Binance has taken a bold step toward redefining the SocialFi experience, launching Live Trading on its social platform, Binance Square.
The move enables users to follow livestreamed strategies from verified creators and execute actual Spot or Futures trades directly within the stream.
Binance Square Launches Live Trading Integration
With this launch, users can follow real-time live streams from verified creators. They can also place spot or Futures trades directly within the stream, removing friction between learning and execution.
This marks a significant leap toward merging real-time content, education, and on-chain action in a single, seamless interface.
“Live Trading is designed to make trading more accessible, interactive, and engaging…It’s a natural evolution of Binance Square,” said Jeff Li, Head of Product at Binance, in a statement shared with BeInCrypto.
During livestreams, users can interact with pinned strategy cards that display vital trade information such as trading pair, order direction, and size. They can also execute trades without leaving the session. This blends entertainment, education, and financial action in a single user flow.
For creators, Binance offers monetization opportunities. Specifically, up to 50% commissions on referred trades, enhanced visibility, and even an Incubator Program for up-and-coming strategists.
Verified influencers with over 1,000 followers can also share up to 100 past trades. This increases their visibility through competitions and campaigns. They also reserve the choice to apply to the Square Live Trading Incubation Program if they are starting.
This move is part of Binance’s mission to transform crypto into a more community-driven and participatory ecosystem.
With livestream competitions, multistreaming support, and more in the pipeline, Binance’s Live Trading turns market commentary into real-time financial action. This feature could reshape how crypto users learn, trade, and connect.
How Does It Compare to Pump.fun’s Livestream Model?
Binance is not the first to introduce the concept of interactive, livestream-enabled trading. Pump.fun, the Solana-based meme coin launchpad, recently reopened its livestream feature with added safeguards. This followed backlash over unmoderated, speculative content that sometimes misled viewers and encouraged impulsive behavior.
In contrast, Binance’s Live Trading approach focuses on verified creators with clear risk disclosures. Additional differentiators include transparency through pinned strategy cards and direct execution through the platform’s regulated trading infrastructure.
There is also a structured monetization model. The market edges challenge the notion that meme hype is amplified, with Binance providing educational value, fostering transparency, and encouraging informed decision-making.
Therefore, it rivals Pump.fun, which reflected crypto’s raw energy and community-driven meme culture. This signals a maturation of SocialFi from chaos to structure, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of SocialFi. The space is shifting from speculative chaos to platform-verified strategy.
SocialFi Matures: COOKIE, Kaito, and the Rise of Creator-Led Trading
At the same time, Binance’s innovation is part of a broader wave of SocialFi developments turning creators into monetized knowledge hubs.
Cookie DAO recently launched COOKIE Snaps, a decentralized creator network focused on InfoFi. It combines news delivery, personalized feeds, and content ownership.
COOKIE is building a full-stack ecosystem that lets creators earn for sharing insights. This gives users more control over the information they consume.
Similarly, Kaito is fusing AI, search, and social media monetization. The project recently launched its native token, KAITO, to reward Web3 researchers and influencers with direct value for their posts, signals, and commentary. This move disrupted the traditional ad-driven model of centralized platforms.
Together with Binance’s Live Trading, these initiatives suggest a new paradigm, where content is actionable, decentralized, and financially incentivized. The future of SocialFi might go beyond watching and liking. These initiatives leverage learning, earning, and time.
As SocialFi advances, Binance’s livestream-enabled trading may be the first domino in a broader movement. This could transform how users interact with finance, content, and each other in the Web3 era.
Two altcoins, Maple’s SYRUP and Kamino’s KMNO, spiked over 30% after receiving a Binance listing today. Maple Finance and Kamino have been active in the DeFi space for a long time, but their native tokens are rather recent.
KMNO briefly fell below its pre-listing valuation due to profit-taking, but it remains nearly 85% up over the past month. Meanwhile, SYRUP also received a Coinbase listing last week, further boosting demand.
Binance Listings Remain Influential for New Projects
Today, SYRUP and KMNO generally stick with this program, as the listing announcement led to huge rallies.
Maple Finance (SYRUP) Daily Price Chart. Source: CoinGecko
Maple Finance is a DeFi Institutional Lender that existed for several years before launching its SYRUP token. The project was launched back in 2019, while its native SYRUP token went live last November.
Its DeFi lending platform took off on Solana and Ethereum in 2021, but it’s been comparatively quiet since. Still, recognition has been growing for Maple lately, leading to the Binance listing.
