RideTheWave

Translated: To all practitioners, investors, and industry observers who care about the future of Web3: I am an entrepreneur who has been working silently in the Web3 industry for many years. Like most of my colleagues who have ideals and are eager to change the world through blockchain, I was full of enthusiasm and expectations for this industry. In particular, after many efforts, I finally opened a communication channel with Binance Labs to discuss potential investment possibilities. Before the conversation started, my heart was full of longing and admiration. Regardless of whether we can get investment in the end, my team and I regard this opportunity as a valuable learning experience, at least to exchange our understanding of the industry from different perspectives. However, throughout the process, whether it was Dana's vulgar questioning and contemptuous treatment in the meeting, or being repeatedly belittled or even ignored in subsequent communications, Dana's attitude as the head of Binance Labs did not reflect any interest in the project itself, but rather more of a condescending suppression and insult. I was very surprised. Why did Dana, as the head of Binance Labs, not even have the patience to listen to potential investment projects? Without knowing the project at all, he could criticize us with an arrogant attitude? In the initial period of time, our team constantly reflected internally, carefully reviewed, and even tried to find out whether there was any inappropriate wording during the Pitch, which led to Dana's misunderstanding of the project. However, as I exchanged experiences with more and more other project parties, I gradually realized the truth - it turned out that the so-called "back door" could be taken through "white gloves". Other project parties also clearly mentioned that Dovey and Chris were among them. I deeply disagree with this Pitch method, and I have tried to instigate other project parties to stand up and expose this phenomenon, but no one dared to do so. He Yi once publicly released Binance's method for reporting bribery, but this act of publicly encouraging reporting is itself a paradox. The vested interests of the project parties that have already listed their coins are unlikely to give up their current interests or sell out their former "allies"; and the project parties that have not listed their coins dare not easily offend the largest centralized exchange in the industry and its core members, and cut off their own retreat. Taking a step back, is it true that no one has ever reported it? Has Binance ever handled any related cases fairly, impartially, and openly? These questions still have no answers. As everyone has actually observed and felt, there are a lot of old dramas of interest transfer within centralized exchanges, led by Binance, and these dramas are even getting worse, and the dreams of entrepreneurs are getting further and further away. Here, I decided to stand up and disclose the solid facts and evidence I have, because if the entire industry turns a blind eye to the secret operations, profit transfers and extortion of these people and projects, Web3 will eventually deviate from its original intention, and the ultimate victims will be every team and user who truly loves blockchain and Web3. I stepped forward first because I knew I was just one of the thousands who still had a dream; I dare not come forward with my real name, please forgive my cowardice, because I don’t want my team members to lose their opportunities to make a living in the industry because of my momentary “impulsiveness”. Main characters involved: 1. Dana: currently lives in Hong Kong, female. He was fired from Kuaishou due to poor reputation. Later, he studied for an MBA at Stanford and met Dovey, who was at Danhua at the time, thus getting the opportunity to quickly enter the Web3 industry. As He Yi's assistant, she has a high degree of authority in Binance. Especially for Binance Labs, almost all projects that want to get investment cannot bypass her. Her catchphrase to the project parties is "I can represent Binance Labs", and her attitude to the outside world is extremely strong. When the project comes to report or seek resources, she often interrupts the other party before they finish speaking. She does not have a deep understanding of the actual content of the project, but habitually questions the project party "Do you understand Web3?" Externally, she makes people tremble with fear, because project owners are deeply afraid of offending her and completely losing the opportunity to cooperate with Binance; internally, she is good at upward management, compiling all kinds of "stories" or "reports" to help the projects she likes get investment and listing, so that Binance executives, especially He Yi, also give her great trust and empowerment. From becoming Dovey's puppet, to winning over interest groups herself, and finally accumulating projects on her own, she has amassed wealth of hundreds of millions of US dollars. 