Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

Last night, U.S. President Trump announced a pardon for Binance founder CZ, which means the U.S. government has lifted the previous restrictions preventing CZ from operating financial businesses. This also creates the preconditions for CZ's return to Binance's frontline operations and CEO position.

After the announcement, mainstream cryptocurrency prices surged. Considering that Trump has previously pardoned several crypto individuals sentenced to various terms, and the increasingly deep relationship between crypto capital and the Trump family, this is interpreted as a further positive signal from Trump towards the crypto industry.

For CZ, this is indeed a significant moment. He stated on Twitter that he would do everything possible to help the U.S. become the cryptocurrency capital and promote the development of Web3 globally.

However, compared to these macro issues, the outside world is more concerned about the impacts or adjustments CZ will bring to Binance after more than a year away from frontline operations, especially whether his return will bring more wealth effects to Binance.

In the nearly two years since CZ's departure, there have been significant changes in Binance's internal and external environment. From the early launch of the Web3 wallet by OKX, which challenged Binance in areas like inscriptions and memes, to Hyperliquid capturing a large market share in perpetual contracts. Meanwhile, major competitor Coinbase has acquired over a dozen projects in the past year to fill its gaps or enrich its product line, such as Deribit, Sensible, Spindl, Opyn, etc.

Perhaps influenced by the previous $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S., Binance has maintained a very restrained attitude in terms of product lines and acquisitions over the past two years. Aside from following the trend to launch a Web3 wallet, there have been few major moves. Yet, against this backdrop, Binance launched the Binance Alpha, a game-changing product, leveraging its position in liquidity and influence to successfully consolidate its advantages in user traffic and trading volume, also driving the BNB price to new highs.

However, while attracting a large number of users and providing substantial airdrops, Binance Alpha has become a target for many altcoin projects to exit liquidity. Recently, there have been multiple instances of tokens plummeting immediately after being listed on Binance Alpha, causing significant losses for many retail investors.

Many opinions suggest that the low threshold for listing on Binance Alpha has negatively impacted the development paths of projects and the industry ecosystem. "This mechanism seems to benefit a large number of small projects, reigniting new possibilities for ICOs, but in reality, it creates an incentive trap where short-term monetization is prioritized over long-term building. To some extent, the monopoly of BNB is not just about attention and liquidity, but about changing the entire industry's rules of the game—replacing 'long-term building' with 'quick exits,'" said independent researcher Haotian.

From the outside perspective, exchanges represented by Binance have become roles that exploit all liquidity and premiums in this cycle. Base's head Jesse also sarcastically remarked, "If you're ready to fight against CEX projects that charge 2-9% of token supply fees, please raise your hand."

For an exchange chasing profits, Binance's actions are understandable; all goals can revolve around collecting more trading fees. However, as a "pillar" of the industry and having repeatedly positioned itself as a significant builder dedicated to industry development, the expectations for Binance extend beyond its own status to guiding and constructing positive industry development.

It remains unknown how CZ will view and adjust the operational mechanism of Binance Alpha after nearly two years of not directly participating in Binance's operations, but his recent series of statements and actions regarding BNB Chain and memes on X have already annoyed a considerable number of users.

For a long time, BNB Chain has been one of Binance's core strategic directions, but its ecological development status has always been unsatisfactory, far less open and diverse than other chains like Base. The main ecological projects such as PancakeSwap, Aster, and Lista DAO mostly have backgrounds in Binance or among the Chinese community, with some even directly managed by Binance employees. Other ecological types outside of DeFi are also relatively scarce.

Especially since a year ago, chains like Solana have attracted a large user flow with memecoins, while BNB Chain has not kept pace with the market. CZ subsequently provided many personal elements (such as dog names, nicknames, and statements), driving the rise of BNB Chain-based tokens like &BROCCO, $CZDOG, $4, $GIGGLE, and $BinanceLife, successfully establishing BNB Chain's foothold in the memecoin wave.

However, CZ's level of involvement in this memecoin wave has led many to believe he has lost perspective. "As a leading figure in the industry, he shouldn't lead retail investors to gamble on meme coins," said crypto KOL @cs_zhaozilong.

The contributions made by Binance and CZ to the industry are undoubtedly significant and meaningful, but looking at the overall ecosystem of the crypto industry, memecoins have very limited contributions to industry building. If CZ is merely satisfied with his own traffic and user growth, it will be difficult for the outside world to have higher expectations of him. Especially in this context, can CZ lead Binance to further break through the ceilings of growth and compliance?

To make matters worse, Binance's fundamental base has recently come under significant scrutiny. In the recent 1011 crash event, the role Binance played has also raised many questions. Numerous crypto industry executives and KOLs have accused Binance's internal oracle malfunction as the cause of the market crash. Although Binance issued an explanation and compensated some users, it still reflects significant flaws in Binance's trading structure and risk control. Moreover, this is not an isolated incident.

While this is unlikely to shake Binance's position in the exchange sector, it will inevitably have a certain negative impact on the public image of the crypto industry in the global market, regulatory attitudes towards crypto trading, and Binance's overall industry competitiveness. For CZ, who emphasizes industry responsibility, this will be an exceptionally complex situation.

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