Recently, Binance's Web3 wallet has created a huge wave in the Web3 wallet market with its innovative 'Alpha' gameplay, rapidly increasing its market share to occupy 90% of the market. Behind this phenomenon are its clever points airdrop mechanism, strategic adjustments from competitors, 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 a 'whale-like' expansion? Beneath the surface of the 'gold rush', what inward pressure and real benefits do users face? Is this merely a brief traffic carnival, or a model innovation capable of leading industry transformation?
Competitors' gaps and points gameplay are devouring the wallet market.
Since its launch, Binance's Web3 wallet has shown explosive growth in market share. Dune data indicates 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, Binance Wallet's peak daily trading volume exceeded $930 million, while on April 22, this figure was only $76 million.
The activity level of the BNB Chain ecosystem has also been boosted by Alpha. The TVL of the BNB Chain has significantly increased, growing by over $6 billion from early 2024 to May 2025. This is closely related to the enhancements brought by Binance Alpha. According to official data, among the top 20 Alpha tokens by trading volume, half are native BSC projects. In the top 10 Alpha tokens for new active users, 90% are BSC tokens, with 6 projects having new user shares exceeding 20%. On-chain BSC data has also seen substantial 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, it is evident that Binance Alpha is becoming an important engine for the activity and capital inflow of the BNB Chain.
It is worth noting that the sharp increase in market share of Binance's Web3 wallet coincides precisely with the timing of competitor OKX's suspension of its DEX aggregator service. On March 17 of this year, OKX announced the suspension of its DEX product aggregator trading service, after which OKX wallet's market share plummeted from about 50% to 3.6%. Almost at the same time, on March 18, Binance announced the launch of the Binance Alpha 2.0 test version, integrating Alpha trading directly into the Binance exchange.
Data also shows significant changes. From March 10 to March 17, the trading volume market share of the Binance wallet was only 8.3%, but by March 24, the market share of the Binance wallet grew to 50.2%, becoming the wallet application with the highest market share.
On April 17, BinanceAlpha announced the upcoming launch of the GM token and the start of an airdrop plan. The search index for BinanceAlpha began to rise rapidly, and its trading volume also experienced 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. As the popularity of the points system increased on social media, the trading volume for the week ending May 5 reached $1.574 billion, a 27-fold increase compared to the week before the airdrop was launched. This also propelled the total wallet trading volume on the chain to $1.876 billion, breaking historical records.
The 'sweetness' and 'burden' of Alpha users
This explosive growth fundamentally stems from Binance Alpha's points airdrop gameplay. 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 in Binance Alpha, and then determines which users can participate in each airdrop event by setting threshold points.
However, with the surge in the number of users, this points system is becoming a new competitive arena. 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 of $100 to $1,000: 1 point per day; total asset value of $1,000 to $10,000: 2 points per day; total asset value of $10,000 to $100,000: 3 points per day; total asset value of $100,000 and above: 4 points per day.
In terms of trading volume, purchasing tokens worth $2: 1 point; purchasing tokens worth $4: 2 points; purchasing tokens worth $8: 3 points; purchasing tokens worth $16: 4 points; purchasing tokens worth $32: 5 points. After that, for every doubling of purchase volume, an additional 1 point is awarded (for example, purchasing $64 earns 6 points, purchasing $128 earns 7 points, and so on). It is generally considered that trading $32 in a single day to earn 5 points is a relatively cost-effective choice.
Additionally, this points system is calculated on a rolling basis over 15 days, meaning users cannot rest on their laurels and must continuously grind points to maintain their level.
This points system has several relatively obvious attractions for users. First, the rules are clear, allowing users to predict the number of points they can earn based on their strategies to chase the airdrop threshold. Second, under this points system, there is essentially no first-mover advantage; later users can also participate and earn similar levels of points as those who joined earlier.
However, as the competition intensifies, the threshold for points is continually rising. From the initial standards of $50 in trading volume or $100 in asset balance to the latest project DOOD increasing to 168 points. According to this standard, a new user needs to maintain a daily points volume of over 11.2 points to participate in this airdrop. Based on calculations, users meeting the criteria must hold over $1,000 and conduct transactions exceeding $1,024 daily to accumulate enough points for the airdrop. Considering on-chain fees, trading slippage, and other costs, the total expenses could exceed $60. Compared to the final value of the airdrop at $81, the return could be about 35%. However, one must also consider the opportunity cost of the $1,000 principal, resulting in a 2% return rate over 15 days, which may not be as high as a token's price increase, but is relatively more stable. Thus, many 'haircut' studios opt to invest in bulk.
Traffic carnival or paradigm revolution?
In fact, is Binance Alpha really a new type of airdrop giant?
The airdrop activity announcement for DOOD revealed the threshold for eligible users. A total of 30,271 accounts met the requirements, and based on an estimated airdrop amount of about $81 per account, the total scale of this airdrop activity is approximately $2.48 million. Other token airdrop activities did not disclose corresponding address data, so specific amounts cannot be determined, but the estimated scale should be similar. For a project airdrop, a scale of several million dollars does not seem high, especially compared to the hundreds of millions or even over a billion dollars of airdrops from Hyperliqued, Movement, and others, and it is even less than the airdrop amount of a single large holder.
However, from the perspective of promotional effects and the trading data brought to the ecosystem, the investment-output ratio of Binance Alpha is undoubtedly impressive. Essentially, this is akin to the trading mining frenzy that was popular a few years ago. With Binance's evident success, many exchanges are launching similar gameplay.
On May 7, Bybit announced the launch of the WEB3 points program, where users can earn WEB3 points by completing tasks such as holding cryptocurrency assets, making exchange transactions, and inviting friends.
On May 5, OKX exchange announced a major functional upgrade to the DEX aggregator built into its self-custody wallet, OKX Wallet. New features include on-chain market analysis, smart fund tracking, and Meme mode. As of May 11, the market share of OKX Wallet rebounded to 8.5%.
Meanwhile, in the process of exchanges competing for the wallet market, some traditional wallet applications have become unfortunate 'collateral damage'. In June 2023, MetaMask's trading volume market share could still exceed 60%. By May 2025, however, it had fallen to just 2.9%, and Binance's Trust Wallet faces a similar predicament.
Overall, Binance Alpha has ignited a new wave of 'haircut' frenzy through its points system, similar to the early liquidity mining of exchanges, stimulating trading activities through potential incentives. On one hand, it serves as an effective tool for Binance wallet, BSC, and other ecosystem products to gain market share and enhance user activity. Through its carefully designed points and airdrop mechanisms, it has successfully attracted a large number of users and capital, even eating into the market share of competitors. There is a clear positive correlation between the recovery of BNB Chain and the promotion by Alpha, forming an 'Alpha-BNB Chain flywheel effect.'
On the other hand, for users, the 15-day rolling points, points burning mechanism, and constantly increasing airdrop thresholds force users into a state of continuous high-intensity trading akin to an 'Alpha treadmill', where the true net returns are often difficult to measure precisely, and they face various hidden costs such as slippage and gas fees. For many ordinary users, the 'gold rush' may gradually evolve into an 'sweatshop' model, leading to an inward spiral effect that could spread from users to exchanges. If the investment-output ratio of this airdrop drops below the profit line, the current lively scene could quickly cool down in a short time.
However, for the industry, the mechanism design of Binance Alpha has many aspects worth learning from, especially for projects that anticipate airdrops. Binance Alpha can be seen as a classic example of achieving great results with a small investment.
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