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Where did the rumors of Binance’s “Girlfriends Section” come from?

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The recent launch of HOOK and EDU has sparked rumors of the "girlfriends section". What happened in the middle?

In November last year, after Binance launched the 29th Launchpad project Hooked Protocol (HOOK), there was no IEO for nearly 4 months. However, what is surprising is that in the past two months, Binance has suddenly connected two IEOs, Space ID (ID) and Open Campus (EDU).

Since GMT, Binance has never had a phenomenal IEO. Different from the celebration status of the Launchpad community in the past, the negative voices of these IEOs have continued.

Especially the launch of Hooked Protocol (HOOK) and Open Campus (EDU).... The voice of criticism from the community and KOL has intensified, and it has changed from "Binance's IEO is getting worse and worse" to "what kind of pheasant project is on the Internet", "it's another girlfriend coin", and "girlfriend plate +1".

Binance "Girlfriend Where did the "plate" rumors come from? What is the so-called "girlfriend coin"? Let's start with He Yi who regained control of Binance Labs.

In August 2022, He Yi was appointed as the head of Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance people. Binance Labs is the largest encrypted asset venture capital institution in the industry with assets under management. Its fund investment income is as high as 21 times, which is second to none in the industry. Binance Labs manages assets totaling $7.5 billion and has invested in more than 200 projects.

Under much anticipation, He Yi posted on social media platforms, "Thank you for your interest in Launchpad and Launchpool enthusiasm. Binance is committed to working hard to meet the needs of the community. Now it has started to find high-quality projects for users.”

As we can see, He Yi often made speeches in support of women, in her Persisting, Binance has also added a women's section to share the achievements and stories of women in the industry.

HOOK Controversy

Back to the end of last year, Hooked Protocol caused quite a bit of controversy when it was first launched. This Hooked Protocol IEO has been nearly 8 months since the last GMT, and it is also He Yi's first IEO project after taking charge of Binance Labs. However, the launch of Hooked Protocol was very hasty, and the community did not seem to buy it.

KOL defi3w The views on Hooked Protocol are very representative in the community: From the perspective of time, the project is launched in a hurry, Hooked's official website smells like a copycat demo (it has a taste of PancakeSwap IFO), At the same time, the only available product Wild Cash is said to be Web3, but it has a strong smell of Web2. The login is through the mailbox instead of the wallet, and the generated wallet cannot export the private key. In short, it reveals a strange smell.

After all, apart from the capital, there is nothing special about such a project.

When the community was looking for the special features of Hooked Protocol, some community members from LinkedIn As seen on the Internet, the team members of Hooked Protocol come from Midu, a text-based growth platform under the China Literature Group. CEO Jason Y (Yang Ji) once worked for Uber and Facebook. Hooked Protocol.

However, it is noticeable that after Hooked’s IEO news came out, the community broke the news that Yang Ji, the project CEO, seemed to have a close relationship with Primitive Capital Dovey Wan. At the same time, Dovey Wan Also an investor in the protocol.

In the face of such revelations and rumors, Dovey Wan denied being married with ironic words: "Didn't you say that I was divorced a few days ago? Why is this married again? Am I married after all?" If you are married or divorced, please give me a confirmation letter."

In the absence of direct evidence, the community pointed out that the "friendly girlfriend relationship" between Dovey and He Yi was the reason why Hooked Protocol was listed on Binance. This is how the rumors of "Girlfriend Coin" began.

“HOOK2.0”——EDU

Let’s take a look at what is called The EDU launched by HOOK2.0, EDU is the Token of the IEO project Open Campus.

The community found that Binance’s new IEO project Open Campus partner and Hooked Protocol Highly overlapping, among its partners, Hooked Protocol and Mocaverse and Sanbox of the Animocoa series are its partners.

EDU and HOOK are both educational tokens, so they are called "HOOK2.0" by many users.

The biggest reason why EDU has been criticized and empty-handed may be that the community discovered the Open Campus Twitter was registered in March, and the domain name was bought on March 18, and it was only purchased for one year. Discord was created in April, and the team members are anonymous and undisclosed. The official website is relatively sloppy, and the white paper has not yet been released. EDU's IEO accounts for 5%, and the remaining 95% is owned by the project party. Such a hasty project can be launched on Binance, and people cannot help but wonder why.

