Original Author: Alex Liu, Foresight News
On March 20, 2025, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched the "Vote to List" voting event, granting part of the decision-making power for token listings to the community. This cryptocurrency democratic experiment, involving millions of users, has garnered widespread attention in the industry while also sparking in-depth discussions about the boundaries of community autonomy, market manipulation risks, and the feasibility of decentralized governance.
From Centralized Review to Community Co-Governance
According to Binance's official announcement, the first round of voting will last until March 27, and users must hold at least 0.01 BNB (approximately $6.2) to participate. Each user can vote for up to 5 BNB Smart Chain ecosystem tokens. The initial candidate list includes 9 projects: BANANAS31 (Banana For Scale), BID (CreatorBid), Broccoli (Broccoli), Broccoli (CZ'S Dog), KOMA (Koma Inu), SIREN (SIREN), mubarak (mubarak), TUT (Tutorial), and WHY (why). The top two projects from the voting will enter Binance's professional due diligence process.
In response to vote manipulation during Binance's voting event, Binance co-founder He Yi commented that they will use vote washing techniques to eliminate cheating and ensure voting fairness.
Notably, there is a dual balance mechanism in the rule design:
Participation Threshold and Anti-Cheating Measures: The low threshold of 0.01 BNB ensures broad participation, while "vote washing" technology filters out fake accounts, maintaining openness while preventing manipulation.
Connection Between Community Will and Professional Review: Voting results do not directly determine listings; they still need to go through traditional due diligence processes such as compliance and security.
Ecosystem Focus Strategy: The first phase is limited to BNB chain tokens, which strengthens ecosystem cohesion while reducing the complex evaluation risks of multi-chain projects.
This "democratic selection + professional gatekeeping" hybrid model has been described by Cointelegraph analysts as finding a compromise between decentralized ideals and centralized realities.
Community Game: Enthusiastic Support and Underlying Currents
Within 24 hours of the event's launch, discussions on related topics surged on X. Most users welcomed the decentralization of participation rights, reflecting the market's desire for open governance. However, hidden complexities lie beneath the surface:
An arms race exists between tokens: Multiple project communities promise token airdrops and other rewards to attract holders to vote; extensive short-selling discussions: Since only a few tokens will be listed as a result of the event, the prices of unselected tokens may drop, leading some to suggest shorting all participating tokens for profit. After Binance launched several new contract trading pairs yesterday, all candidate tokens for this voting have already been listed for contract trading on Binance — "if you don't have confidence, you can short" is not just talk.
This fervent voting atmosphere inevitably recalls the explosive scene when Binance first implemented the voting mechanism for token listings in 2017. In response to users' views that "the voting mechanism implemented by Binance in 2017 was very effective," Zhao Changpeng stated, "The voting started off well. But later it somewhat tore the community apart, causing projects to attack each other. It felt like a PvP situation. Preventing cheating became increasingly difficult over time. We need to keep changing the model. Occasionally, we can still do it."
Mechanism Evolution: The Iterative Path of Eight Years of Voting History
Looking back at the development of Binance's token listing mechanism, it is undoubtedly a history of continuously seeking a dynamic balance between centralization and decentralization. From 2017 to 2019, during its startup phase, Binance relied entirely on its internal team for project reviews. Although the voting mechanism sparked a wave of enthusiasm, it was also accompanied by issues such as vote manipulation and bribery.
Entering the adjustment period from 2020 to 2024, Binance temporarily shelved the voting mechanism, opting instead for more controllable models like Launchpad and Launchpool for project listings, and established an Alpha project library for long-term observation. By 2025, Binance has relaunched the voting event with a new approach, introducing holding thresholds and vote washing algorithms, limiting the voting scope to a pre-screened project pool while retaining the final veto power of professional due diligence.
Through holding verification and strict rule design, Binance aims to build a healthier and more sustainable governance ecosystem.
Future Projections: Three Possible Paths for Autonomous Experiments
Looking ahead, this autonomous experiment may take three distinctly different development paths. Ideally, community consensus could allow quality projects to stand out, and the anti-cheating system could effectively purify the voting environment, thus forming a replicable governance template.
In less favorable scenarios, manipulation by major players could lead to bad tokens driving out good ones; the strategy of shorting all tokens might trigger a collapse of small and medium tokens.
The compromise reality might be: some dark horse projects are selected, and intermittent exposure of vote manipulation scandals forces the platform to continuously optimize rule design.
CoinMarketCap shows that the current total number of cryptocurrencies exceeds 13 million.
Behind the token listing voting is Binance's latest attempt to escape regulatory dilemmas. In this vast crypto empire, a super traffic closed loop formed by exchanges + wallets + public chains + communities + KOLs is beginning to take shape, and we await to see how it will stir the crypto landscape.
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