2. Dovey: A global traveler, female, and calls herself He Yi’s best friend. Through her identity as He Yi's best friend, she positioned herself as the "chief white glove" of Binance Labs. At the same time, she colluded with He Yi's assistant Dana to form a complete chain of interests with Binance's listing department. Dovey's routine operation is to first obtain the priority unlocked consultant tokens (usually 1%) for free; require the project to be listed on Binance before making an investment; a small investment + a large amount of free consultant tokens; through her own information within Binance, contact the project party to request investment before Binance invests or lists the coin. At her peak, she acted extremely arrogantly, even publicly claiming that she was the top female influencer in the industry, and said "Even Yi He listens to me." Dovey's personal wealth accumulation has reached a level where she can completely rely on no external funds to support the investment behavior of her fund Primitive. Her single investment amount often reaches millions of dollars. As for Dovey's wealth accumulation process, you can search her history at Danhua Capital by yourself. There is too much information. 3. Nicola: Currently lives in Hong Kong, female. Dana's "henchman" in Labs. She is Dana's junior from Peking University, and therefore has gained Dana's trust and is responsible for cooperating with Dana's various specific actions to make money. Nicola appears to be extremely obedient and does whatever Dana tells her to do. But in fact, her situation is very awkward. She can either be a loyal lackey and keep her job, or make independent judgments on the project and be abandoned. She formed a chain of interests with Dana and quickly earned considerable income, achieving a leap in her personal wealth level. However, due to the uneven distribution of the spoils in the process of making money and the fact that she was always pushed to the front line, she appeared to be "ugly". She had many complaints about Dana in private, but did not dare to confront her openly. 4. Chris: currently lives in Shanghai, female. He once worked at Sequoia China, where he was laid off due to poor performance. However, he found a new way out through his "mediation" ability on the Web3 project. Chris is familiar with Dana, Nicola and others. He is responsible for introduction and matchmaking, helping some projects that have no technical or application value and rely purely on packaging popularity to quickly obtain investment from Binance Labs and successfully list on the market. She is good at killing two birds with one stone. In the Hooked, Sleepless AI and Catizen projects, Chris assisted the project owners in communicating with Dana and Nicola, and arranged a series of benefits transfers to Binance. On the other hand, she won the appreciation of Folius Ventures through the successful layout of the Sleepless AI project, and successfully joined Folius after being laid off by Sequoia, and made Folius profitable again on the Catizen project. 5. Claudia: Currently lives in Hong Kong, female. The person in charge of Binance Listing reports directly to He Yi. Binance's quality assessment of projects relies heavily on her interpretation. It is said that she owns 4-5 mobile phones and is very low-key. Examples of improper money-making and gray operations: 1. Hooked Protocol. Participants: Dovey, Chris, Nicola, Dana. An old-fashioned girlfriend coin, it is one of Dovey’s representative works at the peak of her personal influence in the last cycle. The founder Jason is Dovey's ex-boyfriend who met both parents. He also met Dana of Kuaishou in business when he was the CEO of Midu. It was natural for him to directly promote the investment in Labs managed by Dana through Dovey. This project was assigned to Nicola for investment. Chris got the news as soon as possible and promoted the investment within Sequoia, using Sequoia to endorse the project. In a short time after obtaining the investment, Hooked successfully listed the coin, which triggered attacks and doubts from the entire network. For a time, "Bestie Coin" became a hot word in the industry, but there was no follow-up. 2. Sleepless AI. Participants: Chris, Nicola, Dana, Claudia. Taking advantage of the popularity of AI and brushing fake data, a Web2 game was temporarily converted into an AI concept project, and the token was hastily launched to cut leeks. This project, which has no AI technology at all, caused an uproar in the entire market when the token announcement was released. Even the Binance token team allowed it to grab the extremely important ticker of "AI". The Web3 AI track has become a laughing stock in the traditional AI field. For those entrepreneurs who are truly committed to promoting the development of the Web3 industry, this phenomenon is ridiculous. Chris used inside information to promote Folius’ investment before the coin was listed, and accepted benefits from the project on behalf of Nicola and Dana. Later, Chris successfully joined Folius after being laid off by Sequoia due to this “merit”. The project was also executed by Nicola as an investment manager. Although it was once reported by the community for cutting leeks and exposing bribery, it was eventually left unresolved and there was no follow-up. 3. Catizen. Participants: Chris, Nicola, Dana, Claudia. The Telegram mini-game traffic scam is a representative work of harvesting centralized exchanges. The project party used means such as data falsification, and the actual controller Lao Yang was very eager to find Binance's resources and network. After obtaining Folius investment, he contacted Nicola through Chris, and then paid tribute to the two and Dana, and then quickly obtained Labs investment. After announcing the investment in Binance Labs, they used the investment endorsement and the expectation of listing on Binance to ignite short-term market enthusiasm, and then harvested ordinary users after Binance was quickly launched, while the project party and internal interest groups all received huge profits. 