$ZKJ and $KOGE were both manipulated and plummeted, waking up a large number of retail investors who were brushing trading volumes on Binance's Alpha platform from their dreams. Originally, they were brushing some trading volume to earn 'interest' from airdrops, but in the end, they lost even their principal. What exactly happened behind this? Who should pay for this disaster? I will try to analyze it deeply:

1) Let's start with the gossip about what exactly happened? Binance launched an airdrop activity for brushing trading volumes on the Alpha platform. ZKJ and KOGE, as popular projects, were featured on Alpha, and a large number of retail investors started to brush volumes madly in anticipation of airdrops.

However, just when the Alpha event was in full swing and retail funds were flooding in, a large holder 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 of the KOGE pool, KOGE passively followed the decline. Retail investors saw the crash and started to panic sell, further accelerating the collapse cycle. In the end, those users who were 'diligently' brushing volumes on Binance Alpha for the airdrop not only did not wait for returns but also lost all their principal.

2) Who should bear the responsibility in this 'evil process'?

The project party might say: We didn't ask the big holder to dump; this is a market behavior, but a TGE valued at 2B can actually be manipulated by a few large holders; it’s simply unbelievable;

The dumping large holder might say: My money is mine to handle freely; losing money is my own fault, but knowing that such a precise timing would cause a chain collapse raises questions about their intentions;

The Binance Alpha platform could also say: We are just providing a trading platform; users bear their own risks, but without Binance's endorsement, how would users dare to invest huge amounts? Now that something has happened, how can we possibly distance ourselves;

You see, every stakeholder in this chain seems to have a reason to distance themselves, except for the retail investors who are left bewildered: Why did this hot Alpha Summer end before it even started? Where is my principal?

3) So where did the problem actually lie? On the surface, it seems like an accidental market risk, but in reality, it is a premeditated systematic harvesting:

The project party 'designed' a correlation trap, the large holder chose a precise 'timing' to strike, and Binance provided a 'legitimate' harvesting platform, while retail investors bore all the losses.

Specifically:

Binance Alpha made strategic errors under competitive anxiety. Seeing OKX making inroads in the Web3 DEX and wallet sectors, they were anxious as their on-chain trading share was being eroded. Alpha was originally designed quite well—to give project parties a testing period, users an observation period, and themselves a risk control period.

But Binance obviously overestimated its risk control capabilities and underestimated the 'malice' of market participants. In a bid to quickly reclaim market share, they abruptly transformed Alpha from an 'observation deck' into a 'battlefield'. To put it bluntly, Alpha was not originally designed to create a better Binance, but to build a new 'Binance' on-chain?

Even more critically, Binance was overly idealistic about the market environment when designing the Alpha mechanism. The 'win-win-win' model envisioned by Binance sounds beautiful: project parties test the market through Alpha, users brush volumes to earn returns, and the platform earns fees? This logic sounds great, but it’s based on a fatal assumption—that everyone would 'act according to the script'. What’s the reality? In this liquidity-weak small coin market, any artificially created heat is false prosperity, and it can burst with a poke.

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, an incentive mechanism gathering retail funds, and ample liquidity available for harvesting, everything was in place.

With this combination, Alpha—originally an observation area meant for 'risk isolation'—turned into a breeding ground for large holders to 'precisely harvest'.

In the end, the whole incident exposed the structural flaws of the current market ecology, where each participant was pursuing short-term profit maximization: project parties wanted to quickly exit liquidity for cashing out, large holders wanted precise arbitrage, trading platforms wanted to increase trading volume and revenue, and retail investors always wanted to grab excess returns. Everyone was calculating their own interests, ultimately leading to a 'perfect' defeat in a multi-party game.

But after all, this happened on the Binance platform, the world's largest exchange, which should have been the 'stabilizing force' for the entire industry, but instead became the main stage for this harvesting drama.

Binance's Alpha strategy essentially used its brand credibility to guarantee others' harvesting actions. Wanting market share, wanting trading volume, wanting fee income, the result was stepping on their own toes.

Alas, it's lamentable that if 'top players' act so recklessly and no one is responsible for maintaining order, when can we expect the industry to truly mature? The answer is likely further away than we think.