Author: Scof, ChainCatcher
The takeout market has suddenly become lively recently.
JD.com is making efforts, Alibaba is entering the market, and Meituan is taking on the challenge. A three-way battle has begun. We can see that "free milk tea", "10 billion subsidies", and "30-minute delivery of good products" are coming one after another, but the logic behind them is not complicated: bind users through high-frequency consumption scenarios (takeout), thereby laying the foundation for their own instant retail business.
This is very similar to the fierce competition among exchanges in the crypto world. Binance’s Alpha Points system is the most typical example. Points for new listings, airdrop rankings, and trading rankings - in other words, it is also a “subsidy war” in the digital asset field. It is not about competing for new users, but competing for users’ attention, trading behavior, and loyalty.
Other exchanges are also not idle. Bybit followed suit and launched the pledged version of Alpha points airdrop, benchmarking Binance's gameplay and trying to compete for the same group of highly active users; OKX announced that it would launch a million-dollar airdrop plan.
This is a typical stock game.
Alpha Points Coupons Reach New Heights, Ordinary Users Are Marginalized
The popularity of the Alpha sector continues to rise. On May 5, Binance Alpha's transaction volume exceeded US$274 million, and the number of daily transactions exceeded 1 million for the first time. The key to this surge in data is the rising "Alpha Points" threshold.
Data source: Dune, @Pandajackson
In the initial stage, 50 points might be enough to qualify for short-selling. But the score line in the latest round has soared to 142 points, and nearly 10 points must be obtained every day in the past 15 days, corresponding to a trading volume of $1,024. Many ordinary players were caught off guard.
Crypto KOL Xia Xueyi said that even if she lost tens of thousands of dollars in a month, she was still "not qualified." Because under this mechanism, only large traders and studios that are continuously active and trade at high frequencies can maintain their points competitiveness.
At the same time, although Binance has launched consolation prizes such as "UID tail number X lucky airdrop", it actually has limited appeal to real retail users. A large number of subsidies ultimately flow to institutional users and score-brushing teams.
This is very similar to the "freeloaders" in the food delivery war: they flock to new platforms for short-term subsidies, but once the price advantage is gone, most people will return to the platforms they are familiar with and trust.
Binance Ecosystem’s Conspiracy: Designing Rules and Creating Traffic
Let's look at the strategy behind the Alpha points system: the Stakestone project uses 5% of tokens for IDO, 1.5% for main site airdrops, and 3.93% for old users, with a total of 10.43% of tokens invested. These tokens brought more than $5 million in potential selling pressure at a price of $0.06, and even approached $9 million at the high point.
However, the project team did not choose to sell immediately, but guided the trading volume and maintained the stability of the coin price, and finally achieved the "standard requirements" for listing on Binance. This is not a simple market behavior, but a "cooperation game with the algorithm."
In other words, the exchange does not wait for the project to grow naturally, but has designed an admission system that says "If you want to go online, you have to dance to my tune." Alpha points are used to screen users, trading volume is used to screen project parties, and coin price performance is used to screen market value management capabilities.
Finally, the closed loop is completed: traffic comes in, data looks good, transaction volume soars, and the platform wins.
Who is the winner? Who can hold on to the end?
The war between exchanges is actually the same as that between food delivery platforms: spending money to attract people, subsidizing the market, and creating a traffic boom. But for users, what is really left after the excitement? Many people work hard to score points in the Alpha points system and lose money to exchange for qualifications, but in the end they find that they did not get the airdrops or participate in the new listings, and they just added bricks to the platform data.
Platforms can change their tactics repeatedly, but users’ choices are always realistic. Many people will switch platforms for short-term subsidies, but once the price advantage disappears and the rules become complicated, most people will return to the place they are familiar with. Subsidies can only bring traffic, but not retain trust.
This also leads to a practical problem: Alpha is defined as a place to "incubate high-quality projects", but the projects listed do not always perform well. Some projects start high and end low, and it is difficult for them to enter the spot area of Binance's main site, and they are regarded as "temporary project areas" by users. Over time, will this frequent occurrence of low-quality listings damage Alpha's reputation and even affect users' confidence in the entire Binance listing system?
From a more macro perspective, does the crypto world still have an "incremental market"? If everything has become a battle for stock, how do we ultimately measure the value of users?
In this era of stock game, exchanges need users’ loyalty and behavior; users need the platform’s trust and long-term returns. If this relationship starts to become unbalanced, it will be a greater cost than missing an airdrop.
The food delivery war can at least bring a cup of "free milk tea", so many users hope that the subsidy war can continue for a while so that they can save more money. Similarly, seeing Binance, OKX, and Bybit take turns to compete for users, users also expect other exchanges to be more aggressive - not just let users "work to score points", but really make concessions and turn competition into a benign game that benefits users.
