Midfield Battle in BNB Chain: CZ, meme, AI, an almost obvious "niche" battle?

Written by: Web3 Farmer Frank

In March 2025, as the crypto market fell into a narrative vacuum, CZ initiated a comprehensive battle for the ecological position of the BNB Chain, leveraging resources from the Binance ecosystem.

Looking back from the on-chain data perspective, the real turnaround came in just about a week: on March 17, the 24-hour DEX trading volume of BNB Chain began to surpass that of Solana, and since then, it has firmly held the top spot across the entire network until the publication of this article.
The dramatic nature of this rapid comeback lies in its almost open-card game: since reactivating in the public eye at the end of last year, CZ has been continuously testing the waters, ultimately choosing to use memes as an entry point to complete a cold start of traffic, and finally executing a textbook-level combination of strategies in the top-tier ecological position battle of the crypto world.

In CZ's attention economics experiment, memes played an excellent "catalyst" role due to their high traffic, but they were destined not to be the final choice in this "ecological position" battle. If one digs deeper into the clues in CZ's words and actions over the past few months, it becomes clear that the breakthrough path for BNB Chain is already evident— it not only aims to become a traffic hub for memes but also to transform into a value anchor for AI Agents.

It remains to be seen who will rise next and become the most compelling footnote in this grand narrative.

BNB Chain's Explosive Growth: "Multiple Resonances" of Liquidity, Trading Volume, and User Growth

It can be said that in the 8 years since Binance was established, CZ has for the first time actively engaged in the spotlight of the crypto world with an unprecedented intensity.

According to Grok's analysis of Twitter data, March 2024 became one of the months with the highest density of personal social media posts from CZ: an average of about 2-5 original tweets per day, with daily interaction replies ranging from 3 to 10, each word and action directly affecting user sentiment and becoming an important barometer of market emotions.

Notably, CZ's tweet content has shifted significantly from personalized expression to systematic market guidance, especially through high-frequency community interactions, effectively making him the super spokesperson for the BNB Chain ecosystem, to the extent that "What did CZ tweet today?" has become a wealth code sweeping the entire on-chain PvP.

It can be said that CZ and He Yi, leveraging their own traffic and public opinion influence, have led a remarkable "expectation management experiment"—by playing the role of "traffic promoter" on BNB Chain, they successfully extended and siphoned the liquidity and market attention following the Solana wave onto the BNB Chain.

Driven by CZ and the strong resources of the Binance ecosystem, BNB Chain's on-chain data has achieved historic breakthroughs. According to DefiLlama statistics, the total trading volume of BNB Chain in the past week exceeded $15 billion, nearly equivalent to the sum of Ethereum and Solana.

In terms of both user and developer dimensions, BNB Chain has clearly welcomed a significant increase in activity: the number of daily active addresses on BNB Chain has stabilized around the one million mark, with a large influx of users participating in interactions, while the daily deployment of on-chain contracts even reached 250,000 at one point, setting a new high in six months.
In terms of incremental observation, Google Trends also shows that the search volume for "BSC" has increased by over 50% month-on-month, maintaining a steady upward trend since the beginning of the month, consistently surpassing "Solana."

Objectively speaking, beyond the glamorous data, the ambition of BNB Chain goes far beyond creating short-term wealth effects; it is exploring a path to industrialized operational success for BNB Chain, and attentive users may notice that Binance has recently been refining a meticulously designed resource combination through liquidity incentive programs and other rule designs, aiming to build a closed-loop engine of "exposure-funding-trading":

CZ and He Yi's statements serve as the public opinion and traffic baton, Binance Alpha becomes the core battlefield for project cold starts, liquidity plans and strategic investments provide financial leverage, and finally, Binance's launch achieves the trading closed loop, thus opening up the entire lifecycle channel of "incubation-launch-liquidity support."

This also reflects a deeper ecological logic: the explosion of BNB Chain is a product of the resonance between the resource tilt of the Binance ecosystem and the urgent need for new outlets for market liquidity, and it can be said that BNB Chain has indeed welcomed its best moment.

However, to attract users with a sustained wealth effect, it cannot rely solely on the concept of memes; after all, it cannot truly settle users, developers, and liquidity, and the attractiveness of traffic effects will inevitably decline, leading to a decline in network activity over time, which is a lesson learned from Solana's subsequent weakness.

Therefore, moving forward, whoever can settle on-chain liquidity and bring incremental benefits to users will be able to sit on the throne of the BNB Chain ecosystem.

From Meme to AI: The Hidden "Ecological Position" Strategy of BNB Chain

If CZ and He Yi are almost active on Twitter 24/7 just to stir up the meme wave on BNB Chain, it would be an underestimation of the deeper logic of this ecological position battle.

BNB Chain's strategic positioning regarding memes has always been very clear—it is not the endpoint but an early "traffic engine" used to complete the ecological cold start.

This can be seen from the coverage of the first two liquidity incentive programs. For example, the first round of the $4.4 million liquidity incentive program specifically targeted meme tokens, successfully boosting the daily trading volume of meme projects, causing this phase of "traffic carnival" to elevate BNB Chain's daily active addresses to the million level.

The new round of $4.4 million permanent liquidity support program launched on March 13 marks a further upgrade of BNB Chain's ecological strategy—the coverage is no longer limited to meme coins; assets from all fields can participate, with no category restrictions.

This almost clarifies the core logic of BNB Chain: "traffic is a means, essential demand is the endpoint," essentially exchanging liquidity for time, seizing user mindshare through the propagation efficiency of memes, and securing a developmental window for essential tracks like AI, ultimately transforming short-term popularity into a long-term user retention ecological barrier.

