Recently, APRO's posts have been flooding the Binance Square. The 'Content Creator Competition' from December 4 to January 5 next year allows participants to share a post with the #APRO and #Oracle tags, and post a trading screenshot of at least $10 to share in the prize pool. Also, there’s that 15M AT prize pool that started on November 28—trading task 3.3M, trading volume leaderboard 11.25M, referral commission 450K, and the 24-hour trading volume skyrocketed to $64.6 million. When I first saw these numbers, one word popped into my mind: 'dumping coins.'
But thinking again, something seems off. Projects like APRO, which involve oracles, typically have a high technical threshold and a significant user understanding cost, so they should theoretically follow an 'elite route'—finding a few leading DeFi protocols for deep cooperation to gradually build a reputation. Yet, it is engaging in this kind of 'community participation' activity, and doing it on such a large scale, which surely has other motives behind it.
Let's first talk about the content competition of Square. On the surface, this seems very conventional—posting, liking, commenting, sharing, accumulating points for rewards. But APRO's requirements are a bit special: it must include specific tags and proof of trading. Why design it this way?
Because oracle technology is too abstract. When you tell users, "We use the TVWAP algorithm to prevent price manipulation" and "We have AI-enhanced data validation," 99% of people will be confused after hearing it. But what if you ask them to write posts and share experiences? Users will be forced to understand: what exactly does APRO do? How does it help me play DeFi more safely? What are the benefits of using APRO's data in prediction markets?
This process of "creating content" is actually about user education. And it's the most effective kind—not the project party promoting itself, but allowing users to research, understand, and disseminate on their own. The community transforms from passively receiving information to actively creating content, directly doubling the level of participation.
And have you noticed that the rewards for the Square activity are not fiat currency, but AT tokens? This means that after participants receive rewards, they can either sell (increasing liquidity), hold (locking supply), or use them (for future staking, paying oracle service fees, etc.). Regardless of the choice, it reinforces the token economic cycle of AT.
Looking at the 15M AT reward pool, this design is even more aggressive. It is divided into three parts: trading tasks, trading volume rankings, and referral commissions.
The trading task is the simplest; users can earn AT by completing a specified trading volume. The purpose of this approach is clear—to activate trading pairs. The total supply of AT is 1 billion, with only 230 million in circulation. If liquidity is not deep enough, it can easily be dumped. Through task incentives, APRO pulls users from a "buy and hold" state to a "frequent trading" state, activating the market, which allows for more actions to be taken later.
The trading volume leaderboard is even more interesting. Who gets the big share of 11.25M AT? It goes to the most active traders. Who are these people? They are not retail investors; they are professional players, market makers, and arbitrageurs. Through this leaderboard, APRO is essentially filtering and binding "core users"—those who will genuinely use AT and participate in ecosystem building.
Referral commissions are even more unnecessary to mention; this is a standard growth hacking strategy. 450K AT may not be much, but it leverages the effect of viral growth. Users recommend friends to participate, and friends recommend more friends, leading to exponential community growth. Moreover, users who come through referrals tend to be more sticky—because there's a "personal connection" involved, rather than just cold advertising.
I dug into the on-chain data and found that the effect of this activity was indeed immediate. After the event started on November 28, the number of AT holding addresses jumped from 18,000 to over 43,000, a growth of 140%. The number of active addresses in 24 hours was over 33,000, with trading relatively balanced (44 buys to 72 sells), indicating that it wasn't a one-sided dump, but that there were indeed people interacting.
More importantly, these new holders are not "airdrop seekers." APRO's HODLer airdrop has long been over, and this wave of growth mainly comes from active participation—buying AT, completing tasks, and earning rewards. The quality of these users is much higher than those who come from airdrops.
But I also see the risks. 15M AT accounts for 1.5% of the total supply, which is a strong stimulus in the short term, but how can it be converted into real usage in the long term? If user churn occurs after the activity ends, the reward pool will be wasted. APRO's operational data gives a clue: the weekly report on November 17 showed 91,000 data validations and 91,000 AI oracle calls, which increased to 97,000 by the 30th, a growth of 6%.
This indicates that actual usage at the foundational level is steadily increasing. The user traffic brought by the activity has indeed converted into real data service demands to some extent. But is a 6% growth rate considered fast? Honestly, not really. This also exposes the challenges APRO is facing at this stage—how to convert "trading users" into "using users."
In the community discussions, someone mentioned a point I find very interesting: what will happen after the staking system goes live? APRO's roadmap includes node staking and reward mechanisms. If this feature is indeed implemented, then the users attracted by this activity will have a long-term reason to lock up AT—not only can they earn trading rewards, but they can also gain project profit dividends through staking.
This combination of "short-term activities + long-term mechanisms" is essentially building a community Great Wall. The activities are the bricks of the wall, while staking, data services, and node governance are the steel and concrete. Once this wall is built, APRO's community stickiness will be stronger than you can imagine.
KOLs are also discussing this. Some say APRO is the "source of benefits for the BNB ecosystem" because its activities have actually boosted the trading volume of the entire chain. Others predict that once the staking system goes live, the locking mechanism of AT will create supply tightness, and combined with the growth in ecosystem demand, the price will naturally rise.
However, I must pour a bucket of cold water on this. No matter how lively the community activities are, it ultimately depends on the product. If APRO's oracle service is truly useful, widely adopted by numerous DeFi protocols, and truly irreplaceable in RWA and AI Agent scenarios, then this community foundation is a huge advantage. But if the product fails, no matter how strong the community is, it will just be a scattered sand.
Currently, APRO's technological accumulation seems relatively solid—Oracle 3.0 upgrade, AI data validation, support for over 40 chains, and cooperation with leading projects. However, it still lacks a "killer application"—a scenario that makes everyone feel that "we can't live without APRO."
So I understand this 15M AT and Square activity as "seed-stage investment." APRO is using tokens to incentivize and cultivate a group of loyal users in advance. When RWA and AI Agents truly become mainstream next year or the year after, these users will be APRO's most solid foundational base.
Don't underestimate the power of the community. Why has Chainlink become the leader in oracle technology? Apart from its technology, a large part is due to the community faith it accumulated in its early days. Those die-hard Chainlink fans will support it, use it, and promote it, regardless of how the market changes.
What APRO is doing now is replicating this path. The only difference is that the battlefield it has chosen is BNB Chain, RWA, and AI oracles, rather than Ethereum DeFi. Time will tell whether this path is right or wrong.@APRO Oracle $AT