Source: Community

The high degree of overlap of partners, plus Hooked Protocol itself is stained with the concept of "girlfriend coin", and Open Campus seems to be unable to get rid of the community's reverie about "girlfriend plate".

Response from the Binance and Open Campus teams

Amid growing criticism and doubts Now, Binance and Open Campus also had to respond.

Binance employees (@sisibinance) were the first to clarify on social media that "the boss said before that education will be the focus of this year", denying that the so-called "girlfriend relationship" is related to the project's launch on Binance.

At 9:30 that night, He Yi also issued an article denying the existence of Binance's girlfriends sector coin. Then, three days later, Open Campus announced the team members of the project through official channels, filling in the vacancy that the community questioned the team's anonymity.

The Open Campus team announced the list of EDU Council members, which includes some famous people, including Animoca Yat Siu, co-founder of Brands, Yogev Shelly, founder and CEO of TinyTap, Jay Varkey, executive director and board member of GEMS Education, Jack Chorowasky, former chairman of KIPP Foundation, and Yida Gao, founder of Shima Capital.

TinyTap claims to have the world's largest library of games made by educators, for 2 to 8-year-old early childhood education, established in 2012, currently has 30 employees. TinyTap is to Open Campus what Uniswap Labs is to Uniswap Protocol. Open Campus is a community-owned underlying protocol for Web3 education, and TinyTap is an educational project using this protocol.

In a recent Twitter Space on April 26, Animoca Chief Commercial Officer Alan Lau Also responded to questions from the community. Alan Lau said that Open Campus did not issue tokens in the name of TinyTap because the project hoped to cover educational services for all ages, not just for children's education, so it chose to establish a new Foundation. The team hopes to develop a larger market, and does not want users to feel that they are just educating children.

At the same time, he admitted that the communication in the early stage was indeed not in place, but many things of Open Campus will be announced one after another. Recently, all aspects of Open Campus information have been supplemented in response to community questions, and there is not only one TinyTap project based on Open Campus. In the future, more than 400 projects under Animoca will explore the field of education based on Open Campus.

In a previous interview, faced with "Open Campus official promotion and official website content is too brief Scrawled, is it a new project of "Shell"? "When in doubt, Yogev Shelly, the founder of Open Campus, also responded: "We must keep it as simple as possible at the beginning, because from a legal point of view, we don't want to announce anything about Token, and we want to keep it as accurate as possible, so we initially launched The Open Campus official website is a very streamlined website.”

At the same time, Yogev Shelly also said that Binance Launchpad announced the news about the token, and more information will be released soon with a detailed chart, including the release of a full white paper.

Perhaps the response from Binance and Open Campus has had an effect. The community has changed the topic of this IEO: Binance has been I am more optimistic about the education sector. It’s just that this wave of IEO seems a little sloppy, giving people a feeling of relationship. There are also KOLs who say that it doesn't matter if a girlfriend is not a girlfriend, "The most important thing is to pull the plate!"

At the beginning of this year, CZ released the three directions of Binance's 2023 planning focus, the first of which is education, followed by compliance and product services. The trading platform is the biggest beneficiary of the growth of industry traffic, so Binance is also the one that most urgently hopes that more people will enter the Web3 industry. The education sector is a good entrance, which can lower the threshold for users to enter Web3.

Because CZ and Binance did mention before that the key investment direction for this year is education. Therefore, many people in the community believe that with Binance’s current market status and wealth, it is not possible to use this method to seek benefits for themselves, but they cannot avoid the people around them and employees with certain rights, and they will specially organize bureaus to do what they like.

Binance seems to have noticed this issue too. When participating in the online chat of "POW'ER 2023 Hong Kong Web3 Innovators Summit", He Yi said that "Binance has very strict internal control. No matter how senior employees are in Binance, they are not allowed to speculate in coins. They must hold 90% after buying. Only days can be traded.”

Binance's current strategic line. It will take time to test whether the education sector will play a role in the market in the future, and whether Hooked Protocol and Open Campus can really be implemented in Web3.

Curse to scold, buy to buy

Amidst the scolding and empty voices, there are also People pointed out, "I saw that everyone is singing empty girlfriends, but although there are a bunch of empty singing now. As long as they are online, they will all run after them. After all, pulling is justice."

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KOLProfessor Suo said

a> I think: "Don't care about the mouse warehouse or the boudoir section, it doesn't matter. After Binance announced the IEO, it directly supported the market. At least it proved that Binance wanted the market OK."