Original title: (Binance Alpha Points 'Battleground': A Web3 Wallet War That Devours 90% of Market Share)
Original author: Frank, PANews
Recently, Binance's Web3 wallet has caused a stir in the Web3 wallet market with its innovative 'Alpha' gameplay, rapidly increasing its market share to occupy 90% of the territory, attracting attention. Behind this phenomenon are its ingenious points airdrop mechanism, competitors' strategic adjustments, and the resulting chain reactions and significant recovery of the BNB Chain ecosystem.
How does Binance Alpha cleverly utilize market gaps and user psychology to achieve an expansion akin to 'whales devouring'? Beneath the surface of the 'gold rush,' what pressures of 'internal competition' and true earnings do users face? Is this merely a temporary traffic carnival, or is it a mode innovation capable of leading industry change?
Competitors' void and point systems devouring the wallet market
Since its launch, the market share of Binance's Web3 wallet has shown explosive growth. Dune data shows that by May 12, 2025, Binance's Web3 wallet accounted for as much as 95.7% of the total trading volume of all tracked Web3 wallets, ranking first. This is a significant leap from 54.1% in March 2025. On May 10, 2025, the single-day peak trading volume of the Binance wallet exceeded $930 million; on April 22, this figure was only $76 million.
The ecological activity of the BNB Chain has also been boosted by Alpha. The TVL of the BNB Chain has significantly increased, with growth exceeding $6 billion from early 2024 to May 2025. This is closely related to the improvement of Binance Alpha; according to official data, among the top 20 Alpha tokens by trading volume, half are native BSC projects. In the top 10 new active users ranked by Alpha tokens, 90% are BSC tokens, with six projects having new user shares exceeding 20%. On-chain BSC data has also seen significant growth: approximately 4.3 million new users in the past week, with daily new addresses exceeding 1 million for two consecutive days and active addresses exceeding 2 million. The total number of independent BSC addresses has reached 552 million. From this data, Binance Alpha is becoming an important engine for the activity and capital inflow of the BNB Chain.
It is noteworthy that the sharp increase in the market share of Binance's Web3 wallet coincides closely with the timing of its competitor OKX pausing its DEX aggregator services. On March 17 of this year, OKX announced the suspension of DEX product aggregator trading services, after which OKX wallet's market share plummeted from about 50% to 3.6%. Almost simultaneously, on March 18, Binance announced the launch of the Binance Alpha 2.0 test version, directly integrating Alpha trading into the Binance trading platform.
Data also reflects a significant change; from March 10 to March 17, Binance wallet's trading volume market share was only 8.3%, but by March 24, it had increased to 50.2%, making it the wallet application with the highest market share.
On April 17, Binance Alpha announced the upcoming launch of the GM token and the start of an airdrop plan. The search index for Binance Alpha began to rise rapidly, and its trading volume also saw significant changes. From April 17 to April 24, the trading volume reached $184 million, more than tripling from the previous week's $57.94 million. With the popularity of the points system gameplay on social media, the trading volume for the week ending May 5 reached $1.574 billion, a 27-fold increase from the week before the airdrop gameplay was launched. This also propelled the total trading volume of wallets on the entire chain to $1.876 billion, breaking historical records.
The 'sweetness' and 'burden' of Alpha users
This explosive growth fundamentally comes from the points airdrop gameplay of Binance Alpha. The Binance Alpha points system is a complex mechanism designed by Binance to incentivize user participation, filter active users, and allocate airdrop or TGE qualifications. It primarily distributes points based on user trading volume, balances, and other data within Binance Alpha, then sets point thresholds for each airdrop activity to determine which users can participate in the event.
However, with the surge in user numbers, this points system is becoming a new battleground for internal competition. The key assessment indicators of this points mechanism are twofold: asset balance and daily trading volume.
Asset balances are divided into four levels. Total asset value $100 to $1,000: 1 point per day; total asset value $1,000 to $10,000: 2 points per day; total asset value $10,000 to $100,000: 3 points per day; total asset value $100,000 and above: 4 points per day.
In terms of trading volume, buying $2 worth of tokens earns 1 point; buying $4 worth of tokens earns 2 points; buying $8 worth of tokens earns 3 points; buying $16 worth of tokens earns 4 points; buying $32 worth of tokens earns 5 points, and thereafter, for each doubling of the purchase trading volume, an additional point is earned (for example, buying $64 earns 6 points, buying $128 earns 7 points, and so forth). It is generally considered that trading $32 in a single day to earn 5 points is a relatively cost-effective choice.