Kamino Finance’s KMNO, the other altcoin to receive a Binance listing, shares a few key similarities with SYRUP. This Solana-based DeFi liquidity protocol also launched years ago, but KMNO first hit the market in April 2024.
Kamino, too, has been gaining notoriety in 2025, and it’s currently considered a major protocol in Solana’s DeFi ecosystem.
KMNO technically bucked the Binance listing trend to a certain degree. The token fell just as sharply after its first spike over 20%. For a brief window, its price was lower than its pre-listing valuation, but this bounced back up.
Kamino saw quick corrections after the initial rally, as traders quickly liquidated to take profits, but it remains up 80% in the last month.
In summary, despite KMNO’s minor setback, both of these assets performed within general expectations. Binance’s listings are still very influential.
However, this event did not provide much insight into the exchange’s overall inclinations toward future listings.
Binance listed two DeFi-centric protocols that operate (at least partially) on Solana, with years of operation before a token launch.
Other than that, there aren’t many similarities; both projects have different core functions. Still, it’s useful to have additional data points for Binance listings.
Gate, a globally leading cryptocurrency trading platform, has officially surpassed 30 million registered users, marking a new milestone in its global expansion. This remarkable achievement underscores the platform’s growing influence across international markets and highlights the progress Gate has made in strategic transformation, brand upgrade, and ecosystem development.
Ushering in the “30 Million+” Era: Unlocking Network Effects Across the Ecosystem
Behind this threshold of the 30 million user base is the steady implementation of Gate’s international strategy and the continuous enhancement of its product suite, technical foundation, security framework, and brand recognition. In an industry where the competitive landscape is rapidly evolving, a consistently expanding user base stands as a critical measure of platform vitality and market trust.
This expanding global community significantly strengthens Gate’s liquidity and trading depth, while laying a solid foundation for the sustainable growth of its broader ecosystem, fueling a strong and self-reinforcing network effect across products and services.
Impressive Operational Momentum: Spot and Futures Drive Dual Growth
According to Gate’s May 2025 Transparency Report, the platform continues to post robust growth in both trading activity and ecosystem expansion. Spot and futures trading volumes have seen simultaneous surges, with Gate’s derivatives products now ranking among the industry’s top-tier experiences. Daily trading volumes are hovering at historical highs.
Currently, Gate ranks second globally in 24-hour spot trading volume, with its token liquidity and trading breadth consistently in the top three worldwide. Derivatives have become one of the platform’s strongest growth engines, with users actively engaging in leveraged and strategy-based trading. Meanwhile, flagship product lines including Launchpad, Gate Alpha, Launchpool, HODLer Airdrop and CandyDrop have delivered outstanding performance, significantly enhancing user engagement and capital activity across the platform.
A Renewed Brand Vision: Entering a New Strategic Chapter
In May, Gate celebrated its 12th anniversary by unveiling a brand-new vision as the “next-generation crypto exchange.” The platform officially adopted the new global domain Gate.com and introduced an updated logo, marking its transformation from a market leader to an industry trailblazer and enhancing its global brand visibility.
On the compliance front, Gate continues to strengthen its global regulatory framework. Its entity Gate Technology FZE has officially obtained a VASP license under the supervision of the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), reinforcing the platform’s regulatory foundation in the Middle East and broader international markets.
Building User Trust: A Relentless Commitment to Security and Transparency
Gate remains an industry leader in asset security and reserve transparency. As of June 2025, Gate holds a total reserve value of $10.453 billion, with a reserve ratio of 123.09%. The platform’s reserves fully cover user assets across 350+ cryptocurrencies, with $1.96 billion in excess reserves, far exceeding industry benchmarks. Gate’s rigorous proof-of-reserves practices and cutting-edge security technologies continue to solidify user trust and lay a robust foundation for long-term, sustainable growth.
Looking Ahead: Driving Innovation and Shaping the Future of Crypto
As Gate moves into its next chapter, it will continue enhancing the on-chain trading experience, expanding forward-looking Web3 infrastructure services, and exploring innovative intersections between AI and crypto technologies. At the same time, Gate will deepen collaboration with global users, developers, and institutional partners, co-creating an open, transparent, and resilient next-generation digital asset ecosystem.
Gate remains committed to opening the gateway to a smarter, safer, and more inclusive crypto future for users around the world.
About Gate
Gate, founded in 2013 by Dr. Han, is one of the world’s earliest cryptocurrency exchanges. The platform serves over 30 million users with 3,600+ digital assets and pioneered the industry’s first 100% proof-of-reserves. Beyond core trading services, Gate’s ecosystem includes Gate Wallet, Gate Ventures, and other innovative solutions, while its global partnerships extend to top-tier sports brands like Oracle Red Bull Racing in F1 and Inter.
