Introduction

With the development of AI technology, the technical threshold for Web3 products has relatively lowered, making the competition for attention and liquidity in marketing even more intense. However, market capability has always been an important aspect that most project teams tend to underestimate. Based on this, XDO attempts to launch this "Web3 Market Annual White Paper," aiming to report market experiences: dissecting and sharing excellent marketing design ideas, hoping to assist entrepreneurs and industry marketing practitioners.

In 2025, the changes in market activities are quite clear: project teams are forced to shift from the previous excessive pursuit of "looking prosperous" DAU to more pragmatic goals such as transaction volume and TVL, which are direct indicators of revenue generation. As a result, the number of activity templates has decreased, and the gameplay has simplified, leading to a more pragmatic mindset among both project teams and users. Users are also beginning to care more about the safety of their principal and the certainty of returns, while project teams are more focused on obtaining real liquidity, real trading users, and a sustainable business growth curve that can be seen by platforms and markets before listing.

In summary, 2025 is the "Year of New Settlement Indicators" and the "Year of Entry Competition." As growth targets shift to being based on actual benefits or values like "funds staying/transactions occurring," competition naturally turns to "who can keep users' fund-related behaviors within their ecosystem."

This is also why wallets are being redefined in their strategic significance. Taking Binance as an example, Binance Wallet is gradually becoming a new entry point into the ecosystem: driving traffic to the main site, pre-listing project pools, and binding trading behaviors to products through points and tasks. The platform seeks not just a lively number of participants but sustainable liquidity and users who can continuously generate transactions. Therefore, activities are no longer just unilateral subsidies from project teams, but rather a tripartite interest structure involving platforms, projects, and users: platforms leverage liquidity and trading users as advantages, project teams exchange tokens and budgets for traffic and trading behaviors, and users exchange attention and trading for predictable returns.

However, the harsh reality of 2025 is this: as activity expectations become more pragmatic, attention cycles are compressed, and the "freshness period" of new projects becomes absurdly short. Once TGE occurs, market attention towards projects sharply declines, leading project teams to concentrate resources on launching and sprinting before TGE, while the ongoing operations post-TGE are long underestimated, and Post-TGE gradually becomes a hollow zone; whether a project continues to operate and remains active after TGE is perceptible to users, but the reality is that very few projects can maintain an active state post-listing. This is partly due to the limited number of projects with a sustainable business model based on continuous demand, and partly because project teams often do not pay much attention to ongoing operations post-TGE. Once a project enters a silent period after listing, it becomes increasingly difficult and costly to bring users back after they have churned away—this is a warning left by 2025 and a topic that must be addressed head-on in 2026.

A deeper issue is the cultural disconnection: many projects create impressive pre-listing metrics but overlook the need for culture and spiritual symbols to sustain long-term consensus. The relationship between the community and founding teams increasingly risks becoming a one-time collaboration of "doing tasks—getting rewards—dispersing," where projects exert significant effort on data but remain culturally hollow, or lack any community consensus beyond exploiting rewards. Meanwhile, project teams are overly reliant on KOLs, leading to more activities being tailored exclusively for KOLs, separating them from the basic user group, and transforming the community from participants into spectators. When projects only focus on KOL groups, they inadvertently create a sense of opposition with retail investors. Additionally, KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers)—core individuals in the community who participate long-term, are willing to contribute, and spread information voluntarily—are often overlooked.

This "2025 Web3 Market Annual White Paper" will unfold around three levels:

• Review the most representative types of market activities in 2025: platform-based activities, TVL deposit activities, community participation activities, simplified narrative & promotional rhythm dissemination, and clarify their respective driving mechanisms and result amplification methods.

• Summarize the common shift in mindset between project teams and users in 2025: users place more emphasis on certainty and realizable returns, while project teams view market activities as tools for acquiring liquidity, trading users, and pre-listing momentum, all while attention cycles shorten, Post-TGE hollowing expands, and cultural and community management are long underestimated.

