《Binance Alpha: Bait, Power, and the Ambitions of an Empire》
Some say Binance Alpha aims to take down the ‘Luo Mao Party’?
Others say it is Binance's transformation of its own Launchpool gameplay?
If you take a step back and look at the whole picture from Binance to the industry, you will find that this seemingly simple user growth game has become a key move for Binance to transition from a CEX giant to an on-chain empire.
In this article, I attempt to systematically clarify the essence, game dynamics, winners, and eventual outcomes behind this game.
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1. The Essence of Alpha Points: A Controllable, Coordinated Planned Economy
On the surface, Binance Alpha points seem to be a user incentive system of "trading for points, points for airdrops," but if you look at it from a broader perspective, you will realize that it is not about rewarding users, but about reconstructing the distribution logic of power, resources, and liquidity. Binance has accomplished three things through the points system:
1) Precisely guiding user liquidity. Users' funds, attention, and trading behaviors are systematically directed towards platform-designated projects, with projects competing for traffic and TVL, leading to jokes like: "Luo Mao talents are what make Binance a major market maker."
2) Allowing project parties to “pay tribute” for tickets. Airdrops are no longer welfare for “broadly distributing users,” but a threshold for “project parties to pay protection fees.” Want liquidity, exposure, and cashing out? You must first fork over enough airdrop quotas to feed the points factory.
3) Creating users' anxiety over points and binding behavioral paths. The 15-day cycle + points consumption mechanism means that if you participate today, you are overdrawing your participation capacity for the next 15 days. Every participation is a choice regarding “future opportunities.”
Ultimately, project parties exchange airdrops for liquidity and cash-out channels; users gain airdrop distribution rights through trading and capital accumulation, while Binance firmly controls the initiative in resource allocation.
All of this is merely a planned economic arrangement on the liquidity supply side.
Why is it like this? Because as CEX's discourse power is squeezed by on-chain developments, Binance must consider how to extend its power to DEX and establish control over DEX. The points system is a strategic attempt.
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2. The Choice for Project Parties and Users: Whether to compete is not the question; the question is whether to comply or not.
The greatest ingenuity of the Alpha points mechanism design lies not in how it distributes points, but in how it compels every participant entering the game, whether project parties or users, to “voluntarily” engage in competition.
For project parties, points serve as a compliance test; I set the rules, you can choose not to participate, but if you do, then: you must accept Binance's points gameplay; you must determine the airdrop logic according to Binance's points consumption logic.
For users, the points consumption system constitutes a highly oppressive dynamic game: if you chase airdrops today, you are prepaying for future opportunities. Every decision you make is a bet on future resource allocation rights. Over time, this game will only leave two types of people:
1) The competitive top players, whose points soar to the sky, can participate in any airdrop, mainly consisting of specialized studios that can consistently benefit somewhat, but cannot change the long-term reality of diminishing returns.
2) The expendable cannon fodder, who cannot accumulate enough, miss out on projects, and exit the game; this group mainly consists of retail investors.
In this arrangement, project parties are the farming landowners, meticulously planting but must hand over their harvest; users are the repeatedly driven tenants, doing the hardest work to scramble for the increasingly scarce remaining quotas.
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3. Binance's Ultimate Intent: A Necessary DEX Expedition, A Convenient Cleanup
Through Alpha, the boundary between CEX and DEX under Binance will gradually blur. Importantly, users who score points on which platform, and on which platform projects queue up, determine the direction of incentives and traffic entry; whoever can do this holds the discourse power in the industry.
Points are bait, power is the truth; Binance's true goal has never been a petty strategy of taking down the ‘Luo Mao Party,’ but rather to ensure that project parties, users, liquidity, and attention all operate under the rules of “on-chain but not decentralized.”
Rules must go on-chain, but power cannot.
Fundamentally, Binance aims to move towards decentralization, but first must bring decentralization under its control, especially before it grows to the point of threatening Binance. Obedient decentralization is the only acceptable form of decentralization.
This is both Binance's logic of conquest and the deeper path of power expansion.
Moreover, our opposition has never been against a specific system, but against the power holder behind that system, who pretends to uphold a just order while quietly subsuming everything into its vassalage.
In such a power game, is it about taking down the ‘Luo Mao Party’?
That is merely the market noise that gets conveniently cleaned up during the empire's expansion.
If you see clearly through this game, it does not necessarily mean we must exit this game. In the hellscape of points, the empire never rejects loyalists but will certainly reap the hesitant.
No breaking, no standing; on the road of the empire's expedition, I, Ice Frog, will definitely support the competition to the fullest.
This cycle is one of accelerating competition, and it will certainly lead to the collapse of the Alpha mechanism, allowing the myth of power control to ultimately perish under the logic it mistakenly believes it can control.
