65 Alpha Points, and surprisingly, the second one was given at 80 points — a 15-point gap. You can't get 15 points a day unless you have a million dollars on Binance. So that sparked controversy.
The New Points Rule
Binance was aware of the situation and tried to escape from it ASAP. They introduced a boosted 2x points system for users. The rule was simple: if you trade using a limit order or use BSC tokens in Binance Alpha, you'll get 2x volume counted for what you generated.
Should You Use Binance Alpha
Binance Alpha isn't free, and the airdrop meta and eligibility are also changing day by day. It requires certain fees, burns, and slippage costs to earn Alpha Points, which is fair if you're eligible for the airdrop.
But most of the tokens listed there are either in a very early stage or pretty volatile, so trading them would cost you additional fees and slippage charges. And if you're recklessly generating volume, you might lose much more money as slippage can reach an extreme 7 to 8 percent.
So, what should you do now
I think it's safe to target $256 in buy volume, which will generate you 8 Alpha Points and require fewer swaps. Plus, you should focus on Solana chain tokens, which have lower slippage and the lowest fees among all the chains out there.
You should also use the custom slippage option and set the lowest slippage possible to avoid further charges and asset losses. And you must choose a less volatile token with good volume.
Binance Alpha was a solid pick in its initial stages, where you could get a handsome airdrop by just doing 1 to 2 swaps in a week or so. But after the platform got overcrowded, it was necessary to introduce a stricter eligibility criterion for fair distribution.
Binance Alpha 2.0 made a Gigantic $206 Million volume in a single Day & earned record-breaking fees during this period, which only points to its popularity and how aggressively people were farming it. So it requires consistency and a little bit of smart work to outperform the majority.
#BinanceAlphaAlert #AlphaAirdrop #BinanceAlpha