Many people believe that November 13th, when Binance listed BANK, was the climax of the story. However, if you closely observe the operations of the Lorenzo team over the next month, you'll find that the listing is just the beginning. The real drama is yet to come.
First, let's talk about Binance. The trading pairs BANK/USDT, BANK/USDC, and BANK/TRY are launching simultaneously. This is not a privilege that just any project can obtain. Everyone is aware of how strict Binance's review process for new listings is. You need to have a solid product, a clear business logic, and most importantly, safety guarantees. The fact that Lorenzo passed this hurdle indicates that the fundamentals are still sound.
However, listing on Binance is only obtaining a ticket to entry. How to make the most of this ticket is the real skill. Lorenzo's subsequent actions are quite interesting. On November 20, Binance directly launched a CreatorPad event, offering 1.89 million BANK tokens as rewards. The design of this event is very clever; it is not simply airdropping tokens but encouraging users to create content, trade, and participate in community building.
How does it work specifically? You need to pay attention to Lorenzo's official account and create content related to the project, ensuring to tag it with LorenzoProtocol and mark the token. Then at least trade $10 worth of BANK. All three conditions must be met. After completing them, you qualify to share in the distribution of 1.89 million tokens.
This event continues until December 22, with rewards divided into three tiers: the top 100 content creators share 1.323 million BANK, other participants evenly split 378,000, and the top 50 creators at the Binance Square share 189,000. The benefit of this design is that it covers different levels of users. Influencers can earn top rewards, while ordinary users also have a guaranteed share, and square creators have a separate pool.
But where this strategy is clever is that, on the surface, Lorenzo appears to have spent 1.89 million tokens on this activity. In reality, what they gained was a massive amount of user-generated content, real trading volumes, and community engagement. The value of these things far exceeds the 1.89 million tokens themselves, and this activity is conducted on the Binance platform, effectively leveraging Binance's traffic pool for a soft launch.
If you look at the timing, they went live on November 13 and launched the activity on November 20, with only a week in between. This rhythm is very tight, indicating that the team had already planned everything out and is not just waiting for the market to ferment on its own after going public.
Then on November 24, Tapbit also listed BANK. This timing is also quite subtle. Binance had just gone live for about ten days, and the heat was still there. At this time, another exchange came in to take the flow, and Tapbit not only opened spot trading but also directly launched 20x leveraged perpetual contracts. This is interesting because the play in the contract market is completely different from spot trading, which can attract another group of users.
Within 48 hours of Tapbit's launch, the contract position of BANK reached $4.2 million. What does this number indicate? It suggests real trading demand, with some people going long and others short. The market is beginning to form a contest. This level of activity is quite rare for a token that has been live for less than two weeks.
On November 28, Binance Thailand announced the addition of BANK/USDC and BANK/USDT trading pairs, with recharges opening on December 1. Trading began at 2 PM the same day. This is another round of regional market expansion. Thailand's cryptocurrency market has developed rapidly in the past two years, and Binance has localized operations there. Lorenzo's ability to access this resource indicates significant support from Binance.
If you look at these actions together, on November 13, they were listed on Binance's global station, on November 20, they launched the CreatorPad event, on November 24, they went live on Tapbit for spot and contracts, and on November 28, they were listed on Binance Thailand. Four major actions within a month, with intervals of less than two weeks between each action. This intense rhythm is clearly well-planned.
Moreover, each action has a different goal. The Binance global station establishes basic liquidity, the CreatorPad builds community and content, the Tapbit contract expands the derivatives market, and Binance Thailand represents regional expansion. Together, these dimensions effectively utilize all the resources that exchanges can provide.
But relying solely on being listed on exchanges is not enough, because once users buy tokens, they need a place to use them, which involves the product level. Lorenzo has actually been active in this area, just not as high-profile as going public on exchanges.
On December 10, they issued a notice stating they would strengthen support for the sUSD1+ product. Why choose this timing? Because Binance has just launched spot and futures trading for USD1. USD1 is a stablecoin created by World Liberty Financial, and Lorenzo's USD1+ series products are designed for yield optimization based on this stablecoin.
What is sUSD1+? Simply put, it is a product that allows you to deposit USD1, and it will automatically allocate funds between different DeFi protocols based on where the yield is highest, adjusting dynamically in real-time. Users do not need to operate it themselves; the protocol backend completes it automatically. The benefit of such a product is that it lowers the threshold for use. You do not need to understand what Aave or Compound is; you just need to deposit your money.
Lorenzo chose to launch sUSD1+ right after USD1 was listed on Binance. This timing was also carefully designed because liquidity and awareness would increase after USD1 was launched on Binance. Promoting derivative products based on USD1 at this time would yield a much higher conversion rate than usual.
From November to December, Lorenzo has actually made quite a few optimizations at the product level. EnzoBTC's cross-chain bridge has become more stable, and the number of supported chains has increased from a dozen to over 20, including mainstream and emerging chains like Ethereum, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Sui, Hemi Network, and Berachain.
Each additional supported chain means another use case. For example, EnzoBTC can participate in liquidity mining at Magma Finance on Sui, engage in early ecosystem projects on Hemi, and connect to Venus Protocol for lending on BNB Chain. The more scenarios there are, the stronger the practicality of EnzoBTC, and the greater the motivation for users to hold it.