This content does not constitute an offer, solicitation, or recommendation. You should always seek independent professional advice before making investment decisions. Gate may restrict or prohibit certain services in specific jurisdictions. For more information, please read the User Agreement.
The metrics used to measure outcomes can be misleading when evaluating blockchain performance. As more blockchain networks emerge, the public needs clear, efficiency-focused metrics, rather than exaggerated claims, to differentiate between them.
In a conversation with BeInCrypto, Taraxa Co-Founder Steven Pu explained that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to compare blockchain performance accurately because many reported metrics rely on overly optimistic assumptions rather than evidence-based results. To combat this wave of misrepresentation, Pu proposes a new metric, which he calls TPS/$.
Why Does the Industry Lack Reliable Benchmarks?
The need for clear differentiation is growing with the increasing number of Layer-1 blockchain networks. As various developers promote the speed and efficiency of their blockchains, relying on metrics that distinguish their performance becomes indispensable.
However, the industry still lacks reliable benchmarks for real-world efficiency, instead relying on sporadic sentimental waves of hype-driven popularity. According to Pu, misleading performance figures currently saturate the market, obscuring true capabilities.
“It’s easy for opportunists to take advantage by driving up over-simplified and exaggerated narratives to profit themselves. Every single conceivable technical concept and metric has at one time or another been used to hype up many projects that don’t really deserve them: TPS, finality latency, modularity, network node count, execution speed, parallelization, bandwidth utilization, EVM-compatibility, EVM-incompatibility, etc.,” Pu told BeInCrypto.
Pu focused on how some projects exploit TPS metrics, using them as marketing tactics to make blockchain performance sound more appealing than it might be under real-world conditions.
Examining the Misleading Nature of TPS
Transactions per second, more commonly known as TPS, is a metric that refers to the average or sustained number of transactions that a blockchain network can process and finalize per second under normal operating conditions.
However, it often misleadingly hypes projects, offering a skewed view of overall performance.
“Decentralized networks are complex systems that need to be considered as a whole, and in the context of their use cases. But the market has this horrible habit of over-simplifying and over-selling one specific metric or aspect of a project, while ignoring the whole. Perhaps a highly centralized, high-TPS network does have its uses in the right scenarios with specific trust models, but the market really has no appetite for such nuanced descriptions,” Pu explained.
Pu indicates that blockchain projects with extreme claims on single metrics like TPS may have compromised decentralization, security, and accuracy.
“Take TPS, for example. This one metric masks numerous other aspects of the network, for example, how was the TPS achieved? What was sacrificed in the process? If I have 1 node, running a WASM JIT VM, call that a network, that gets you a few hundred thousand TPS right off the bat. I then make 1000 copies of that machine and call it sharding, now you start to get into the hundreds of millions of ‘TPS’. Add in unrealistic assumptions such as non-conflict, and you assume you can parallelize all transactions, then you can get “TPS” into the billions. It’s not that TPS is a bad metric, you just can’t look at any metric in isolation because there’s so much hidden information behind the numbers,” he added.
The Taraxa Co-founder revealed the extent of these inflated metrics in a recent report.
The Significant Discrepancy Between Theoretical and Real-World TPS
Pu sought to prove his point by determining the difference between the maximum historical TPS realized on a blockchain’s mainnet and the maximum theoretical TPS.
Of the 22 permissionless and single-shard networks observed, Pu found that, on average, there was a 20-fold gap between theory and reality. In other words, the theoretical metric was 20 times higher than the maximum observed mainnet TPS.
Taraxa Co-founder finds 20x difference between the Theoretical TPS and the Max Observed Mainnet TPS. Source: Taraxa.
“Metric overestimations (such as in the case of TPS) are a response to the highly speculative and narrative-driven crypto market. Everyone wants to position their project and technologies in the best possible light, so they come up with theoretical estimates, or conduct tests with wildly unrealistic assumptions, to arrive at inflated metrics. It’s dishonest advertising. Nothing more, nothing less,” Pu told BeInCrypto.
Looking to counter these exaggerated metrics, Pu developed his own performance measure.
Introducing TPS/$: A More Balanced Metric?
Pu and his team developed the following: TPS realized on mainnet / monthly $ cost of a single validator node, or TPS/$ for short, to fulfill the need for better performance metrics.
This metric assesses performance based on verifiable TPS achieved on a network’s live mainnet while also considering hardware efficiency.
