Binance and Huobi strongly promote "Mining for Tokens," while OKEx announces integration with Compound. Will platform tokens soar again?

After Binance and Huobi successively announced the launch of "Launchpool," OKEx CEO Jay Hao also stated on Weibo that their token issuance platform "OK Jumpstart" will soon support Launchpool. With platform tokens serving as entry tickets on all three major exchanges, will platform tokens rise again?

DeFi Beautified IEO

According to reports, Binance will launch a 30-day mining project starting on September 9th, where users can stake tokens like BNB, BUSD, ARPA, etc., to earn Bella Protocol (BEL) mining rewards. The rewards will be mainly in BNB, with the following distribution:

• BNB Pool: 4,500,000 BEL available for mining (90%)
• BUSD Pool: 450,000 BEL available for mining (9%)
• ARPA Pool: 50,000 BEL available for mining (1%)

In addition, Binance will also launch the Bella Protocol (BEL) trading market on September 16th. Bella is an all-in-one asset management platform dedicated to lowering the barrier of entry for DeFi users, offering products such as lending, one-click investment, and smart advisory services.

Huobi and OKEx Keeping Up

On September 7th, Huobi launched two DeFi mining activities. At 16:00 Taipei time, they initiated the "Lock HT/HPT for DeFi Liquidity Mining" activity, with HT being their platform token Huobi Token and HPT being the pool token, rewarding with CRV tokens.

Later at 20:00 on the same day, they started the "Lock HT for New Coin Mining" with ACH (Alchemy Pay), also opening the trading market simultaneously. Alchemy Pay is a crypto payment infrastructure with a total token supply of 10 billion, used for ecosystem incentives, system consumption, and governance.

Furthermore, OKEx CEO Jay Hao mentioned on Weibo on the 7th that their token issuance platform "OK Jumpstart" will soon support new coin mining. Later that evening, OKEx announced that their "Earn Coins Product" will integrate with the Compound protocol, supporting tokens like BAT, DAI, ETH, USDC, USDT, ZRX, etc.

Will Platform Tokens Rise Again?

OKEx's "Earn Coins Product" integrating with the Compound protocol is different from what the CEO mentioned about "New Coin Mining," which requires holding the platform token OKB. Therefore, OKEx is likely to launch mining listing projects similar to Binance and Huobi.

At the beginning of the year, these three major exchanges saw significant increases by burning tokens and launching products like OKChain. Despite DeFi taking the spotlight in the latter part of the year, the returns on the platform tokens outperformed Bitcoin's halving rewards, with OKB having a return rate of 103% year-to-date.

To not let DeFi steal the spotlight, exchanges are now starting projects in the form of DeFi. Although fundamentally similar to IEOs, given the high Ethereum gas fees and the current operational threshold of DeFi, this approach may break the deadlock and potentially further drive the demand for platform tokens on a fundamental level, consequently boosting platform token prices.