In fact, the transition from memes to AI is not accidental but is based on the precise positioning of BNB Chain's technology cycle and user demand. CZ has already hinted at this strategic intention in various tweets, and this consistent layout thinking is very clear with the support of CZ and the resources of the Binance ecosystem:

• In November 2024, CZ publicly called for the construction of a decentralized AI data labeling network, proposing to use the BNB Greenfield storage chain to reduce data costs and pay global labeling labor with cryptocurrency;
• In January 2025, Binance Labs was renamed YZiLabs, shifting its strategic focus to Web3, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. As of the time of writing, almost all disclosed investments are related to Crypto & AI: Crypto AI projects Vana, decentralized AI laboratory Tensorplex Labs;
• In March 2025, CZ stated that whether the new AI project is L1 or L2 is not important; for projects focusing on AI economic models, the choice of architecture should emphasize practicality. He also mentioned, "BNB Chain, I have been waiting for the AI hype to cool down a bit before proceeding. True builders will persist even after the hype fades."

Last month on Space, he reiterated: "AI is a foundational technology, and the intersection with crypto lies in AI adopting cryptocurrency as its native token."
While memes can attract users, they are unlikely to become a liquidity pool for settling funds; once the meme craze fades, some attention will inevitably return to certain "value coins."

As the originally attracted users begin to demand "utility," Binance also needs to ensure that users are not subject to "malicious harvesting," signaling the baton handover to AI, which is also a precise collaboration between Binance's resources and BNB Chain's ecological strategy—after all, AI Agents require high-frequency, low-cost on-chain interactions, which is a natural scenario for meme training.

From this perspective, through liquidity incentive programs and proactive layouts in the AI field, Binance and BNB Chain are constructing a complete ecological system from traffic acquisition to value realization and liquid trading.

Who Will Be the Seed Code for Meme & AI?

When the meme frenzy on BNB Chain completes its mission of cold-starting the liquidity flywheel, the ultimate strategic move is undoubtedly to select AI projects with technological extensibility to land on Binance's main site, completing the ultimate leap of value capture.

This is also the inevitable choice to realize the full lifecycle process of "incubation-launch-liquidity support" from BNB Chain to Binance. From this perspective, the first voting project for Binance is highly representative and serves as a good observation window:

Among the 9 projects, 7 are meme types, and BID and SIREN are the only two AI-labeled projects—of which SIREN is strictly a dual narrative of meme & AI Agent, essentially an on-chain AI tool product with both meme and practical attributes.

Currently, the voting situation shows that BANANAS31, SIREN, and Broccoli are in the top three, all of which possess meme attributes. However, as a product of the attention economy, the ultimate form of memes needs to achieve a chemical fusion of "propagation power × productivity."

In this context, SIREN, with its composite form of "propagability + practicality," perfectly resonates with the strategic demands of BNB Chain's ecological upgrade—as the first AI Agent token on BNB Chain, its core is to provide market insights and signal sharing through the SirenAI investment analysis agent, and it embodies a dual personality of AI:

The golden personality corresponds to conservative decision-making, while the crimson personality corresponds to aggressive decision-making. Both selection modes can autonomously choose investment coins, aligning highly with the factor of "technological differentiation."

If we trace the growth trajectory of SirenCoin, we will also find that it highly aligns with Binance's strategic layout, with almost every step hitting key nodes:

• On February 19, it directly launched on Binance Alpha;
• On February 21, BNB Chain announced SIREN as the winning project of the Meme liquidity plan Day 3;
• On February 28: as the "protagonist of a technical misjudgment event," it surged back to the weekly Tier 2 rankings, securing $400,000 in liquidity support;
• On March 20, it launched on Binance contracts and became one of the first projects voted on by Binance;

More noteworthy is its "triple jump" strategy in exchange layout—as of the time of writing, SIREN has successively achieved a grand slam on mainstream exchanges, including completing coverage of spot or contract trading pairs on Bybit, KuCoin, Gate.io, etc.

Especially with early positioning on "Binance reserves" like Bitget, which has a significant guiding effect, it not only maintains the market's heat gradient but also accumulates momentum for the launch on Binance, almost aiming directly at Binance.

At the turning point of the transition from attention economy to value economy, projects that can achieve a closed loop of "on-chain data - user value" transformation will ultimately become the rule-makers defining the new ecological position. With long-term resource tilt support from Binance + the key to BNB Chain's upcoming AI ecological position + full coverage of mainstream exchange listings, Siren is expected to become the most noteworthy target in this ultimate game.

In a sense, if SIREN, as one of the first AI-labeled native projects of the BNB Chain ecosystem, successfully launches on Binance, it may trigger the "AI Agent sector effect":

Developers will realize that CZ's consistent hints have pointed toward protocols that combine "tradeability (meme gene) × interactivity (AI core)," which is the optimal solution for capturing traffic and value in the Web3 era, thus attracting more developers and funds to flow into BNB Chain.

Conclusion

The "mid-game battle" of BNB Chain is essentially a balancing game between "traffic entry" and "value sedimentation."

If you believe that CZ is planning a new ecological evolution equation for BNB Chain—using memes to complete the cold start mission, and then taking over with the technological necessity of AI to become the new engine of the ecosystem, then this round of Binance's voting for new listings is essentially a handover ceremony of the new and old ecological order from meme to AI, capturing and sedimenting the traffic dividend.

This is also why hybrids like SIREN, which embody "meme shell + AI soul," occupy high positions in the voting; the market is betting real money not on a specific project but on the direction that BNB Chain has already mapped out:

Rebuilding application narratives in the "post-meme era" initiated by Solana, using AI to carry the traffic and liquidity dividends, ultimately realizing CZ's grand vision of "Web3 intelligent service infrastructure."