big dump 80%: The Binance Alpha dilemma behind the price collapse of ZKJ and KOGE coin

Written by: angelilu, Foresight News

Dear players, please open your eyes. Tonight, ZKJ and KOGE have been poisoned!

In the quiet ending of the weekend market, the crypto market staged a thrilling scene once again. Around 20:30 on June 15, 2025, the two tokens ZKJ and KOGE, with the largest trading volume on the BSC chain on the Binance Alpha platform, experienced a cliff-like drop.

The token ZKJ of Polyhedra Network plummeted from $1.946 in a waterfall drop, reaching a low of $0.3767 within just two hours, with a maximum decline of an astonishing 80.64%, and its market value dropped to only $230 million. At the same time, KOGE also fell from $61 to a low of $8.46 within half an hour, with a similarly shocking decline.

Market Impact and Chain Reaction

Coinglass data shows that during the period from 20:00 to 22:00 that night, the total liquidation amount across the entire network reached 102 million USD, of which the ZKJ coin alone contributed 94.336 million USD in liquidations, with long positions liquidating up to 93.688 million USD, forming a typical bull trap.

For ordinary participants, the losses are particularly severe. Users who were trading merely to earn Binance Alpha points suffered devastating blows. For example, with an investment of $1,000 and an 80% drop in ZKJ, users who panic sold lost an average of about $800, which is nearly the equivalent of the earnings from 10 Binance Alpha airdrops. Some users reported that their original plan to accumulate points through small trades with a $5,000 investment was reduced to less than $500 after the flash crash, resulting in a net loss of as much as $4,500. This once again confirms the saying, 'penny wise, pound foolish.'

It is worth noting that ZKJ has maintained a trading price of approximately $2 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV) over the past few months, showing an unusually stable trend—with liquidity exceeding $20 million, it is almost like a "stablecoin," and it has long held the top position in the Binance Alpha score ranking. This irrational price performance now seems to be the calm before the storm.

Warning Signals Before a Crash

In fact, signs of a crash were already apparent the day before. The prices of ZKJ and KOGE experienced slight fluctuations yesterday, with analysts pointing out that the initial decline of ZKJ and KOGE stemmed from a specific address (starting with 0x364) withdrawing 1.29 million ZKJ and 8,667 KOGE from OKX, followed by a selling operation.

Some market observers have indicated that "the 3% fluctuations of KOGE and ZKJ yesterday are just the countdown to a crash. Price fluctuations → fewer wash traders → APY plummets → LP withdraws liquidity → spot selling → more people withdraw liquidity. When the negative spiral begins, it is like an avalanche, unrelated to the quality of the project itself."

What is more surprising is that the 48 Club team behind KOGE stated when the coin price first began to fluctuate: "KOGE has been fully released since day one, with no lock-up. 48 Club has never promised not to sell the treasury holdings. Investors should do their own research, and the risks are theirs to bear." This statement was later interpreted by many investors as a disguised "collapse warning."

In-depth cause analysis

According to research by on-chain analyst AI Yi, the flash crashes of ZKJ and KOGE exhibit characteristics of a meticulously planned harvesting operation. Three major addresses targeted the massive trading volume and liquidity created by the two tokens in the context of Binance Alpha, employing a dual strike of "large withdrawals of liquidity + continuous selling," leading to consecutive crashes of the two tokens:

The address starting with 0x1A2 withdrew approximately 3.76 million USD in KOGE and 532,000 USD in ZKJ of bilateral liquidity twice between 20:28 and 20:33, and then exchanged 45,470 KOGE for ZKJ, worth 3.796 million USD, and sold 1.573 million ZKJ in batches.

The second key address withdrew approximately $2.07 million in KOGE and $1.38 million in ZKJ bilateral liquidity, while selling off 1 million ZKJ.

The third address conducted a liquidation operation after receiving 772,000 ZKJ transferred from the second address, further exacerbating the downward trend of ZKJ.

It is worth noting that the crypto community had a prevalent operational strategy of "ZKJ-KOGE low wash trading" when participating in Binance Alpha airdrop events, and this phenomenon has precisely laid the groundwork for this harvesting action.