The significant 20-fold gap between theoretical and actual throughput convinced Pu to exclude metrics based solely on assumptions or lab conditions. He also aimed to illustrate how some blockchain projects inflate performance metrics by relying on costly infrastructure.
“Published network performance claims are often inflated by extremely expensive hardware. This is especially true for networks with highly centralized consensus mechanisms, where the throughput bottleneck shifts away from networking latency and into single-machine hardware performance. Requiring extremely expensive hardware for validators not only betrays a centralized consensus algorithm and inefficient engineering, it also prevents the vast majority of the world from potentially participating in consensus by pricing them out,” Pu explained.
Pu’s team located each network’s minimum validator hardware requirements to determine the cost per validator node. They later estimated their monthly cost, paying particular attention to their relative sizing when used to compute the TPS per dollar ratios.
“So the TPS/$ metric tries to correct two of the perhaps most egregious categories of misinformation, by forcing the TPS performance to be on mainnet, and revealing the inherent tradeoffs of extremely expensive hardware,” Pu added.
Pu stressed considering two simple, identifiable characteristics: whether a network is permissionless and single-sharded.
Permissioned vs. Permissionless Networks: Which Fosters Decentralization?
A blockchain’s degree of security can be unveiled by whether it operates under a permissioned or permissionless network.
Permissioned blockchains refer to closed networks where access and participation are restricted to a predefined group of users, requiring permission from a central authority or trusted group to join. In permissionless blockchains, anyone is allowed to participate.
According to Pu, the former model is at odds with the philosophy of decentralization.
“A permissioned network, where network validation membership is controlled by a single entity, or if there is just a single entity (every Layer-2s), is another excellent metric. This tells you whether or not the network is indeed decentralized. A hallmark of decentralization is its ability to bridge trust gaps. Take decentralization away, then the network is nothing more than a cloud service,” Pu told BeInCrypto.
Attention to these metrics will prove vital over time, as networks with centralized authorities tend to be more vulnerable to certain weaknesses.
“In the long term, what we really need is a battery of standardized attack vectors for L1 infrastructure that can help to reveal weaknesses and tradeoffs for any given architectural design. Much of the problems in today’s mainstream L1 are that they make unreasonable sacrifices in security and decentralization. These characteristics are invisible and extremely hard to observe, until a disaster strikes. My hope is that as the industry matures, such a battery of tests will begin to organically emerge into an industry-wide standard,” Pu added.
Meanwhile, understanding whether a network employs state-sharding versus maintaining a single, sharded state reveals how unified its data management is.
State-Sharding vs. Single-State: Understanding Data Unity
In blockchain performance, latency refers to the time delay between submitting a transaction to the network, confirming it, and including it in a block on the blockchain. It measures how long it takes for a transaction to be processed and become a permanent part of the distributed ledger.
Identifying whether a network employs state-sharding or a single-sharded state can reveal much about its latency efficiency.
State-sharded networks divide the blockchain’s data into multiple independent parts called shards. Each shard operates somewhat independently and doesn’t have direct, real-time access to the complete state of the entire network.
By contrast, a non-state-sharded network has a single, shared state across the entire network. All nodes can access and process the same complete data set in this case.
Pu noted that state-sharded networks aim to increase storage and transaction capacity. However, they often face longer finality latencies due to a need to process transactions across multiple independent shards.
He added that many projects adopting a sharding approach inflate throughput by simply replicating their network rather than building a truly integrated and scalable architecture.
“A state-sharded network that doesn’t share state, is simply making unconnected copies of a network. If I take a L1 network and just make 1000 copies of it running independently, it’s clearly dishonest to claim that I can add up all the throughput across the copies together and represent it as a single network. There are architectures that actually synchronize the states as well as shuffle the validators across shards, but more often than not, projects making outlandish claims on throughput are just making independent copies,” Pu said.
Based on his research into the efficiency of blockchain metrics, Pu highlighted the need for fundamental shifts in how projects are evaluated, funded, and ultimately succeed.
What Fundamental Shifts Does Blockchain Evaluation Need?
Pu’s insights present a notable alternative in a Layer-1 blockchain space where misleading performance metrics increasingly compete for attention. Reliable and effective benchmarks are essential to counter these false representations.
“You only know what you can measure, and right now in crypto, the numbers look more like hype-narratives than objective measurements. Having standardized, transparent measurements allows simple comparisons across product options so developers and users understand what it is they’re using, and what tradeoffs they’re making. This is a hallmark of any mature industry, and we still have a long way to go in crypto,” Pu concluded.
Adopting standardized and transparent benchmarks will foster informed decision-making and drive genuine progress beyond merely promotional claims as the industry matures.