• Outlook for 2026: how these activity logics will continue to evolve, and the core trends and challenges that project teams need to face head-on.

  Thank you for reading this far. If you are not a marketing staff member of a project team, you can skip directly to Part 3.

Notable Project Marketing Imprints Left by 2025

For project teams, user behavior and psychological states change every year, and the flow of attention and distribution channels also evolve. Therefore, before designing long-term strategic marketing, three things need to be clarified. First, what type of users do you want to attract? Second, what benefits can you offer them? (Ideally, this benefit should not overdraw your own tokens but be provided by a third party). Jiayi has previously elaborated on how to design "Wool Comes from the Pig's Body" core business long-term marketing strategy methods for further reading. Third, is it smooth for your activity users to participate? Are there any bugs to exploit? And the art of balancing the interests of the studio and current task metrics.

2.1 Using Core Advantages to Exchange Target Tokens and Other Benefits to Capture the Market, with Binance Wallet as a Representative Case Crushing OKX Wallet to Secure the Top Position

Wallets were once passive tools, but they have now become a constructible marketing infrastructure. @Binance Alpha is a typical case where platform capabilities align closely with user motivations. It has surpassed OKX Wallet through the aforementioned long-term marketing strategy methods.

Binance Alpha represents a true breakthrough innovation in crypto marketing, with the key change being: wallets have transformed from "asset storage tools" to "project discovery centers." Binance has directly integrated the discovery entry for early projects into @BinanceWallet. Users no longer need to go to external platforms to find new projects; they can explore projects and receive incentives right within the wallet. Binance Alpha prominently showcases projects with momentum, and if a project performs well enough on Alpha, it may also have a chance to be considered for a spot on the exchange. The entire system creates a positive feedback loop:

Projects want exposure and traffic → Users join and receive rewards → Projects gain highly matched new users → Binance achieves higher wallet usage rates and more trading activity.

In the Binance Alpha system, the most critical point is that rewards are given to users who genuinely trade, bring liquidity, and are willing to pursue new projects. Binance's advantages lie in liquidity and user volume, while Alpha merely turns these two advantages into a more efficient distribution channel, further squeezing the survival space of second- and third-tier players:

Project teams issue tokens as costs → Exchange for Binance's exposure and traffic, striving for liquidity + further listings.

Binance directs users through the wallet → Users generate trading behaviors.

Users trade and complete tasks → Exchange for rewards → At the same time, contribute trading and liquidity to projects.

Binance aims to maintain a user structure that can generate transactions within Alpha, and as projects develop, the user structure also changes, so it must continuously optimize mechanisms and activities to allow core value users to win effortlessly.

2.2 From Completely KOL-Centric Marketing to Emphasizing Overall Community Culture Building—Different Volume Marketing Strategies from Kaito to Sahara

In the first half of 2025, an innovative solution project for public domain traffic attention, @KaitoAI, emerged, and most project teams began to use Kaito activities as their primary marketing approach. However, Kaito's incentive structure inherently favors "whoever has greater influence is easier to be seen and rewarded." Thus, market promotion formed a fixed route: projects want volume, collaborate with KOLs, KOLs produce content, and ordinary users observe. This process can indeed create some excitement, but retail community participation feels weak, and the common memory of the project is perceived as KOLs advertising for airdrops. Consequently, project teams' traffic is initially concentrated on the Kaito platform. From Kaito's perspective, it is undoubtedly successful because it follows the core principles of strategic activity design I mentioned earlier.

The transition from UGC on third-party platforms to self-platforms began with XDO's client @SaharaAI during its ICO on @buidlpad. The starting point for Sahara's UGC is "to let the community engage and benefit before the project issues tokens." Sahara's UGC activities do not rely on monetary rewards, do not require users to complete tasks, and do not set various leaderboards. Instead, they first introduce a clear cultural symbol representing the Sahara AI community and brand—the mascot Bitsy (the ears in my current avatar represent Bitsy, which is so cute that I still use it). Coupled with Sahara's ICO timing on @buidlpad, it encourages community evangelists to participate better in the early ICO qualifications. This group is no longer just focused on free tokens but consists of individuals who have a strong trust and love for the project.

