Binance Hands Token Listing Power to Community 🖐🏽
In a power shift, Binance is giving its users the keys to decide which cryptocurrencies live or die on the world's largest exchange amid a flood of new tokens.
The exchange announced a new community co-governance structure allowing users to vote on token listings and removals. The growth of cryptocurrencies now number over 12.4 million.
"When a project has a dedicated listing budget, we will disclose it in their listing announcements," Binance stated, emphasising that users holding just 0.01 BNB can participate in voting.
The move follows pointed criticism from Binance's founder Changpeng Zhao, who recently called the exchange's listing process "broken" after a test token that accidentally featured in a tutorial video reached a staggering $489 million market cap despite his warnings not to buy it.
Read: Binance’s Token Listing Conundrum
This four-hour window has become notorious for enabling market manipulation. Traders accumulate positions on decentralised exchanges before dumping them on retail investors once Binance listing goes live.
The new system places underperforming projects in a "monitoring zone" where community members can vote to remove them entirely. Projects lacking development updates, inactive communities, or failing to disclose token information will face potential exile.
Binance isn't alone in this struggle.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently admitted that evaluating the estimated one million tokens created weekly is "totally infeasible," suggesting a move toward a crowdsourced approach similar to Twitter's Community Notes.
Binance's experiment in community governance may establish a new standard—or reveal the limitations of democratic approaches in an industry where test tokens can reach half-billion-dollar valuations on pure speculation.