The Evolution of Power at Binance: The Dilemma of a 300-Million-User Empire
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The Evolution of Power at Binance: The Dilemma of a 300-Million-User Empire
From an era where one person had all the power to today's co-CEOs, seven-member board of directors, and a 1,000-person compliance team, Binance's power structure has undergone dramatic changes.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Lesley, ChainCatcher
Prologue: The Birth of a Coordinate
At 4:00 PM Beijing time on January 5, 2026—a seemingly ordinary moment—marked the entry into a new phase of the most dramatic power transition in cryptocurrency history.
On this day, Binance’s global operations were officially taken over by three Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM)-licensed entities: Nest Exchange Services Limited for exchange platform operations, Nest Clearing and Custody Limited for clearing and custody, and Nest Trading Limited for over-the-counter trading services. The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, once claiming to have "no headquarters," now had a clear legal domicile for the first time.
It had been exactly one month since He Yi was appointed co-CEO.
In that month, Binance experienced: an employee suspended and referred to judicial proceedings for exploiting insider information via social media for personal gain; an official $100,000 bounty reward distributed evenly among five whistleblowers according to rules; He Yi publicly acknowledging in multiple forums that Binance “listed poorly, with no wealth effect,” “products are not good enough,” “wallet product gap is obvious,” “too big to turn quickly,” “organizational bloat,” and “talent iteration issues”...
From a wild era ruled by one person to today’s modern corporate structure featuring three entities, two co-CEOs, and a seven-member board—Binance took eight years.
But building the architecture is just the beginning. The real question is: what is this global behemoth with 300 million registered users going through when individual will can no longer cover everything, and systems have yet to operate cohesively?
The Golden Age and Shadows of Centralization
One summer in 2017, in an office in Shanghai, Zhao Changpeng (CZ) and He Yi began building Binance. No one could have imagined then that this makeshift team would become the world’s highest-volume crypto exchange within 180 days.
Early Binance’s success was built on extreme efficiency—CZ’s will was the company’s direction, and everyone else executed. There was no board, no lengthy approval processes, not even a fixed headquarters. The company moved like nomads through regulatory gaps—from China to Japan, then to Malta—maintaining strategic mobility.
This model created miracles. By the end of 2021, amid surging cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, CZ topped the list of wealthiest Chinese individuals with a net worth of $94.1 billion, briefly entering the ranks of the world’s top ten billionaires. Binance processed $65 billion in daily trades on average, capturing up to 70% market share.
But behind every miracle lay accumulated systemic risks.
During CZ’s reign, management repeatedly ignored compliance warnings labeled “high risk” in pursuit of explosive user growth—even pushing to “remove KYC” so users could start trading within ten minutes of registration. Marketing and growth teams ran unchecked, while compliance held little influence, often seen as obstruction rather than protection.
Reuters investigations revealed the cost of this culture: Binance admitted prioritizing growth and profits over adherence to U.S. laws. Court documents show He Yi participated in planning strategies to evade regulation. Internal decision-making followed a simple logic—if it brought users and volume, everything else was negotiable.
This approach fueled astonishing short-term growth but planted massive long-term vulnerabilities.
Within Binance’s power structure, “listing rights” were the most coveted prize—directly tied to instant monetization. As the world’s largest exchange, Binance’s user base, liquidity, and endorsement conferred immense wealth effects. “List and launch” became Binance’s core weapon during its wild early days, outpacing competitors.
Because of this, listing rights were highly centralized and deeply personal under the old system, reflecting the exchange or founding team’s goals and values at any given time.
During the chaotic expansion phase, Binance’s early Angel program played a subtle role. Officially a community promotion channel, due to its extremely short reporting lines reaching directly to core decision-makers, it effectively served as a “fast track” for certain projects to gain visibility. Some leveraged this path skillfully, which partly explains why outsiders often struggled to discern a unified logic behind listing rhythms—the logic itself was pluralistic, even competitive.
Of course, Binance also established its own formal listing framework early on—now the foundation of its current system. According to public information, Jeff Young, co-founder of BitWell, was involved in related listing activities, while Erick Zhang, founder of Buidlpad, played a deeper role in shaping Binance’s listing standards and procedures.
