100,000 people left, those who lost money in Binance Alpha

Author: shu, BlockBeats

After the $ZKJ and $KOGE flash crash events, Binance Alpha's activity declined significantly. According to Dune data , the number of Alpha trading users plummeted from a high of 233,000 on June 12 to 195,000 on June 15, losing nearly 40,000 in just three days, a significant decline. As of today, the number of users who actually trade on the platform has further reduced to 70,000, showing a cliff-like decline in user enthusiasm and willingness to participate. Meanwhile, the marginal cost of scoring points has increased significantly, and the cost-effectiveness of Alpha games is deteriorating rapidly.

At the same time, some of Binance Alpha’s recent online projects have shown signs of “sinking it as soon as it goes online”.

BlockBeats calculates the profit of Binance Alpha's new points to claim project VELO. Under normal circumstances ($1,000 principal), the Alpha user income for this period is micro-profit. If transactions are calculated using Alpha tokens, it will result in a daily wear of US$4, an expected return of US$224 for 30 days, an expected cost of US$120 for 30 days, and an expected profit of US$104 for 30 days, an average daily profit of US$3.5.

Starting from 00:00 (UTC) on June 17, 2025, Binance Alpha has officially launched new regulations, and the transaction volume between Alpha tokens will no longer be included in the Alpha Points calculation. This means that strategies that once relied on ZKJ/KOGE and other score pool arbitrage will no longer be effective, and users will face higher thresholds for obtaining points and more complex liquidity structures.

It can be foreseeable that due to the $ZKJ plunge, Binance Alpha's incentive model entered a period of adjustment. The direct consequence of this mechanism replacement is that a large number of users who were originally active in the Alpha ecosystem are choosing to leave. Some people left the double currency pool of $ZKJ/$KOGE, while others found that the marginal income of scoring points was lower than the transaction cost and were no longer willing to invest energy.

In this interview, BlockBeats interviewed several Alpha users, including LP providers who suffered actual losses in this round of plunge, as well as ordinary participants who tried to "fight points arbitrage" but had lower returns than expected. Some of them have decided to quit the Alpha game completely, while others are still hesitating whether to continue looking for new opportunities. In their narrative, we were able to restore the true emotions and thoughts behind this "cliff-like resignation wave".

Those who gave up

"The early income is really high, the handling fee is still low, especially when I was on the Island of Adventure. In late May, I increased to 20 accounts one after another. Because of the frequent faces, I handed over the account owner's account to them, and I maintained the actual transaction volume of US$16,000 every day."

However, as the number of participants increased and the competition intensified, Jiang Jiu said that he had noticed something wrong in mid-June: "I realized something was wrong on the 14th. Several numbers had great losses that day, and the total was 160 U.S. It was too wrong, but because of the troubles, how to change the strategy, I ignored the risks that might be coming or that I don't want to admit, and I still had too many expectations."

What’s even more regrettable is that during the ZKJ plunge, a friend of Jiangjiu mistakenly thought that he was urging him to rush to increase his position in ZKJ, and his final loss was as high as 60%. Jiang Jiu recalled that he wanted to wait for his friend to reply before reminding him not to continue to swipe and wait and see the situation first, but the other party misunderstood his intention and immediately ended the deal. After buying, I found that I could not sell it smoothly, so I asked Jiangjiu for help. Jiangjiu didn't have time to explain in detail how to get out of the low price, which eventually led to friends watching the price drop. In this regard, he admitted that the core of this loss is not luck, but information analysis and communication costs.

When talking about whether they had contacted the project party, Jiangjiu said that she did not try to seek feedback. "This kind of thing is too common in the crypto circle. Unless the trading platform is willing to take the lead, retail investors will lose money if they have no place to reason, so they still have to be cautious."

He also added that since he lost the pool of low-cost transactions such as ZKJ and KOGE, the loss of points has increased significantly, and the reward for each issue has also dropped to around 50-60U, but the score threshold has become higher and higher. He is already on the verge of giving up, "But he still wants to struggle to see the benefits of the subsequent periods, but he has to give up if he is not satisfied.

Unlike Jiangjiu, Mosquito operates four accounts, with a total profit of about 5,000U before the plunge. The day before the plunge, ZKJ was found abnormal fluctuations, but because the currency price rebounded at that time, it actually increased his luck mentality.

"I found ZKJ fluctuated the day before. I resisted it for an hour and found that I made 5U after the rise. When I plummeted that day, I found that the pins were very powerful and thought they were the same as the day before."

This lucky mentality caused Mosquito to use the second account to continue entering the market after being trapped in 30U for the first account. "I thought it would be the same as the day before, so my number did not move and continued to do the task of 1800U with the second account, and the second number also began to plummet."