AI Aunt's in-depth analysis on platform X reveals several key issues regarding this flash crash:

Strategic considerations for the order of dumping

The operator first dumps KOGE and then ZKJ, which is not a random choice. The primary reason is that ZKJ has contract trading, allowing the operator to short on the exchange while simultaneously dumping on-chain, achieving dual profits. Secondly, from a liquidity perspective, ZKJ has relatively more liquidity, and dumping requires more capital investment, making it more economical to start with KOGE, which has weaker liquidity.

The mechanism of price delay collapse

ZKJ and KOGE, known for their "good liquidity + stable prices" in the Binance Alpha ecosystem, lead to LPs (liquidity providers) generally setting extremely narrow price ranges. Once a large sell-off breaks through this narrow range, there is not enough capital in the market to absorb the sell orders, inevitably triggering a flash crash. Worse still, when LPs see the price drop, they often panic and flee, further exacerbating the vicious cycle of price plummeting. For those LPs who are slow to react, the end result is passively holding a large amount of devalued ZKJ and KOGE tokens.

The precision of timing selection

AI Aunt speculates that the significant decline in trading volume of Binance Alpha over the past few days may be a key inducement for operators to dump at this time. For large LPs, "running fast" is often a survival rule. Especially considering that there are few true long-term believers among the holders of ZKJ and KOGE, most participants are only in it for the high interest, which makes the entire ecosystem extremely fragile, like a building that can collapse entirely with just the breakage of one load-bearing column.

Analysts have pointed out that 16 days before the incident, these two projects had jointly established the ZKJ/KOGE trading pair and liquidity pool on the Pancake platform, accumulating tokens worth 30 million dollars. However, as altcoins within the Alpha ecosystem, if the price of one coin collapses, it can easily trigger a chain sell-off of the other coin, creating a "domino effect."

In addition, on the news front, Polyhedra Network (ZKJ) plans to unlock approximately 15.53 million tokens at 8 AM on June 19, accounting for 5.04% of the current circulation, valued at about 30.3 million USD. This upcoming unlocking pressure may also be one of the catalysts for the collapse. Overall, this flash crash is the result of a combination of carefully orchestrated technical operations and objective pressures from the market fundamentals, stemming from multiple factors.

Reflection on Binance Alpha Mechanism

This incident has also sparked a deep reflection on the Binance Alpha point mechanism. Since Binance launched this mechanism, it has attracted a large number of users to participate in "picking up free money" activities, but it has also provided an opportunity for some ill-intentioned projects.

This flash crash coincided with Binance's launch of two reform measures for the Alpha mechanism: First, the introduction of the Alpha Wealth Management Center, allowing LP providers to earn points; second, the adjustment of the airdrop distribution mechanism, which will be distributed in two phases starting from June 19, allowing users who meet the airdrop thresholds to first receive points, and then the remaining points will be distributed at a reduced rate. However, during this incident, holders, liquidity providers, and users trying to earn points during the downturn all suffered significant losses.

Market Warnings and Lessons

Traders in the community have pointed out that the so-called trading competitions are essentially often for the project party to offload their tokens. Some users have analyzed that before ZKJ was listed on Binance, there were observations of up to 100 million positions on BYBIT, equivalent to over 200 million dollars, comparable to the positions of the mainstream coin SUI on Binance. In this crash, over 600,000 dollars worth of positions were liquidated just in contracts.

A trader offered advice: "I advise everyone not to buy such altcoins because of the Binance trading competition; encountering a spike could result in significant losses. Profits often do not outweigh the potential losses."

The recent crash of ZKJ and KOGE has sounded the alarm for Binance's Alpha ecosystem and for participants in the cryptocurrency market. In the high-risk crypto market, especially when facing altcoin projects with opaque governance structures and artificially maintained liquidity, investors must remain highly vigilant to avoid becoming targets of exploitation.

As large and small holders compete to exit, the future direction of the Binance Alpha event and the platform's response to such issues will become the focus of market attention.