Then we need to look at the data. Lorenzo's TVL was $737 million on November 1 and dropped to $601 million by December 12, a decline of about 18%. This number doesn't look too good on its own, but you have to analyze it in the context of the broader environment. From November to December, the entire DeFi market's funds were flowing out, with many protocols experiencing TVL declines exceeding 20%. Lorenzo's ability to maintain an 18% drop indicates decent fund stickiness.
Moreover, if you look at the composition of TVL, EnzoBTC accounts for 89.2%, which is $539 million. This part is relatively stable because users wrap BTC into EnzoBTC mainly for long-term yield and will not frequently enter and exit. The real volatility comes from the funds of other products, but that part is already a small proportion.
Looking at the distribution of BANK tokens, this data is very interesting. Binance's hot wallet holds 53.83% of BANK, which indicates that most tokens are held on exchanges. This means good liquidity, where buying and selling can be executed at any time. However, it also indicates a low level of decentralization, as Binance alone controls more than half of the circulation.
The top ten holding addresses together control 93.07% of the supply, which is indeed quite high. In addition, Binance, Gate.io, and Bitget combined account for almost 2%, and PancakeSwap's V3 pool holds 2.39%, while the rest is distributed among some large holders.
This distribution structure has its pros and cons. The advantage is that liquidity is concentrated on exchanges, making trading depth better and less prone to being dumped. The downside is that if something goes wrong with the exchange or if large holders collectively sell off, the market becomes very passive.
However, one point worth noting is that from when they went public on Binance in November to mid-December, the holding structure did not undergo drastic changes, and there was no large-scale transfer of chips. This indicates that early participants and institutional investors are mostly observing and are not in a hurry to cash out.
Lorenzo's financing situation is also quite special. They have only raised $200,000 in total, which is very small in the DeFi project space. Most projects easily raise millions or tens of millions. Lorenzo's ability to achieve $600 million in TVL with $200,000 in startup funds is indeed very efficient.
However, having less money also comes with its own issues. You can't spend money on marketing like those projects that have raised tens of millions, recruit top technical talents, or conduct large-scale market promotion. Lorenzo is currently able to access resources from Binance more due to the competitiveness of the product itself and the execution power of the team.
The technical team is quite robust; CTO Fan Sang has a strong background, holding a doctorate from Georgia Tech and specializing in blockchain security. He has published several papers at top conferences. Having someone with this academic background as CTO ensures that there won't be major issues in technical architecture and security design.
CEO Matt Ye previously worked on multi-chain interoperability projects, and this experience is helpful for Lorenzo's current cross-chain asset management. COO Tad Tobar has operated at ZetaChain, which is focused on full-chain interoperability. Looking at these backgrounds, the team configuration is reasonably balanced.
On November 9, Lorenzo integrated Chainlink's proof of reserve system. This is crucial because EnzoBTC is essentially a wrapped Bitcoin. Users are most concerned about whether the underlying reserves truly exist. Chainlink's PoR system can verify in real-time that each EnzoBTC has a corresponding BTC locked in a smart contract, and this verification process is decentralized, not just determined by Lorenzo.
In November, CertiK also deployed a real-time monitoring system for Lorenzo. The Skynet system will monitor the status of smart contracts 24/7 and immediately alert if it detects any abnormal transactions or potential vulnerabilities. Lorenzo received a score of 91.36 points, which is considered above average in DeFi protocols.
These security measures collectively cover most conventional risk points. Of course, there is no absolute safety, but at least it shows that the team is serious about this aspect, rather than waiting for problems to occur before trying to remedy them.
From the perspective of ecosystem cooperation, Lorenzo has now integrated projects like KiloEx, Venus Protocol, Avalon Labs, Pell Network, and Satoshi Protocol. KiloEx is a decentralized derivative exchange with a 24-hour trading volume of over $20 million, and EnzoBTC can be used for margin trading there.
Venus Protocol is the largest lending protocol on BNB Chain, with a TVL of $1.5 billion. EnzoBTC can be used for collateralized lending there. These collaborations are not just a simple list but involve actual product integration, allowing users to genuinely use EnzoBTC for transactions on these platforms.
Lorenzo's current strategy is very clear: first solve the liquidity problem by going public on exchanges, then address use case issues through product optimization and ecosystem cooperation, and finally resolve trust issues through security audits and monitoring. These three dimensions are promoted simultaneously, forming a closed loop.
From the actions taken from November to December, Lorenzo is not waiting for the market but actively creating it. Going public on exchanges, hosting events, launching products, and expanding ecosystems, every step is in rhythm. This level of execution is indeed rare in DeFi projects.
Of course, it is still too early to judge success or failure because Lorenzo faces very fierce competition. There are not only their project in terms of Bitcoin liquidity. Whether they can really grow big depends on whether they can continuously launch competitive products, retain users, and find a balance between security and returns.
But at least from the current performance, Lorenzo's direction is correct, the strategy is clear, and the execution is in place. Binance has played this card quite well, and the next step is to see if they can continue this momentum.