You will see many users not completing assignments but sincerely expressing themselves as members of Sahara. Some create videos with AI, some draw, some write serialized novels, some produce promotional music and shoot music videos for the community, and some even handwrite diaries daily, recording their experiences in the Sahara community and why they like Bitsy and the Sahara AI team. When users are willing to document their stories in this project, it indicates that they have integrated this project and community into their life narratives.

The results are also impressive.

• The main force of this UGC activity shifted from the KOL group to ordinary community users, with the aforementioned KOC users playing a significant role in this activity. Sahara AI's UGC content is no longer concentrated in the hands of a few; the community begins to produce and disseminate content spontaneously.

• The community has developed a common language, common symbols, and shared memories with the Sahara AI team. The mascot Bitsy has become a meme and identity marker that everyone understands; whenever they see the yellow-eared fox, they know it is Sahara AI. Discussion costs have decreased, and the speed of dissemination has increased.

• The real data brought by the diffusion of community emotions led the activity topic #AIforALL to reach the second place on Twitter's trending topics, with 330,000 users participating in the entire activity, and Sahara's new listing on Buidlpad exceeded the original target by 700%.

  While there were certainly users engaging in volume manipulation, the final rewards were for ICO participation qualifications, and the team manually screened each UGC creator's content. Therefore, the ROI was extremely high, and based on this result and innovation, the ICO UGC activity has been extended as a regular program by Buidlpad.

However, Sahara AI also has a regret: Sahara's UGC activity was able to ignite the community for a month in the market, but it did not connect with sustainable cultural extensions afterward, causing the heat to fade. This is a common issue for many projects; they can ignite but not sustain. Although Sahara has already proven to the market that culture can retain users, only continuous cultural output and community mechanism management can serve as a "religious" firewall to become a long-term moat. The cultural continuity post-TGE must continue and even require more effort.

2.3 Simple Slogans + Precise Rhythm Control = Beautiful Emotions Before Listing; Marketing Rhythm Control for Projects like Sign and Kite (To B, Weak Community Sensation, Difficult to Perceive Products)

@sign has created a Web3 orange dynasty with the slogan "Sign Everything." The rhythm goal of Sign is to first strengthen and enlarge the core user group, using the simplest slogan to brainwash users into equating Sign with major projects. It is important to note that, for the market, Sign does not belong to the category of projects that can be quickly established as 'kings' through technology or product narratives. The founder @realyanxin once said, "What matters is whether we can have 100 people in our community earn seven figures." He also mentioned that after TGE, the foundation would use tokens to support internal entrepreneurship within the community, essentially making the community recognize that "following Sign can lead to profits; TGE is not the end but the beginning of the next stage."

I still remember that during the peak popularity of Sign, Yan Xin and the community's official Twitter account interacted frequently with users, prioritizing interactions with those whose Twitter profiles featured Sign elements. This provided users with clear feedback: as long as they participated earnestly and were "one of their own," they would always be seen by the official team (see the sign). Being seen could lead to becoming one of the community members who profit from Sign. The dissemination of Sign resembled a natural flow of water; everyone engaged in simple activities, and then the official team provided ample affirmation, with the community sharing tweets and mutually supporting each other, gradually forming a positive feedback loop where the more users participated, the more likely they were to be seen, and the more willing they were to continue participating.

Another example is @GoKiteAI, which uses minimalist keywords and precise rhythms to convey project value to ordinary users, quickly aligning community perceptions. Kite, as a public chain born for AI payment with AI technology as its core advantage, faces the concern that technical projects often fail to communicate effectively with users, making it difficult for them to see differentiated value. To add, early public chains in the cryptocurrency industry that did not communicate effectively would cause users to feel more FOMO, but that era has long been eliminated.