What made these “system builders” unique was that they didn’t just understand the rules—they helped define them. When they left Binance to become project incubators or investors, that knowledge didn’t vanish—it became a rare asset.
Judging from outcomes, after leaving Binance, BitWell’s founders reportedly had several associated or recommended projects successfully listed on Binance Spot; Buidlpad-incubated projects saw four listings on Binance, boasting a claimed 100% “Binance acceptance rate.” Such above-average hit rates are hard to explain solely by project quality. A more plausible explanation is: if you wrote the grading rubric, you naturally know how to score high.
YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) is another key example. Despite Binance’s repeated claims of “firewalls” between departments, historical data and market consensus suggest that receiving investment from YZi Labs remains one of the strongest “golden tickets” for listing.
According to insiders, the early listing framework was shaped by figures including Erica Zhang and Jeff Yang. Early members of YZi Labs also held influence over listings, but major personnel changes occurred later—several core members, including head Bill Qian, departed simultaneously in June 2022.
Binance never publicly explained this mass departure, but the timing—coinciding with the full replacement of the Loss team (now Yield Security), followed by tighter listing procedures—suggests it wasn't merely a strategic shift.
Unconfirmed rumors point to internal governance issues, though without official confirmation, we refrain from judgment. What is certain: after this personnel shake-up, Binance clearly strengthened internal controls over its listing decision chain.
Notably, even at peak centralization, no single individual unilaterally decided listings. Insiders familiar with internal processes say major listing decisions required sign-offs from multiple key roles—meaning even top executives needed to balance interests within an established approval system.
After enduring such turbulence, Binance systematically restructured its listing power architecture. Historically, there was a centralized Global Head of Product (e.g., Mayur Kamat), but after Kamat’s departure in 2023, the role was split and reorganized. Today, spot listing authority is divided among product leads and trading operations leads across parallel tracks—not concentrated in one department or person. This design sacrifices decision speed but brings clear benefits: by adding veto points, attempts to influence outcomes through single relationships or channels face much higher coordination costs.
The evolution of Binance’s listing system is essentially a transformation from the dividends of personal rule to institutionalized defense. But institutional reform doesn’t mean problems disappear.
In February 2025, former CEO CZ publicly stated Binance’s listing process was “a bit broken.” That same year, a leak involving listing information for a MEME coin surfaced, again exposing weaknesses in internal information control. These incidents show that despite multiple rounds of structural adjustments, the inertia of past gray zones remains stubborn—soil for loopholes and corruption has not been fully eradicated.
On December 17, 2025, Binance issued a sharply worded announcement formally unveiling comprehensive listing frameworks covering Alpha, Futures, and Spot, explicitly banning third-party intermediaries, publishing a blacklist naming individuals and institutions like BitABC, Central Research, and Andrew Lee, and establishing a whistleblower reward fund of up to $5 million.
This announcement marked both a milestone in institutionalization and a testament to persistent underlying problems. When Binance must put in writing that applications can “only go through official channels,” or offer large bounties to fight brokers, it shows previous “distributed checks and balances” failed to fully seal the gaps of personal rule. Notably, Binance did not designate a single “global head of spot business” in external announcements. Instead, it dispersed decision-making power across several product and trading operations leads.
The $4.3 Billion Turning Point
November 21, 2023, U.S. Federal Court in Seattle.
Forty-seven-year-old CZ admitted failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and stepped down as CEO. Simultaneously, Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion to U.S. authorities to settle criminal charges—the largest corporate settlement in U.S. history involving criminal charges against an executive.
Under the plea agreement, CZ is barred from participating in Binance’s day-to-day operations and all Binance-related activities for three years. However, the agreement does not prevent him from retaining ownership stakes or “providing advice.”
This is a delicate form of power withdrawal: CZ is no longer CEO, but still the largest shareholder; he no longer commands operations, but controls investments; he no longer appears internally, yet his name remains inseparable from Binance.
That day, longtime Binance executive Richard Teng was announced as the new CEO. A heavily regulated exchange needed someone who could engage with global regulators—and he was one of the few senior executives at Binance with an “establishment” background.
Before joining Binance, Richard Teng held key positions at the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Singapore Exchange (SGX). In 2015, he helped create FSRA (Financial Services Regulatory Authority) and assisted ADGM in becoming one of the world’s first jurisdictions to introduce a cryptocurrency regulatory framework. This hybrid background enables him to navigate both traditional finance and crypto worlds.
