On October 11, Base founder Jesse Pollak posted multiple messages on X criticizing certain centralized exchanges for charging projects 2% to 9% of their token supply as listing fees.
The post garnered over a million views. Zerebro founder Jeffy Yu retweeted it, stating: When we built Zerebro, Binance demanded a $1 million listing fee, Bybit took a large amount of tokens plus $250,000, and accused market maker Wintermute of demanding 10% of the token supply (100,000,000 tokens), which they later dumped for profit.”
Although Binance later responded that no records of Zerebro existed after verifying with their listing team, suggesting Jeffy may have encountered fraud, Jesse’s remarks reignited the debate over centralized exchange listing fees within the community. Many industry insiders have since exposed instances of unreasonable listing fees charged by certain centralized exchanges.
Why did Jesse initiate this protest amid diverging listing approaches between Eastern and Western exchanges?
Web3 independent researcher Haotian contends that listing fees serve merely as a pretext. Logically, listing fees function as a quality screening mechanism: CEXs provide traffic and exit channels, while market makers supply liquidity support—making fee collection entirely justified.
“But Jesse’s real concern isn’t the 9% fee itself—it’s that mysterious Eastern force orchestrating a full-scale ‘platform-building + exit mechanism’ combo.”
Binance’s “Alpha Watchlist” mechanism offers many small projects a fast-track listing channel. Projects with sufficient buzz can quickly enter this watchlist to gain traffic. Users earn Alpha points through trading activity, receiving a proportional airdrop reward in return—effectively assuming part of the market maker’s risk.
Once a project launches its futures contract, it can hedge exposure by shorting the contract, enabling rapid capital withdrawal and exit. This process creates a highly interconnected cycle of rapid price pumping and hedged exits, seemingly becoming the “optimal strategy” for many projects.
“To some extent, Binance’s monopoly extends beyond attention and liquidity—it’s reshaping the industry’s rules, replacing ‘long-term development’ with ‘quick exits.’ This is the core of Jesse’s true anxiety.”
Users rush to accumulate points, project teams rush to cash out—incentive design fuels “quick in, quick out”
Jesse has repeatedly emphasized slogans like “permissionless token launches” and “cultivating long-term holders,” hoping decentralized market mechanisms would enable developers to co-build projects with communities from day one—rather than treating exchanges as short-term exit routes.
Senior secondary analyst @JunShao_666 contends that Jesse’s true frustration stems from his slice of the pie being threatened—this mechanism is quietly rewriting crypto’s “value magnetism.”
According to DeFiLlama’s historical data, over 70% of TVL for projects launched on Binance Alpha halved within three months. Incentive designs favor “quick in, quick out”: users farm points for airdrops, while project teams hedge and cash out.
Base and Coinbase follow a “chain-based cold start” path: projects first launch permissionlessly on DEXes to build authentic, tightly-bound holder communities before distributing on centralized exchanges. This “Day 1” grounding philosophy propelled Base’s TVL from zero to over $10 billion during the 2024-25 cycle.
Conversely, Binance’s fast-food mechanism leaves project teams questioning why they should invest time cultivating on Base when they can simply list on Binance and cash out within a month.
Jesse argues that Binance has invested heavily in building advanced infrastructure—such as flashblocks that enhance trading efficiency and transparency, and deep DEX integration—to provide projects with a fair, open, and efficient on-chain development environment.
Yet this infrastructure now risks being exploited by centralized exchanges prioritizing quick exits and high listing fees.
