TST Shows a Market Cap of 500 Million in Three Days, What Ecosystem Does the BNB Chain Have?

[TL；DR]:

The meme coin TST on BNB Chain unexpectedly became popular in the market due to a teaching video demonstration. Its market cap soared to over $500 million in three days, and CZ’s implicit endorsement played a driving role.

The sudden popularity of TST has brought BNB Chain back into the spotlight, and has also led to the emergence of other Altcoin projects on the four.meme platform.

Although the TST event brought traffic and topics to BNB Chain, BNB Chain needs to retain developers, users and value that truly support the eco after the heat fades.

Introduction

The crypto market is never short of magical realism. Recently, a test coin TST, originally used for teaching demonstrations, quickly became popular with the intentional or unintentional promotion of various parties, and its highest market cap is close to 500 million US dollars. This article will give you a comprehensive explanation of the causes and consequences of this test coin incident.

A Test Triggered a Frenzy, and TST Unexpectedly Became Popular

Recently, an unusual event occurred on the BNB Chain. TST, a meme coin originally used for teaching video demonstrations on four.meme, unexpectedly became popular in the market, and its market cap soared to over $500 million in just three days.

Source: BNB CHAIN

Since the concept of “demo coin” had precedents in chains such as Solana and Merlin, the market cap of TST briefly touched $5 million and then quickly returned to zero. Later, CZ issued a statement saying that TST was not an official token, but attached the intriguing “Happy Trading” which was interpreted as an implicit endorsement, and the market cap of TST quickly rose to $50 million.

By last Friday, although the market cap of TST briefly fell back to $10 million, it subsequently experienced a series of reversals, including being included in the Alpha list and being denied by CZ again. These actions acted as a catalyst and quickly boosted the attention of TST.

In general, it took only 4 days from CZ’s first mention to its official listing, and hype funds poured in crazily. The price of TST once soared to $0.60635, with a market cap of over $600 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $1.23 billion, surpassing Ethereum‘s top DeFi protocol during the same period.

It is worth noting that Gate.io listed the coin relatively early, which may have also played a role in promoting TST’s popularity.

Source: Gate.io

Of course, the popularity of TST not only made many investors rich, but also triggered repeated criticisms of the market for the opaque listing standards and attitudes of large exchanges. This kind of meme carnival just happened to hit the recent trend of celebrity endorsement of memes, highlighting that at the moment of tight liquidity, the market rhythm tends to be more about traffic narratives than value innovation.

TST Drives the BNB Chain Craze, and Well-established Coins Take the Opportunity to Rise

The popularity of TST has brought the long-dormant BNB Chain back into the spotlight. As a public chain that once competed with Ethereum and Solana in the last bull market, BNB Chain has been in a downturn in recent years due to the slowdown in DeFi growth, the lack of NFT eco, and DEV attacks. However, the craze for TST unexpectedly activated the enthusiasm for speculation, resulting in a short-term agitation of on-chain assets.

Four.meme, the launchpad for TST, was originally a tool platform developed by the BinaryX team to demonstrate the creation process of Meme tokens. Its core function is to allow users to issue tokens with one click through a “code-free” template and automatically generate a liquidity pool. After TST became popular, four.meme’s daily active users surged by 300%, and hundreds of imitation projects, such as Queen YI, CZ, and binancedog emerged on the platform. Although most of these tokens have a lifespan of less than 24 hours, four.meme’s TVL (total value locked) still soared from $1.2 million to $58 million in a week.

Source: four.meme

In addition to TST, the governance token BNX of BinaryX, the incubator of four.meme, was also quickly hyped, with its market cap once climbing to $260 million.

Source: Gate.io

In addition, the tokens CAKE and BAKE on DEX platforms such as PancakeSwap and BakerySwap also rose, reaching a maximum market cap of $570 million and $420 million respectively. The rise of these tokens and protocols not only enriched the BNB Chain eco, but also provided investors with more investment options.

Source: four.meme

As mentioned above, this short-lived craze is more like a concentrated emotional catharsis of the only remaining liquidity in the current lack of new narratives and low sentiment. An important basis for this is that at the time of writing, we have seen a visible and significant decline in the activity of the BNB Chain.

After TST, Where Is the BNB Chain Eco Heading?

Although the popularity of TST has brought unprecedented heat to BNB Chain, based on past experience, this kind of test coin lacks practical application scenarios and sufficient value support, and the hype is often difficult to sustain.

On the other hand, the TST incident also exposed the official’s vacillating mentality in promoting the BNB eco. This attitude of endorsing and attracting traffic on one hand and urgently cutting off on the other hand not only made the market confused and uneasy, but also weakened the credibility of TST and BNB Chain to a certain extent.

In fact, the performance of BNB Chain’s eco in this round of bull market is indeed lackluster. First of all, although there are many Meme coins and DeFi projects on BNB Chain, there are only a few projects that are truly innovative and competitive.

What’s more serious is that BNB Chain’s user base is relatively single and mainly concentrated in Asia. It lags behind other public chains such as Solana and other competitors in terms of technology and product innovation, and has always lacked a global user base and market influence.

Source: Artemis

TST’s popularity of hitting a market cap of $500 million in 3 days has indeed brought long-lost traffic and topics to BNB Chain, but past experience has shown that the public chain craze driven solely by Meme is often short-lived - whether it is Dogecoin in 2021 or BONK in 2023, it will ultimately need to return to the essence of technology.

For BNB Chain, the real test is not whether it can create the next TST, but how to retain the developers, users and value that truly support the eco after the heat fades. But in any case, the popularity of TST has brought new vitality and opportunities to BNB Chain. Gate.io will continue to pay attention to the latest developments of the chain and push new insights and targets to everyone in a timely manner.