Kite's first rhythm was established by showcasing names like @PayPal Ventures and @generalcatalyst, reducing uncertainty and providing initial credibility anchors, allowing users to make the most realistic judgment in their minds: if even the king of the payment track, PayPal, is willing to heavily invest in Kite as a bet on AI payment, it at least indicates that the team's technical capabilities are reliable and their capital resources are strong, amplifying the possibility of becoming a leader.

The second rhythm is that Kite AI aligns its story with the payment standards that the AI payment industry aims to unify, making it easier for community users to understand what it is doing. Kite is well aware that the narrative of the AI Payment Chain is inherently difficult to convey; if it obediently explains to users "how AI agents pay, how settlements work…" most people would not understand or have the patience to comprehend. Therefore, Kite first makes users believe that the project is on the path that the mainstream will take. Kite leveraged the hot topics of 402 and PayPal, releasing news in a compact timeframe about the cooperation with 402 and the investment from @coinbase, as well as collaborations with PayPal, creating a narrative that pushes x402 towards the universal standard for AI-driven payments and hinting at potential giant companies that could become its clients before the official launch. When everyone sees Kite associated with these names, they naturally feel reassured about the project's layout capabilities.

Kite AI has reduced users' cognitive costs. The community no longer needs to read white papers or study technical details; they can simply scroll through a few news articles to start trusting Kite AI.

2.4 Behavioral Mining Design Transformation—How to Turn "Liquidity" into "Participation" in Yield Projects like Plasma

In 2025, TVL yield projects exploded, with numerous locking activities emerging in the market, but very few projects could genuinely convert "liquidity into participation and retention." However, those deposit activities that performed well typically combined staking with token issuance expectations, quickly achieving FOMO effects through partnerships with liquidity giants. For example, @Plasma and @zerobasezk first attracted substantial liquidity through activities on Binance, then pulled this liquidity into their own ecosystem, forming deep engagement, which is the essence of their market design. Additionally, Buidlpad's HODL—depositing to exchange for ICO quotas & a series of lower valuation project activities—also achieved excellent results.

Plasma's strategy starts by promoting the continuous stock behavior of stablecoins within the ecosystem to attract users. Plasma collaborated with Binance Earn to launch an on-chain USDT yield product, allowing users who participate in Plasma's USD₮ periodic locking to enter the $XPL airdrop range. This design is not a one-time event; it is based on daily snapshots and a time-weighted holding accumulation reward mechanism, where long-term holding and higher holdings amplify the final XPL rewards.

At that time, the entire market was densely packed with TVL projects, and many projects appeared to offer "high" subsidies, but the design still revolved around "who can rush in last." Plasma's design is time-weighted— the earlier you deposit, the longer you hold, and the more you lock, the more real, quantifiable, and calculable your contributions become. This brings about a transformation in the behavioral incentive structure: Plasma relies on the cumulative weight of locked contributions to determine distribution. This allows retail investors to genuinely feel that even depositing 10 U can yield equivalent $XPL returns, significantly lowering the participation threshold for small amounts, and the high subsidies + TVL design attracted many retail investors.

Zerobase similarly established a connection with Binance Wallet, allowing users with high Alpha points to participate in priority allocations through the Booster Program. This design also first draws users in using the exchange's own points and traffic mechanisms, then leverages point contributions/trading behaviors to form real distribution rights, ultimately bringing liquidity into its ecosystem. Like Plasma, they emphasize user behavior thresholds in their activity designs.

Note: This article discusses the effects of activities more, but excessive reward airdrops will inevitably have some impact on their secondary existence. Our industry has long entered a cycle where both doing business and market-making must be strong.

The designs of Plasma and Zerobase indicate:

1. Grabbing liquidity from exchange entry is fundamental—cooperating with Binance as a deep traffic channel is the premise for the entire market's participation explosion.

2. Transforming TVL/behavior into calculable rewards—truly linking the reward formula with contribution to earnings.

3. Secondary market strategies cannot be ignored—Plasma's spot trading incentive design ensures that liquidity does not just remain in locked data but stays within the real market ecosystem, forming a stronger value cycle.