The $4.3 billion fine changed not only CZ’s trajectory but also redirected Binance’s entire course.
Under the settlement with U.S. regulators, CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) explicitly required Binance to establish a corporate governance structure including an independent board. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Justice and Treasury mandated external compliance oversight—Forensic Risk Alliance and Sullivan & Cromwell were appointed as independent monitors to review Binance’s operations over the next three years.
Thus, in the summer of 2024, after seven years, Binance held its first-ever board meeting. Seven directors sat around a long table in an ADGM conference room. At the head sat Gabriel Abed, a former diplomat from Barbados; opposite him sat Richard Teng, the newly appointed CEO who had consumed copious coffee to stay alert.
Among the seven directors, three were independent non-executive directors—they received no salary from Binance and were theoretically capable of making judgments independent of management. Gabriel Abed was elected chairman—a meaningful choice: a former diplomat from a small Caribbean nation, neither aligned with U.S. regulators nor CZ’s camp, thus a “neutral” figure acceptable to all parties.
The other two independent directors were also carefully selected:
Xin Wang, CEO of Bayview Acquisition Corp., experienced in capital markets and a practicing lawyer. The other independent director shifted from Arnaud Ventura in 2024 to Max Yang, described on Binance’s website as a strategist and corporate leader with extensive international experience.
The remaining four directors were internal Binance figures: Richard Teng, Lilai Wang (founding member), Heina Chen (co-founder), and He Yi. Notably, Jinkai He was an original board member, now replaced by He Yi. Heina Chen is one of Binance’s more enigmatic yet influential executives. She long controlled multiple corporate bank accounts and served as director or signatory for various Binance entities, overseeing clearing, settlement, and treasury functions. In investigative reports by SEC, Forbes, and others, she has been repeatedly cited as one of the key figures “managing the purse strings” at Binance.
What does this composition imply? On the surface, independent directors hold less than half the seats, unable to form a majority on critical votes. Yet externally, their significance extends beyond voting—they represent a constraint in themselves. At least formally, Binance is no longer ruled by one person.
The Appearance and Reality of Power Sharing
In December 2025, during Dubai Blockchain Week, Binance announced He Yi would assume the role of co-CEO. As Binance surpassed 300 million global users, the woman who had stood beside CZ since 2017 finally emerged from being the “invisible number two” into a visible center of power.
According to sources, this move was not impromptu but part of a governance requirement when Abu Dhabi invested $2 billion in Binance in 2024: He Yi would take over as CEO within one to two years, driving the transition of power and governance structures.
Multiple considerations underpinned this arrangement, primarily business complementarity: Teng excels in compliance and regulatory engagement but lacks deep roots in the crypto industry; He Yi, as co-founder, possesses intuitive understanding of products and markets—something Teng lacks. Teng handles compliance and regulation; He Yi oversees products, markets, and user growth—two parallel tracks advancing together.
But a deeper question remains: Does He Yi’s return signal a comeback of CZ’s influence?
Court documents reveal He Yi participated in planning regulatory evasion strategies. Media citing anonymous sources said the U.S. Department of Justice initially wanted He Yi to step down during early settlement talks, but ultimately did not pursue charges—reasons unknown. Media described it as: U.S. authorities toppled the king of crypto, but the queen remains standing.
Additionally, on January 23, 2025, when Binance Labs was renamed YZi Labs, CZ’s name appeared under “co-founder.” The name “YZi” itself is symbolic—derived from “Yi” in He Yi’s name and “Z” in CZ’s. This investment arm manages approximately $10 billion in crypto-related assets.
Insiders say CZ exerts significant influence over investments—his informal posts on X about specific sectors or technologies directly shape investment decisions made by YZi Labs’ managers.
Projects invested in by YZi Labs
Has power truly been decentralized—or merely repackaged?
In CZ’s era, the compliance team held low status within Binance. The culture favored “move fast and break things,” treating compliance as a hindrance rather than a safeguard.
Now, everything has changed.
In January 2023, Noah Perlman joined Binance as Chief Compliance Officer (CCO). Perlman’s career spans traditional finance and crypto—he previously led financial crime compliance at Morgan Stanley, then served as COO and CCO at Gemini Exchange. Perlman spearheaded rapid expansion of the compliance team, establishing global AML (anti-money laundering), sanctions screening, law enforcement liaison, and listing approval processes.