In addition, these points are calculated on a rolling basis of 15 days, which means users cannot rest on their laurels; they need to continuously accumulate points to maintain their level.
This points system has several relatively obvious attractions for users. First, the rules are clear, and users can completely predict the number of points they can earn based on their own strategies to chase the airdrop threshold. Second, under this points system, there is basically no first-mover advantage; later users can also participate and achieve similar point levels as early participants.
However, as internal competition intensifies, the threshold for these points is constantly rising. From the initial standards of $50 trading volume or $100 asset balance, the latest project DOOD has raised it to 168 points. According to this standard, a new user needs to maintain a daily points amount of over 11.2 points to participate in this airdrop. According to calculations, qualifying users need to hold over $1,000 and conduct transactions exceeding $1,024 daily to accumulate enough airdrops. Including on-chain fees, trading slippage, and other costs, the total cost may exceed $60. Compared to the final value of the airdrop of $81, one can gain approximately a 35% return. However, this also considers the opportunity cost of the $1,000 principal; relative to the total capital investment, the 15-day return rate is about 2%. This return rate may not be as high as a single token's appreciation, but it is relatively more stable, which is why many airdrop studios choose to batch create accounts and invest in it.
Traffic carnival or paradigm revolution?
In fact, is Binance Alpha really a new type of airdrop big deal?
The airdrop announcement for DOOD revealed the user thresholds that meet the requirements. A total of 30,271 accounts qualify, and based on an airdrop amount of approximately $81 per account, the overall scale of this airdrop event is about $2.48 million. Other token airdrop events did not disclose corresponding address data, so specific amounts cannot be obtained, but the estimated scale should be similar. For a project airdrop, a scale of several million dollars does not seem high, especially compared to airdrop scales of hundreds of millions or even over a billion dollars for projects like Hyperliqued and Movement, and it is even lower than the airdrop amount of a single large holder.
However, from the perspective of promotional effectiveness and the transaction data it brings to the ecosystem, the input-output ratio of Binance Alpha is undoubtedly impressive. Essentially, this is similar to the trading mining that was all the rage a few years ago. As Binance's effects become evident, many trading platforms are also launching similar gameplay.
On May 7, Bybit announced the launch of a WEB3 points program, where users can earn WEB3 points by completing tasks such as holding crypto assets, conducting exchange transactions, and inviting friends.
On May 5, the OKX trading platform announced a major functional upgrade to its self-custody wallet OKX Wallet, which includes a DEX aggregator. New features such as on-chain market analysis, smart fund tracking, and Meme mode have been added. As of May 11, the market share of OKX Wallet has rebounded to 8.5%.
In the process of trading platforms competing for the wallet market, some traditional wallet applications have unfortunately become targets of 'friendly fire.' In June 2023, the market share of MetaMask's trading volume could still reach over 60%. By May 2025, however, it had dropped to just 2.9%, and Binance's Trust Wallet is facing a similar predicament.
Overall, Binance Alpha has sparked a new wave of airdrop enthusiasm through its points system, similar to the early liquidity mining of trading platforms, stimulating trading activities through potential incentives. On one hand, it is an effective tool for Binance wallet, BSC, and other ecosystem products to gain market share and enhance user activity. Through carefully designed points and airdrop mechanisms, it has successfully attracted a large number of users and funds. It has even, to some extent, encroached on competitors' market share. There is a clear positive correlation between the revival of the BNB Chain and the promotion of Alpha, forming an 'Alpha-BNB Chain flywheel effect.'
On the other hand, for users, the 15-day rolling points, points burning mechanism, and continuously increasing airdrop thresholds force users into a 'Alpha treadmill' of sustained high-intensity trading, making it difficult to accurately measure real net gains and facing many hidden costs such as slippage and gas fees. For many ordinary users, the 'gold rush' may gradually evolve into an 'exploitation factory,' and this internal competition effect could spread from users to trading platforms. If the input-output ratio of such airdrops falls below the profit line, then today's bustling scene could cool down quickly in a short time.
However, for the industry, there are many aspects of the mechanism design of Binance Alpha that are worth learning from, especially for projects that expect to distribute airdrops. Binance Alpha can be considered a classic example of achieving great results with minimal investment.
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