Binance plans to reveal listing fees and donate them to charity
It will be interesting to see how much each project is donating for its place on the exchange.
Binance has attracted a lot of criticism for its practice of accepting listing fees, which are fees a coin's developers pay to get their coin implemented on the exchange. The criticism is perhaps not entirely fair though. Listing fees are a sensible way of weeding out the tire kickers as well as covering the inescapable costs of adding new projects, and they don't necessarily have to inhibit high quality projects.
The general idea is that good projects might get listed for free, or for cheap, while more dubious projects have to pay to make it worthwhile for exchanges.
These are some of the reasons recently given by Coinbase when it followed suit by implementing its own listing fees ahead of a planned expansion.
Donations welcome
The practice of charging listing fees is widespread, both in crypto and fiat markets. And to Binance's credit, it's been relatively transparent about it even before now. CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao has publicly gone into a fair bit of detail on how exactly it all works, and previously described the listing fees as being more in the nature of voluntary donations than a fixed cost.
That stance might be formalised now, with Binance promising a new level of transparency in a Medium post published yesterday.
"Project teams will still propose the number they would like to provide for a 'listing fee,' or now more appropriately called a 'donation.' Binance will not dictate a number, nor is there a minimum required listing fee," it says. "Starting immediately, and going forward, we will make all listing fees transparent and donate 100% of them to charity.
"A large donation does not guarantee or in any way influence the outcome of our listing review process."
Market-wise, it will be interesting to see the kinds of donations different projects are making ahead of their listings, and how that might reflect on the potential Binance sees in each project. For project owners, this kind of transparent information might also go a long way towards establishing a reasonable set of benchmark expectations.
The charity
The Binance Blockchain Charity Foundation will be the recipient of listing donations. It aims to advance the "industry" of philanthropy by leveraging the potential of decentralised technologies and bringing blockchain tools to the bottom billion, with the goal of helping lift them out of poverty.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author holds ETH, IOTA, ICX, VET, XLM, BTC and ADA.
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