Common Shift in Mindset Between Project Teams and Users in 2025

Change 1: Activity KPIs Shift from "DAU" Orientation to "Long-Term Profit Contribution" Orientation, Focusing on Core Revenue Scenarios and Sustainable Behavioral Incentives. Simply using subsidies to activate without measuring revenue recovery is outdated.

The "hundred billion subsidies" market logic was extremely rampant in the previous cycle, where project teams attracted users through airdrops, subsidies, and tasks, making DAU look impressive. This led to a period of "on-chain prosperity" in the previous public chain cycle, but much of the activity did not correspond to real demand scenarios, let alone sustainable revenue and retention.

Thus, in 2025, the market reawakened to the realization that:

• DAU is no longer the goal and cannot independently prove value.

• The goals of activities are more directly grounded in sustainable revenue scenarios.

This shift has been forcibly solidified by platform rules and activity structures: in addition to the previously shared logic of acquiring Alpha Points revolving around "asset balances and Alpha trading behaviors," this effectively anchors the value of activities in the early asset flow and trading behaviors that can be settled.

This is also evident in the growth structures of Perp DEX/staking-type FI (such as prediction markets), where most project teams' incentive mechanisms follow the path of "trading volume/deposits → points → rewards." Users either earn points by depositing funds or through continuous trading, with the core of the activities being to exchange trading and capital occupation for future rights or rewards.

Meanwhile, the evaluation methods on the user side are also changing in sync: since 2025 has not seen the anticipated altcoin bull market, participants in activities naturally place greater importance on "principal risk" and "return certainty." When evaluating activities in 2025, users typically first consider:

• Is the principal safe (will it be clawed back, are there any pitfalls in the rules, is the exit smooth)?

• Are returns calculable (is there a guarantee, is realization predictable)?

• What remains after subsidies stop (product retention, revenue logic, long-term demand)?

The activity design of trading as mining was first introduced by an exchange called Fcoin seven years ago, quickly seizing a large market share and even shaking the exchange landscape in the short term. However, due to rampant wash trading leading to a secondary market collapse and insolvency, the team ultimately fled, marking its end. Trading mining is an effective market capture activity, but very few projects can play it well in the long term or have the strength to do so.

Change 2: Attention Cycles Shorten, Project Teams and Users Enter a Vicious Cycle of Rapid Token Issuance and Monetization

Attention is not just a cryptocurrency issue; it reflects the underlying changes in society: from long videos needing to be sped up to short videos that are barely watched to completion; long articles are increasingly difficult to read in full, much like this article.

The cryptocurrency space is a microcosm of the real world, where the effects of capital and time are leveraged. Due to the fast-paced narrative updates in the industry, project lifecycles are short. Consequently, the attention cycle for projects has been further compressed to extremes, with new projects becoming "old projects" in just two weeks. Both project teams and users have formed a default consensus: the days surrounding TGE are often the times of highest liquidity, so everyone's attention is concentrated at the same time point, with project teams monitoring Pre-TGE data, users focusing on cashing out during TGE, and platforms watching trading volumes. Ultimately, the entire industry transforms into a "top-heavy" structure—extremely crowded in the first half, long-term hollow in the second half; the first half relies on emphasizing marketing to get exchanges to pay attention and fulfill obligations, while the second half seeks to realize profits through the secondary market. Such mainstream operations inevitably lead to a trend of altcoins returning to zero.

The consequence is that after TGE, everyone quickly turns to the next TGE, systematically abandoning Post-TGE, with project teams lacking motivation for long-term operations and users having even less reason to stay. The appearance of new projects daily masks the reality that liquidity is merely being shuffled between different pools, while truly driving mass adoption through new narratives, products, and scenarios becomes increasingly difficult.

For project teams, continuously maintaining community relationships, retaining users, and forming positive business models should be as important as TGE, if not more so, rather than burning all budgets at the moment of TGE. Once users disperse after listing, the cost of bringing them back will be extremely high, which is the biggest hidden danger I see from the market rhythm of 2025.