4. Altlayer. Participants: Dovey, Nicola, Dana, Claudia. Under the modular chain narrative, Dovey sent a project to Binance. After investing in the project, she introduced the project founder Yaoqi to Binance Labs and handed it over to Nicola as an internal investor of Binance to be responsible for the execution. And Dovey, as a white glove of Binance Labs, received benefits on behalf of Dana and Nicola. The project owner provided a large number of tokens to the interest group in exchange for a green channel for Binance investment and listing. The project owner has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with this unreasonable distribution in private, but in the face of the powerful internal forces of the exchange, it still has only one option: to cooperate. 5. Cheems. Participants: Dana. As the meme narrative became popular, Dana deliberately created a project to create a wealth effect for BNB Chain in the meme field. He also used his internal connections to successfully get Cheems to focus on building a meme coin within BNB Chain. Dana eventually pushed it to land on Binance Futures and gained considerable profits. The above projects are only some well-known examples. Some other cases are not so widely spread, so I will not list them all for the sake of protecting the source of information. If the industry loses its way amid the huge influx of capital and resource monopoly, and allows the interests of a few to manipulate and destroy the ecosystem, the ultimate victims will be every industry participant, including the vested interests who are enjoying the dividends at this time. Everyone has been curious about why Binance has listed so many junk projects? Why Binance projects fall as soon as they are listed? Why projects fall flat after listing on Binance? The answer is very simple. Imagine that even if a project actively wants to create utility, serve the community, and make money for users and investors who truly support it, it will have to face the following problems when it comes to contacting Binance: • First, you need to take care of the white gloves and internal core members. Usually it starts from 1%, and it is required to be unlocked immediately after listing. • Second, when accepting Labs investment, one must bear a huge valuation discount and suffer dilution. • Third, when discussing the Listing process, if it is a first-launch project, you need to take out 4%-8% of the tokens to participate in Launchpool or Megadrop and airdrop them to Binance users. • Fourth, in addition to the airdrop, you also need to pay a 5-10% listing fee for the total circulating tokens. This portion of the tokens is directly paid to Binance and is usually not disclosed to the public. It is usually not charged to overseas projects such as Fantom, but this part of the consulting fee is a common practice among our Chinese projects. • Fifth, the mandatory deposit of millions of dollars for listing will not be refunded if the market value falls below a certain agreed market value. By the time the project is actually listed on Binance, how much incentive will the project team and the community have left? A large amount of benefits are taken away by the corrupt links instead of flowing to the user group. Is the final outcome of our response to CZ's call for the BuildL spirit to hand over the coins to Binance and Binance's corrupt group? If things go on like this, users will not trust the quality of Binance's new coins and will not spend real money to buy them. This will form a negative cycle in which Binance's new coins will inevitably fall, leading to the dilemma of bad money (bribery projects) driving out good money (clean projects), and creating deeper suspicion and prejudice against our Chinese projects. Here, I would like to call on all those who care about the future of Web3: Let us pay attention to these opaque corruption phenomena, stick to the bottom line and conscience of the industry, and create a fair and sunny living and development space for more truly valuable innovators and projects. Only in this way can the road of Web3 go further and truly fulfill our promise to the future. I dedicate this letter to all my fellow travelers who still have ideals and are brave enough to speak out. I would like to use this letter to awaken the entire industry to the awareness of self-examination and reconstruction. With this letter, we call on everyone to keep our original aspirations and make true decentralization a reality. An ordinary entrepreneur