Accused of airdropping PUA and abnormal price fluctuations, penetrating the pre-market red and black of Redstone

Author: Shenchao TechFlow

"Red and black are the intertwining of ambition and reality, the collision of desire and coldness." -- The Red and the Black

In the cryptocurrency market, the rise and fall of prices is an endless game; the success or failure of a project is more like a battle of trust and doubt.

As depicted in the classic novel The Red and the Black, red symbolizes passion and hope, while black represents shadows and crises.

When we turn our attention to the recently launched project RedStone on Binance Launchpool, this contrast of "red and black" becomes particularly vivid:

As a representative of new cross-chain oracles, RedStone previously attracted market attention with its innovative multi-chain architecture and strong investment background (including Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain Capital).

In the past week, this "red stone" became a highlight in a sluggish market, with its token RED showing a positive price performance in the pre-market on Binance.

However, as the heat increased, recent controversies surrounding airdrops and price fluctuations in the pre-market gradually surfaced, causing this "red stone" to become increasingly "blackened" in the eyes of some community members.

A battle of red and black, a test of community trust and market rules.

RedStone in the Price Cap Experiment

In the cryptocurrency market, innovation is often the key to attracting attention.

The "Price Cap Mechanism" introduced by Binance for RedStone (RED) undoubtedly became the biggest highlight of this experiment.

On February 25, 2025, Binance announced that it would test this mechanism in the pre-market trading of Launchpool, aiming to control volatility by limiting price increases and avoiding the recent "Christmas tree" style of extreme fluctuations that have become commonplace during the initial token issuance.

Since RED was launched in the pre-market, this mechanism quickly ignited market enthusiasm.

In three consecutive days of trading, RED's price repeatedly hit the upper limit of the price cap, and after the price restriction was lifted, it soared to $1.4, becoming the focus of the pre-market.

As of now, RED is reported at $0.83, with a market cap of $33 million and a fully diluted market cap of $830 million. For a project that just launched in a bear market, the initial performance is indeed impressive, giving everyone a sense that "even the price cap can't contain the upward momentum."

If it can make money, people will naturally like it.

The price cap mechanism has indeed brought market enthusiasm to RED, but the applicability of this "red" still needs to be tested.

While the continuous price increase has attracted a lot of attention, it may also mask potential issues that could ferment within the community.

Controversies Surrounding Airdrops

The point of contention is still the airdrop.

In previous activities, RedStone launched three phases of "exploration activities" through Zealy and Discord, requiring community members to complete various tasks, such as studying technical documents, writing analysis articles, creating graphic materials, and even continuously producing content during the Spring Festival holiday.

These tasks were promoted as opportunities to "co-build the ecosystem," with community members earning RSG points by completing tasks, and RedStone promised that these points would be key credentials for future RED token airdrops.

To put it more bluntly, this effort to earn rewards is quite taxing.

According to its tokenomics (RED Tokenomics), RedStone plans to allocate 48.3% of the tokens to the ecosystem and community, with 10% designated for initial community claims, which community players have high hopes for.

However, on March 5, 2025, when RedStone announced the airdrop results, the community's enthusiasm quickly cooled.

The official announcement stated that only 2.19% of community members (a total of 4,386 people) received RED token rewards, while the RSG points of a large number of players were deemed invalid, leaving those who worked hard seemingly with nothing.

It's not about having too few but about the inequality; those who worked hard might end up with nothing, but having the right identity might lead to receiving an airdrop.

According to RedStone's official post, identity in Discord became the key to obtaining airdrops. Eligible roles include Vein Master, Deep Miner, Professor, and IRL (those who participated in offline activities). Public data shows that the proportion of people with these roles in the project's DC group is only 2%.

Therefore, based on the total community size of around 230,000, the number of people who could receive this airdrop is just the aforementioned 4,000+.

Once the airdrop results were announced, dissatisfaction among community members began to spread across various social media.

Some netizens humorously stated that if you didn't receive the RED airdrop, don't worry, because you will never walk alone.

Meanwhile, angrier players began to directly accuse the project, with some negative posts rapidly circulating in both Chinese and English communities, with sharp language and even hostile tones, directly pointing out that RedStone is exploiting community users.

As a neutral observer, I cannot verify the accuracy of the accusations in these posts; however, the community's accumulated grievances cannot be ignored, as the story of "water can carry a boat, but it can also capsize it" frequently plays out in the crypto world.

But at its core, the community's anger boils down to "I worked hard but didn't qualify."

Many users, even after accumulating millions of points, were still excluded and regarded as "ineffective labor": the mere 2.19% reward ratio highlights the long-standing issue of "airdrop PUA"—that is, projects guide users to work hard through high-intensity tasks before the token launch but fail to fully deliver on their promises.

When the efforts of community members are gradually devalued to being "sacrifices of digital laborers," players within the situation will naturally feel that they have been exploited for free labor to promote the project, only to have the fruits of their labor seized by those with more privileged identities.

Price Fluctuations in the Pre-Market

Under the premise that the airdrop has displeased community members, any abnormality in the token price would clearly deepen misunderstandings and distrust.

This afternoon, some community members shared screenshots showing that the price curve of RED in the pre-market exhibited a very bizarre oscillation, completely unlike a normal price trend.

Subsequently, well-known KOL @_FORAB also discovered similar issues and speculated that there seemed to be problems with RED's market makers, with a large number of orders being canceled, leading to a significant price fluctuation.

This situation easily leads people to mistakenly believe that market makers are playing a solo game, manipulating prices back and forth without proportional retail counterparties.

However, Stephen, the community manager for RedStone's Chinese community, later clarified in the comments that the issue was not caused by market makers. RED did not have market makers participating in the pre-market, and the price changes were actually due to the trading rule that limited each person to trading 5,000 RED.

Later, Binance officially responded that the limit order function for RED/USDT experienced a malfunction from 11:39 to 12:09 on March 6, 2025, but the market order function was operating normally, and the platform has completed repairs.

In terms of results, while the issue did not originate from market manipulation, the severe price fluctuations in the already unstable sentiment within the RedStone community quickly spread the "manipulation theory" among community members.

Despite RedStone and Binance clarifying the actual cause of the issue, retail investors in the crypto market often prefer to believe in conspiracy theories rather than technical explanations. This public opinion effect further exacerbated the community's distrust.

Conclusion

With profit as the priority, the relationship between project parties and the community in the cryptocurrency industry is always subtle: they need each other, but sometimes feel they are harming one another.

From its innovative multi-chain architecture to Binance's price cap mechanism, and then to the airdrop controversy and price fluctuations, this project has experienced a high level of market attention in a short period while facing a severe test of community trust.

The airdrop results from RedStone left the vast majority of participants disappointed, even leading to accusations of "PUA" exploitation. This sentiment is highly contagious in the crypto market, especially in an environment where the community is highly sensitive to fairness.

For RedStone, the future challenge lies in how to repair community relations and establish a more transparent and robust mechanism at both the technical and operational levels.

Perhaps, from a broader perspective, this round of crypto projects needs not only technological innovation but also a profound insight into community sentiment and a comprehensive optimization of market rules.

To gain the community is to gain the world.