Change 3: The Overall Size of Crypto is Increasing, but the Initial Spirit and Belief Have Disappeared—"Token Values" Have Squeezed "Spiritual Symbols"

In 2025, many projects' market actions increasingly resemble a pure "numerical engineering" approach: points, leaderboards, tasks, and subsidies can be scheduled weekly, KPIs can be reviewed daily, and growth can be dissected by funnel. However, founders talk less about dreams and are less willing to spend time clarifying "who we are, why we exist, and what needs we aim to solve." The community and teams also more easily become two separate language systems—teams are only responsible for pushing data up, while communities only complete tasks to earn rewards.

Once the spiritual symbols are absent, it becomes challenging for participation to solidify into a sense of belonging. Behind any great business lies a cultural revolutionary symbol. Blockchain, BTC, ETH, and Binance have all achieved their current status due to this cultural consensus. However, today, the paths taken by successful individuals have been quickly forgotten by entrepreneurs and the market.

This is also a pitfall many projects encountered in 2025: they initially exerted great effort to generate volume and participation but lacked sustainable mechanisms and rhythms, finishing one round and assuming "culture has been established," then leaving the subsequent growth to the community. The reality is that culture is not like data; it does not automatically compound after a one-time spike; it resembles "repetitive labor"—you must continuously provide the community with a reason to participate, a symbol that can be retold, and a scene that can solidify identity. The ROI may not be immediately attractive; many things require persistence and what may seem "unwise" but can catalyze significant power in the long run. Yes, I want to mention again that Binance became the first exchange to propose a "not-so-wise" plan to refund users after the Chinese government banned exchanges in 2017, leading to hundreds of users from around the world eventually becoming Binance angels for eight years, becoming the core spark for Binance's internationalization.

Change 4: Over-Reliance on KOLs → Alienation from Retail Investors; KOCs (Community Key Opinion Leaders) Are Overlooked

In 2025, I observed many project teams mistakenly believing that "the market" equals "KOLs."

It seems that as long as they gather the top influencers, fill the topics, and pile up the heat, users will naturally stay. However, KOLs ultimately serve as important channels for amplification; they can amplify voices but do not establish relationships, and they can elevate emotions but do not retain consensus. When projects allocate resources and rights solely to KOLs, ordinary users will naturally feel like spectators, even feeling that they are merely there to provide liquidity, data, or background. Once this psychology forms, activities will shift from "closing the distance" to "creating opposition."

Aster's recent Human vs AI trading competition is a very intuitive example: the official activity itself is a "quota-based" funded trading competition, where not all users can directly sign up to participate, but rather watch a group of KOLs trade, leading to a comical yet inevitable scene of "arbitraging $10,000" and leaving. Such activities are certainly strong in dissemination and can easily create dramatic conflicts, but they also amplify a problem—when the main stage of activities belongs only to a few, retail investors naturally lack a sense of participation, leaving behind discussions that are often "watching the excitement" rather than strong links relevant to users.

KOLs are an important part of the industry, but their value has been exaggerated too much in 2025. Many projects mistakenly believe that doing marketing means merely developing KOLs, neglecting that the true holders of public domain traffic are KOCs—KOCs may not have the most exposure, but they are certainly the most stable supporters, organizers, and long-term participants within the community, even penetrating into other communities. They can sustain the heat of an activity over time, and when projects face fluctuations and doubts, they can steer discussions back in a constructive direction.

KOLs are very important community representative partners. However, activities must prioritize users, especially not to overlook the power of KOCs, treating them as core assets to manage, and establishing their identities, participation paths, and long-term material and spiritual incentives as mechanisms.

2026 Marketing Trends and Challenges

My thoughts on the marketing trends for 2026 are premised on the idea that a bull market driven by national and traditional capital giants will find it challenging to enter the altcoin market; attention will become even scarcer, and marketing ROI focused solely on public domain traffic will approach negative numbers; the era of AI will make it harder for projects to differentiate themselves through technology and products, while the homogenized content of "全民创作者" on X will gradually lead to user disinterest; and more open regulations will give rise to competition for attention in both public and private domains.