According to Binance’s 2024 annual report, the internal compliance team grew to 650 experts; including contractors and related personnel, the broader compliance team exceeded 1,000. Bloomberg reported in August 2024 that Binance’s annual compliance spending surpassed $200 million—making compliance one of its largest cost centers.
More importantly, power dynamics shifted. Within Binance, no business can proceed without compliance approval. Perlman is no longer just a functional head—he has become a key participant in strategic decision-making.
Chief Compliance Officer Noah Perlman told media including CNBC that his mission is to find a new “balance,” inevitably creating “friction” and “unpleasant experiences” for business units.
Listing data offers the clearest gauge of this tension. According to Binance’s official announcements, 80 new projects were listed in 2021, dropping to 19 in 2022. From March 2023, when CFTC filed suit, to November when the DOJ imposed the $4.3 billion fine—a span of eight months—only 10 projects were listed. Never before had the compliance team wielded such strong veto power. Yet within three months after penalties were settled, Binance rapidly listed another 10 projects, nearly matching the total from the entire litigation period. The marketing team’s drive never vanished—only temporarily suppressed.
Growing Pains in Institutionalization
If rebuilding the power structure was Binance’s “software upgrade,” then the events of October 11, 2025, exposed fatal flaws in the “hardware.”
On that day, Bitcoin plunged from around $115,000 to near $86,000—a drop exceeding 25%. But what turned this decline into an “epic massacre” was Binance’s system outage at the most critical moment.
Numerous users reported inability to log in, add margin, close positions, or reduce exposure. Some claimed account freezes and failed stop-loss orders during the crash. Within 24 hours, forced liquidations across the market reached approximately $19 billion, with over 1.6 million accounts wiped out—setting a record for single-day liquidations in crypto history.
Social media unanimously accused Binance of “pulling the plug” at the crucial moment.
On October 12, Binance acknowledged “brief technical failures in some system modules under extreme traffic” and announced compensation for users who suffered losses due to asset de-pegging—totaling about $283 million in two disbursements.
Despite the official explanation, market skepticism over Binance’s system capacity and technology remained unresolved. The tech side is overseen by CTO Rohit Wad—a veteran who joined Binance in 2022 after over 30 years in technical leadership roles at Microsoft, Facebook, and Google.
Yet the incident on October 11 proved that under true extremes, the system remains fragile.
If the technical collapse was accidental, the issues exposed in the listing process reflect systemic institutional deficiencies.
In February 2025, an article titled “To All Practitioners, Investors, and Industry Observers Who Care About Web3’s Future” sparked industry attention on Medium. The author listed projects suspected of “backdoor access” and “favoritism,” detailing challenges faced when engaging with Binance.
Former CEO CZ publicly admitted Binance’s listing process had “some problems.”
Even more troubling was the failure of internal controls.
On December 7, 2025, a tip alleged that a Binance employee may have used their position for personal gain—on-chain token issuance (13:29) matched content posted by the official account (13:30). The employee was immediately suspended, and Binance cooperated with relevant jurisdictions on legal proceedings. The $100,000 bounty was distributed equally to the first five whistleblowers who submitted valid reports via audit@binance.com.
This was not an isolated case. Throughout Binance’s history, listing information leaks have repeatedly surfaced, continually exposing weak internal information controls.
The root problem lies here: when a company transitions from “rule by man” to “rule of law,” institutions can be built quickly, but cultural change takes time. Behavioral patterns formed in the wild era—informal information flows, personal relationships influencing business decisions, “getting things done” overriding “following procedures”—do not vanish overnight with a press release or penalty.
Talent Density—the Real Dilemma
In December 2025, when He Yi officially assumed the role of co-CEO at Dubai Blockchain Week, she told media that Binance’s biggest current challenge remains talent density.
“With technological development, not only in crypto but also in AI, traditional industries—whether finance or internet companies—already have very high talent density. We’re competing with top-tier talent from these fields.”
He Yi emphasized, “I’ve always believed one thing: if you don’t believe in something yourself, you can’t do it well. Employees like that can hardly help build a globally top-tier team and enterprise. So I think the biggest pain point remains our talent pool. It’s also the responsibility I feel most acutely—to find the best talent for Binance.”
