How long can the Binance Alpha bonus period for ZKJ and KOGE continue?

Author: Fairy, ChainCatcher

Last night was not Christmas Eve. The hottest "massive pool brushing" targets in Binance Alpha, ZKJ and KOGE, experienced a synchronized flash crash.

In two hours, ZKJ plummeted from $2 to $0.29, a drop of 85%. KOGE crashed from $57 to $24, and even briefly touched $8. Its market value vanished, and liquidity evaporated instantly.

The joint collapse of ZKJ and KOGE hit the soft spot of the Alpha model like a heavy punch. Is it an unexpected loss of control for individual projects, or is the entire incentive mechanism approaching a critical point?

The Collapse of the "Mining Pool" Paradigm

In the Binance Alpha game, users generally prefer to use tokens with "low wear" to increase volume, and ZKJ and KOGE are representative of volume-boosting tools, together accounting for over 87% of the trading volume of Alpha tokens, especially ZKJ, which has been used by users to boost scores for more than a month.

However, the chips of ZKJ and KOGE are highly concentrated, with the top ten addresses of KOGE holding as much as 93%, while ZKJ is close to 80%. Behind the hype of volume manipulation, there is actually a liquidity risk that could be triggered at any time by the "controllers".

16 days ago, ZKJ and KOGE jointly established the ZKJ/KOGE liquidity pool on PancakeSwap, which has accumulated over 30 million dollars worth of equivalent tokens. The community once rumored that the ZKJ-KOGE trading had extremely low slippage, attracting a large number of traders to participate, which set the stage for a flash crash.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's analysis, three main addresses caused the successive collapse of ZKJ and KOGE last night due to the dual pressure of "large liquidity withdrawals + continuous selling."

The three major addresses have clear divisions of labor, withdrawing millions of dollars in bilateral liquidity in succession, and then using methods such as exchanging KOGE for ZKJ and concentrated dumping of ZKJ to "relay suppress," gradually triggering a cliff-like drop in the token price. KOGE experienced a significant decline first, and after the collapse of the KOGE price, it further catalyzed the drop of ZKJ, completing the harvesting of the two tokens' LP and holders.

Aunt Ai pointed out that in addition to these three main forces, there are several "cooperating addresses" with hundreds of thousands of dollars also participating.

Why Did Large Investors Suddenly Withdraw Liquidity?

In fact, just the day before yesterday, the KOGE token project team 48 Club issued a "meaningful" announcement: "$KOGE has been fully released from day one, with no lockup. 48 Club has never promised in any form not to sell treasury holdings. Just like Binance has never said it wouldn't sell $BNB. Please research on your own, and the risk is yours to bear."

Once this announcement was issued, it triggered market alertness, leading to a slight decline in KOGE and ZKJ on that day, with many community users viewing it as a "dump warning." Although crypto KOL BroLeon from Australia later revealed that the project team denied any connection to the dump, this "risk warning-style" official tweet could very well become one of the key catalysts for major holders to withdraw liquidity. Once liquidity participants sense signs that the project team may reduce their holdings or withdraw liquidity, they will quickly take actions to withdraw pools to avoid losses from sudden declines.

At the same time, ZKJ is also facing a critical time point: on June 19, approximately 15.53 million tokens will be unlocked, accounting for 5.04% of the current circulation, with a market value of about 30.3 million USD. Additionally, the overall trading volume of recent Alpha activities has significantly declined, and the profit-making effect has weakened, causing liquidity providers to reassess the cost-effectiveness of continuing their participation.

In addition, there are some other speculations in the market. Crypto KOL Danny mentioned that the initial APY of the KOGE - ZKJ pool is extremely high, attracting a large number of users to follow suit and quickly accumulate tens of millions of dollars in liquidity. After this, large holders quietly established short positions on ZKJ in centralized exchanges. When the scheduled "detonation window" arrives, they start exchanging KOGE for ZKJ and then quickly sell ZKJ back to USDT, achieving dual harvesting of both suppressing the coin price and earning contract profits through "spot + contract."

How long can Alpha's bonus period last?

Since the launch of the Binance Alpha Points strategy, the trading volume of Binance Wallet has surged rapidly, with market share exceeding 90%, driving the overall transaction volume of wallets to a hundred times higher than before, and the on-chain transaction volume of BNB Chain has also risen sharply.

On the surface, this is a successful case of boosting user activity on the platform and enhancing the overall blockchain ecosystem. However, when we peel away the facade of this data prosperity, it becomes evident that this is a "pseudo-activity" bubble driven by point incentives and user engagement manipulation.

The sudden collapse of ZKJ and KOGE was like a needle that punctured this bubble ecosystem. These two projects exposed a series of structural issues such as the uneven quality of tokens on Alpha, the high degree of control over certain projects, and fragile liquidity. The high trading frequency and high return expectations created by Alpha may not have been built on a healthy and sustainable logic of user participation.

Meanwhile, the threshold for Alpha points continues to rise, breaking the initial illusion of "everyone can participate" in inclusive finance. Now, the Alpha score line has been raised to 247 points, which is already close to the breakeven point for many retail investors. Crypto KOL Ice Frog pointed out that whether it is the point consumption mechanism, fee adjustments, or the integration of points into financial products, Alpha's "dividend period" has actually come to an end. He stated: "In fact, this has never been a fair competition; any incentive mechanism built on the basis of internal competition is essentially not about 'encouraging participation,' but about 'accelerating elimination.'"

After the incident, Binance Alpha introduced new regulations, announcing that the trading pairs between Alpha tokens will no longer be included in the points calculation. However, based on the evolution of rules over time, it seems that Alpha has been "patching up"; whenever issues arise or controversies break out, they start to make adjustments.

However, rather than continuously making corrections, we should perhaps question from the very beginning: what kind of incentive mechanism can truly serve the long-term interests of ordinary users? And what truly benefits the industry?