Based on this, I believe 2026 will be a return to simplicity: 1. The market will continue to compete with subsidies before TGE. 2. Low market cap projects with heavy community participation before TGE, where activities generate profits and can cycle sustainably, will become the mainstream operational strategy for emerging projects. 3. Users achieving significant results will rely on trust built through companionship and co-creation trends (a hopeful wish, but I believe project teams will awaken). 4. Private community management will be valued again.

Purely sharing with the pioneers navigating this chaotic market

In a fiercely competitive and chaotic market cycle, becoming the next unicorn is exceptionally difficult. Therefore, at the end of this article, I share an eternal market example of Binance's operations, hoping to provide concrete hope for everyone.

Do not forget that the market environment when Binance was established was generally considered difficult to produce the next centralized exchange giant; do not forget that Binance also experienced the awkward situation of launching a product that no one used:

$BNB was first ICO'd in July 2017, with 50% of it sold publicly at a valuation of $20 million. When enough chips were given to retail investors at the beginning, they had the motivation to treat themselves as "shareholder-style users" to follow the project team (low opening and high rise). Of course, we can see the results; Binance did not disappoint everyone, securing its position as the leading exchange in just a few years, and BNB has returned thousands of times in value to holders.

Binance captured the market by gaining user trust + strong PMF business capabilities. In 2017, during the 94 crackdown, when Chinese exchanges were completely banned, Binance quickly made the decision to shift its operational focus to overseas markets and chose to buy back tokens at high prices amid severe market panic and most project teams opting for rug pulls. This is the origin of Binance's hundreds of angels worldwide, a grassroots community that cannot be imitated by project teams. From then on, Binance became their faith. Thus, Binance began its journey of rapid penetration into local markets through angels from around the world, transforming from a "Chinese exchange" into a global exchange.

@cz_binance and @heyibinance, the two co-founders, embarked on their entrepreneurial journey without burdens, fully aware that becoming KOLs was the most cost-effective marketing strategy. They frequently voiced their opinions on social media, maintaining high exposure and communication, coupled with regular AMAs and deep engagement with the community, effectively managing both public domain traffic and private domain management (angels).

After eight years of development, I still believe the biggest trust crisis for Binance stems from the previous massive hacking incident involving North Korean hackers. CZ faced the market head-on with an AMA, and SAFU subsequently became one of the cultural symbols. This textbook crisis management paradigm is something many project teams still have not learned. Market operations can sometimes be very simple; it is not about whether one can do it, but whether one wants to do it. I have given many project teams very effective advice. Unfortunately, the projects that ultimately fell into major pitfalls did so due to a lack of courage and decisiveness.

The growth of Binance into the world's largest exchange is closely intertwined with the rise of BNB. The story of BNB is not just about "the token has risen, so it is successful," but also about turning "holding" into a reason for "using": fee discounts, consumption and rights within the platform, and products continuously providing clear return expectations to holders, leading to BNB chain gas becoming today's strong mainstream token. These mechanisms ensure that the token is not just a trading target but also leverages the wealth effect of BNB to attract and solidify supporters, pulling user behaviors back into the platform ecosystem; the stronger the platform, the more usage scenarios for the token, the stronger the willingness to hold the token, leading to users being reluctant to sell BNB for fear of missing out. Thus, it has become today's mainstream token, allowing many who were originally just buyers to gradually become more frequent users. Transitioning from "buying tokens" to "using tokens," and then from "using tokens" to "holding tokens." When holders continuously gain return experiences in usage scenarios, the platform's trading and cash flow can also be expanded; a stronger platform will further reinforce everyone's confidence in BNB—this is what I consider an excellent "product growth ↔ token value" positive spiral.

Sincerity is always the killer move in the market. Only with PMF can entrepreneurship stand firm in the market.

If you like our content, have unique insights into the market, or wish for long-term market cooperation, feel free to DM me @mscryptojiayi💌