This wasn’t the first time He Yi spoke publicly about talent issues. It raises a puzzling question: as the world’s leading crypto exchange, why worry about talent?
Salary isn’t the issue—given Binance’s scale and profitability, it can easily afford top industry pay.
The real problem may lie somewhere more hidden.
According to insiders, CZ personally approached a leading project in a certain sector with a highly attractive acquisition offer—but the founding team declined. Given Binance’s history of acquisitions, being acquired by Binance should seem like a favorable outcome. Why refuse?
The reasons are telling. Reputational crisis is one of Binance’s most overlooked risks today—it’s turning into a pervasive trust deficit.
Most projects previously acquired or deeply partnered with Binance lack public disclosure. This information asymmetry itself sends a signal: for potential partners, the real uncertainty isn’t market price, but who ultimately holds interpretive power over the rules. Industry discussions about complex terms, payment schedules, and earn-out arrangements—though unverifiable individually—have long coalesced into a consensus: when dealing with the platform, you’re always the weaker party.
This concern over “reputation” triggers ripple effects among elite hackers and successful entrepreneurs. For them, monetization matters, but whether their team will be respected post-integration and whether systems guarantee original promises are core criteria in evaluating a platform’s appeal.
Employees who “believe in something,” as He Yi described, face not only cross-border collaboration pressures within Binance but also confront a highly pragmatic, even somewhat cold organizational character. When this trait translates into doubts over “contractual credibility” in M&A and executive hiring, Binance’s talent pool faces a structural shortage: ordinary talent rush in, but top-tier elites with independent value and long-term reputation concerns remain hesitant.
In February 2025, He Yi publicly admitted: Binance currently struggles with being too big to pivot quickly, expending energy on regulatory pressure, organizational rigidity, and talent iteration.
From being a “magnet of attraction” driven by wealth effects to now facing a “systemic bottleneck” in talent density, Binance’s talent journey reflects the growing pains of its brand reputation transitioning from early wild expansion to modern professional governance. Without offering top talent institutional certainty of a dignified outcome, relying solely on bounties and high salaries may not fill the talent gap that troubles He Yi.
Binance’s previously promoted “regional autonomy” model was seen externally as an attempt at institutional decentralization, but key decisions remained highly dependent on CZ personally. This superficially decentralized structure delivered high efficiency but failed to sustain continuity after the founder’s exit. The introduction of a board and now co-CEOs represents, in essence, institutional compensation for the loss of founder-driven will.
But this compensation is incomplete.
Personal rule relies on a few loyal confidants; institutional operation requires stable collaboration among thousands of professionals. Binance entered a vacuum where “power remains centralized, but no individual can execute”—when personal will can no longer cover everything, the core issue shifts from institutional design to talent density: does Binance have enough people to support this globally operating, compliance-heavy giant?
Conclusion: Between Certainty and Uncertainty
From an era ruled by one man to today’s co-CEOs, seven-member board, and 1,000-person compliance team, Binance’s power structure has undergone earth-shaking changes. But structure is only the container. The real challenge is: what fills this container?
Listing corruption reveals institutional gaps; technical crashes expose system fragility; internal leaks show cultural inertia; talent anxiety highlights limits in attractiveness. With individual will receding and institutions not yet self-sustaining, and organizational culture still transforming, Binance faces not a single issue, but an interconnected set of systemic challenges.
At the Hong Kong Crypto Finance Forum in April 2025, He Yi said: “Binance’s essence comes down to three things: first, building great products; second, serving users and employees well; third, communicating effectively with regulators.”
These three things sound simple but are hard to execute—especially under conditions of 300 million users, global distribution, intense regulatory pressure, and founder exit.
Perhaps Binance’s greatest challenge now isn’t regulation, but how to maintain innovation within compliance, repair reputation during institutionalization, and attract those who truly “believe in it” in the talent race.
When Binance is no longer the bold dragon-slayer youth, and has perhaps already become the dragon it once fought, can that slayer spirit endure? Can space exist within internal stability-seeking and shadows of centralization for new business models and innovation to sprout? The era of reckless growth is over—but the real challenge has only just begun. How far can it go?
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