What started as an X rant of a crypto investor blaming Binance Alpha for raking airdrops while leaving testnet users with negligible rewards turned into a discussion, an open letter to Binance, and a trending hashtag #StopBinanceAlpha. Table of Contents Binance Wallet’s dominance What is Binance Alpha? Why did it get criticized? Binance Wallet’s dominance Primitive Ventures founder Dovey Wan emphasized the fact that Binance Wallet became a dominant power in the swap market after the shutdown of OKX Wallet due to its use by North Korean hackers. In her X post, Wan called Binance Wallet a MetaMask killer and brought up an 80% market share evaluation. Nobody on CT is talking about this, but Binance Wallet quietly became the global level MetaMask killer, ate the whole lunch of OKX wallet after its prolonged shutdown. Its market share just rips after launching of the alpha program, turned the wallet into a meme farming engine +… pic.twitter.com/XuBjKlguHy — Dovey "Rug the fiat" Wan (hiring) (@DoveyWan) May 14, 2025 Wan said that given Binance Wallet’s functionality, which makes it a “meme farming engine” and has millions of daily users, it is rather a funnel than just a wallet. She noted that CEX wallets serve as an on-ramp for many newcomers, and the centralized Binance Wallet achieved great results while working “against a decentralized ethos.” She elaborated further that the need to undergo a KYC procedure to use Binance Wallet streamlines liquidity towards Binance while unlocking all the Binance-curated services for users. What is Binance Alpha? Binance Alpha is a platform within Binance Wallet. The platform helps to look for fresh cryptocurrency projects that offer airdrops and squeeze their profits out. Through Binance Alpha, users may profit from the tokens not listed on Binance Exchange. Binance Alpha was introduced in December 2024, amidst the nascent memecoin craze. Read more: Binance Wallet unveils Binance Alpha to highlight emerging projects Binance Alpha highlights the early-stage projects that already have notable traction in the Web3 space. The platform allows users to buy tokens instantly at favorable rates during 24-hour windows. After purchasing, the tokens are available on the Alpha account. Binance Alpha Points that Binance users earn for completing some tasks or reaching specific achievements can be exchanged for participation in an airdrop of choice or a token generation event. To ensure that users won’t miss interesting projects, each one is announced beforehand via Binance’s social media accounts, and the countdown clock is attached. According to the Binance announcement , the tokens are picked by the exchange’s experienced team of experts who consider strong community interest and consistent growth. Why did it get criticized? The very fact that Binance Alpha offers its users the opportunity to benefit from already trending projects is problematic for those who helped to make these projects trending–the community behind these early-stage tokens. Critics point out that it allows people who had nothing to do with the project to get more rewards than those who dedicated their time to finding out the project’s weak spots in the testnet period. According to a Web3 enthusiast using a satyaa moniker on X, the problem with Binance Alpha is that this platform violates the decentralization principles, monopolizes the airdrop market, and most importantly, allows “token tourists” to get the most out of airdrops. On May 14, 2025, satyaa shared the first post that read: “Grind testnet for months. Give feedback. Squash bugs. Wait for that sweet airdrop… Binance Alpha: walks in last minute and gets the fat slice of the pie. damn..” The post found relative support from the crypto X, with many people responding to the post with the hashtag #StopBinanceAlpha. On May 15, satyaa shared another post. This time, he tagged Binance-related accounts on X and called his rant “an open letter from a community member and believer of decentralization.” 🟡 Dear @BinanceWallet @binance @_RichardTeng Are You Building Crypto Monopoly or Just Killing Early Communities? This is an open letter from a community member, and believer of decentralization. And I’m not the only one feeling this. Many of us are mad and we need to talk.… https://t.co/BAqCAewqC7 — satyaa (@satyaXBT) May 15, 2025 In the post that gained 7,000 retweets, satyaa likened the actions of Binance to a monopoly and referred to them as “extraction.” Here’s how he described the situation: “Oh, you completed testnet quests before it was cool? Posted threads, memes, brought in new users, ran Discord community nights? Congrats. You get diluted by people who just joined for one Alpha snapshot. This is not crypto. This is a game of pay-to-play, burn-to-earn, and pay-for-allocation. Even worse? The Alpha Points requirement keeps increasing. The fees keep climbing.” He said it is not Web3 and blamed Binance for caring mostly about how to impress venture capitalists. He said that the “real alpha” are the loyal users who help the project when no one else cares: “alpha points don’t build loyalty.” One of the X users responding to this post tried to defend Binance Alpha, saying that it helped them to earn more money than they were trying to earn as a usual community member. However, this standpoint found little support in the comment section, more loyal to the grassroots stance of satyaa. Another user pointed out that the lack of rewards for the community is rather the project’s fault, not Binance’s. The counterpoint to it was the lack of awareness from the side of Binance, which just decided to profit from new projects, whatever it takes. I understand you as a mediator thank you, but this controversy was created by binance itself who, without thinking long and only thought of reaping their own huge profits without thinking about what web3 really is — Retrofit | (Ø,G) Seismic (@Jono38003) May 15, 2025 Some ironically criticize Binance Alpha for encouraging its users to pay for airdrops (with Binance Alpha Points), which are normally free. However, it is far from being the main concern. Lol. So we now basically buy the airdrop with alpha points.. — Greatness (@iamgr8nesss) May 12, 2025 As of press time, Binance hasn’t responded to this debate. You might also like: Kevin O’Leary: Binance is an unregulated monopoly