On a deep night in May 2025, the Binance Alpha trading competition was in full swing. Hundreds of thousands of users entered the battle, striving to leave their names on the leaderboard. Meanwhile, a crypto trading studio quietly took action in a brightly lit office, eyeing a vaguely defined loophole in the competition rules.

Phase One: The Temptation of Loopholes

Han Xiao (pseudonym) had already set up an 'arbitrage chess game' before the Alpha project went live. He noticed that although Binance required participating users to trade Alpha tokens, it did not clearly specify in the initial announcement whether the behavior of exchanging project tokens counted as valid trading.

Thus, Han Xiao utilized over 100 accounts controlled by the studio to meticulously design a 'wash trading' path:

Using exploit methods (such as creating their own pools, constructing their own trading pairs, etc.) for off-chain conversion;

Simulating trading volume with minimal price differences, rapidly transferring Alpha tokens between multiple accounts;

Using automated scripts and distributed IP to obscure behavior trajectories.

Within a few days, the studio's accounts continuously refreshed trading volume, with some terrifying accounts even reaching trading volumes in the tens of millions.

Phase Two: Community Doubt

The Binance community is not lacking users with keen eyes. A seasoned trader pointed out in the community: "Some of the top-ranked accounts have strikingly similar trading patterns, and there is no real market depth fluctuation to support them; they are likely engaged in internal wash trading."

Meanwhile, a blockchain data analyst published an on-chain graph on the X platform (formerly Twitter), showing that account wear and actual pool depth were inconsistent, sparking extensive retweets and discussions. The Binance risk control team quickly responded and launched a detailed investigation.

Phase Three: Countermeasures and Liquidation

By comparing multiple dimensions of data such as trading counterparties, price deviation, and order behavior patterns, Binance quickly identified abnormal behavior patterns and confirmed that most of these accounts did not use compliant tokens from the Binance spot market for Alpha purchases, but instead used exploit methods to bypass the market, creating false trading volume.

On June 11, Binance officially announced, clarifying that **"only using tokens listed on the Binance spot market for Alpha project purchases counts as valid trading"**, and corresponding penalties would be imposed on accounts violating the rules, while suspicious paths on-chain would be reported to prevent other projects from being harmed.

Epilogue: Fairness and Warning

The studio's operations ultimately fell to on-chain transparency and community power. Binance reiterated its emphasis on a fair trading environment, stating that all similar activities in the future will introduce a 'on-chain audit + AI behavior recognition' mechanism and encourage users to actively report suspicious trading.

"You can play with technology, but do not challenge the bottom line of rules—especially in a place where everyone is watching the whole network."

So, an hour ago, Binance released the participation qualification explanation for the Alpha trading competition!