In the end, Mosquito coil decided to cut its losses and leave the market when the price of the currency fell to 0.8, with a total loss of more than 2,000U. "It is still not enough to pay attention to the risks. We should observe the size of the pool more often. The pool did indeed withdraw in large quantities that day."

Mosquito believes that the Alpha project is coming to an end. "The input and output are not proportional. It will be useless to be clipped a few times. Today, all accounts have been withdrawn from the minimum living allowance."

Not only mosquito coils, in BlockBeats interview, there were many interviewees who mentioned that the input-output ratio of Binance Alpha has declined, and many people no longer choose the multi-number strategy.

Alpha's bonus window may be closing.

Under the sunken cost, the scores are still continuing

Jie Ge is the founder of the BSC ecological community. He has been participating in Alpha activities since the initial Shell new launch. As a message transmitter in the community, he also failed to avoid the systemic risks this time.

"I felt at that time that when the "stablecoin" is no longer stable, the price fluctuates a lot. In fact, I already felt that the gray rhino was coming. However, because the management of the account and the time for trading will fill my personal life, (I was unable to control it in time)" said Brother Jie.

During the plunge, Brother Jie immediately stopped the loss and notified the members of the group, but still faced great losses. He believes that the loss cannot be entirely attributed to luck: "I can only say that I need to pay tuition to the market again. There are still many ways to avoid this situation. It's just that I happened to catch up with this time when I was brushing the big amount, and the two numbers were brushing at the same time, so I couldn't avoid the situation of cutting half on the spot."

This experience made Brother Jie reflect on his risk control strategy, especially the importance of on-chain monitoring tools. He felt that some tools needed to introduce on-chain monitoring were needed in the future. "I felt the price of this coin at the first time. The capacity of the pool is decreasing, so the price of the coin will bring greater fluctuations."

Despite this, Jee Ge said he would continue to participate in Alpha. "If there is profit, it is worth continuing to work hard. Of course, he also looks forward to more innovative and fair launch models of Alpha."

"The early strategy was 60,000 times 33 times, and then 130,000 times 66 times. The revenue has not been calculated in detail yet," Siner introduced. This high-frequency and high-value trading strategy can bring considerable benefits during periods of stable currency prices, but it also exposes greater operational risks.

His main loss did not come from market fluctuations, but artificial mistakes: "The loss is mainly due to the most mistakes in human operations. The first one is that Koge forgot to sell on No. 16, and then decided to win the 130,000 ft. It is a bit too radical. The numbers that forgot to sell have now dropped from 1,000 u to 400 u."

Large-scale account operations also bring efficiency challenges. "I usually brush all the time in 1-2 hours, but the workload of 170,000 is too high, resulting in a vacancies for four or five days in a row."

Unlike the users who left the market, Siner is still confident in the future of Alpha. When asked, will he continue to swipe alpha? Siner said, "It must continue, just found a lossless method." This means that he will continue to look for opportunities to speculate and fuck in the Alpha ecosystem, even after the rules are adjusted.

For Brother Tian, ​​who did not lose money in the ZKJ plunge, withdrawing from Alpha means that the sunken cost of the early investment cannot be recovered. "The sunken cost has been 200%. If you give up, it will be like it is wasted. And if you have a good project to go to Alpha, you will get the money back in one wave."

Brother Tian summarized his mentality in participating in the Alpha project in this way - "It's all garbage projects, so don't have feelings."

Conclusion

Jiang Jiu admitted that the profit of Alpha scores cannot cover the operating costs. "The reward is only fifty or sixty U now, the score threshold is high, and the trading slippage is getting bigger and bigger. You may only earn three or four yuan a day." The ZKJ/KOGE collapse took away not only the principal, but also a low-cost arbitrage path. Once the Alpha project cancels the rule that the transaction volume between token pairs is counted into points, users will face higher transaction wear and more complex points game structure.

Binance Alpha was once regarded as an innovative mechanism to revitalize activity and user engagement on the chain, but the current integral model obviously overestimates the long-term incentive effectiveness of transaction volume and LP, and also underestimates the risk of structural runs.

With the implementation of the new Binance regulations, Alpha is gradually shifting from a scoring arbitrage tool to an incentive mechanism that focuses more on real interaction and value capture. This means that points acquisition no longer only depends on trading volume or LP quota, but is more inclined to dimensions such as position duration, interaction depth, and real demand.

However, for many users who rely on low-cost scoring strategies, this shift forces them to reassess the significance of participation. If the future Alpha wants to restart the growth engine, it is necessary to find a new balance between fair distribution and risk control mechanisms.

For users who are still exploring in the Alpha ecosystem, it is recommended to strengthen risk management awareness, pay attention to indicators such as pool structure, token fundamentals and LP concentration, and avoid becoming a buyer in the next time systemic risk is exposed. After all, in this constantly trial and error Web3 world, the window of arbitrage always exists, but the cost of stepping on the mine has never been reduced.