Has LBank Become More "Fun"? A Monkey Brings Brand Warmth

If you've also been scrolling through Twitter late at night, your finger mechanically swiping past one "RT + Follow" giveaway post after another, feeling as cold inside as someone who only gets a cold appetizer while waiting in line at a buffet, then you definitely understand the despair brought by this "marketing electronic impotence."

In this era of social fatigue, where even "giving away money" feels like fulfilling some KPI and fails to stir even a flicker of emotion in users, the impression of exchanges remains stuck on their unshakeable market announcements and those strings of cold, accurate numbers representing liquidity.

But recently, the vibe has suddenly felt a bit off...

If you frequently hang out on X, TikTok, or various Telegram chat groups, you must have scrolled past this image: a monkey wearing an LBank uniform, with a comical expression and occasionally rolling its eyes.

This monkey is called Ponke.

Before its appearance, most crypto exchange marketing efforts were still stuck in a homogenized cycle of "forcing the donkey to turn the mill even if it doesn't want to"—posting "RT for a chance to win 100U" tweets every morning, waiting for KOLs to shill at night, only to be met with users who have long been "marinated" in ad immunity.

This time, LBank "had an epiphany."

While everyone else is still competing on fees and token listings, LBank quietly invited this top-tier "madman" with millions of followers across platforms and video views exceeding 3 billion to become LBank's Brand Strategy Partner. This feels like a legacy fuel-powered car brand, once focused solely on mechanical prowess and even a bit "greasy," suddenly installing an intelligent driving system, instantly transforming from a "sleeping tiger" into a "social media attention-seeker."

The rebellious and comical Ponke meeting the rational, rigorous, data-driven LBank creates a strong sense of contrast, rapidly heating up LBank's brand warmth in this spring of the crypto market.

Bidding Farewell to "Rogue" Marketing, LBank Begins a "Major Facelift"

Over the past few years, the marketing logic of crypto exchanges has been highly consistent. When all platforms are repeating the same message, even the biggest ad spend just turns up the volume in the noise. The collaboration with Ponke, however, stems from a different logic—it doesn't talk to you about yields; it talks to you about "crazy literature."

Ponke, this character-type IP born from the crypto community, is not a "collaboration partner" in the traditional sense. It spreads through animated characters, short video narratives, and meme culture, gradually evolving on social media into an internet emotional symbol: authentic, anti-involution, and carrying a touch of the absurd humor unique to the crypto world.

The "social circle" of this monkey has long exceeded the crypto space. In the past, Ponke has collaborated with various Web3 projects and communities like OpenSea and MoonPay; in December 2025, it crossed over to partner with the top-tier, "middle-finger-flipping" streetwear IP RIPNDIP, continuously extending into broader cultural fields.

However, this collaboration between Ponke and LBank clearly goes further.

After Ponke became the Brand Strategy Partner, LBank gained deep usage rights to this IP. This "mad monkey" will serve as LBank's brand vibe squad, lurking in every user's meme library. 

In their collaboration, there are no dense CTAs, no forced traffic redirection, and no traditional product explanations. Instead, it's replaced by original animated content led by Ponke—Ponke officially "joins" LBank.

LBank also integrates it into various memes, cleverly combining products, market trends, and assets. From social media content and event visuals to memes, short videos, and even operational materials, this "mad monkey" naturally blends into LBank's brand daily life. The originally standardized, function-oriented trading platform materials thus gain an extra layer of emotion and storytelling.

In other words, LBank isn't trying to make users "remember the event"; it's making users "like the content" first.

This is a subtle but crucial change.

The underlying nature of finance might be cold, but a brand must be scorching hot. Users may stay for the returns, but they often develop identification through emotion.

When an exchange starts participating in culture, true dissemination begins.

From Trading Platform to Cultural Participant: A Dimensionality Reduction Strike-Style Growth Revolution

Growth for exchanges in the traditional sense has long been built on a standardized funnel: using advertising for exposure, subsidies for conversion, and trading incentives to improve retention. But as the industry enters a stage of stock competition, this linear model of "advertising → filtering → conversion" is experiencing significant diminishing marginal returns.

The collaboration between LBank and Ponke precisely offers another, more structural solution. The key isn't just introducing a highly recognizable meme image, but transforming an emotion-driven IP originally used for social diffusion into a "front-end traffic entry point" and "cognitive amplifier" within the brand growth chain.

This is no longer about "buying" traffic, but about "generating" traffic internally.

Under this logic, LBank is building a growth chain based on deep IP coupling: IP content production → social media diffusion → community interaction sedimentation → platform activity hosting → user conversion.

This is essentially a Web3 brand growth model that combines cultural narrative with product growth mechanisms. Unlike traditional exchanges that rely on trading incentives or airdrop subsidies to acquire users, this path emphasizes content-driven natural dissemination and community participation, then completes the final conversion loop through the platform's product mechanisms.

It's worth noting that LBank didn't just keep this "monkey" on promotional posters; it positioned it as a key role in opening the entrance to ecosystem growth. On March 13th, the same day it officially announced the strategic brand partnership with Ponke, LBank simultaneously launched an event with a total prize pool of 40,000 USDT, directly embedding the brand collaboration into its user growth system.

If we further deconstruct the event design, we find it's not a simple subsidy campaign, but a structured growth task system built around three core paths: new user acquisition, social fission, and trading conversion.

First, in the user acquisition phase, the platform set up a 10,000 USDT newcomer prize pool. New users can claim a 20 USDT spot cashback voucher upon completing registration. This design seems simple but actually targets a key issue in crypto exchange user growth—the barrier to the first trade for new users. The cashback voucher mechanism lowers the psychological cost of a user's first trade and guides them to complete their initial trading behavior within the "golden active window" after registration, thereby improving the conversion efficiency from registration to trading.

At the social fission level, LBank introduced an invitation reward mechanism. The platform allocated a 10,000 USDT prize pool for invitation tasks, where each successful invitation of a new user registration earns the inviter a 10 USDT bonus. This mechanism essentially turns users into "propagation nodes," achieving low-cost diffusion through acquaintance networks and social relationship chains, thereby creating a spontaneous propagation effect between social media and communities.

At the trading conversion level, the platform further layered on trading incentives: users can also receive a 20 USDT BTC position voucher after completing designated trading tasks. Through this design, the activity chain is fully connected—key behavioral nodes from registration → deposit → trading are all incorporated into the incentive system, guiding users not only to be attracted to the platform but also to gradually complete core trading actions, thereby increasing overall user lifetime value.

From a growth logic perspective, this task structure isn't a simple multi-layered reward stack but a typical funnel-style growth design: expanding the user entry point with low-barrier rewards, amplifying the propagation scale through the invitation mechanism, and then driving behavioral conversion through trading incentives, gradually solidifying traffic into real trading users.

Judging by the event's performance, this growth mechanism has also quickly driven user participation heat. Since the event went live, participation has exceeded 50,000, generating high levels of discussion and engagement on social media and in communities. A large number of users have entered the platform through the invitation mechanism and participated in trading tasks, making the event not only significantly effective in user acquisition but also further boosting platform trading activity. To some extent, this also validates the effectiveness of combining IP dissemination with a task-based growth system: when content narratives can generate attention on the social media front, and then are met with a clear task path for conversion, traffic can be more smoothly transformed into real user behavior, rather than remaining at the level of fleeting marketing exposure.

Beyond the task-based reward activities, LBank further enriched the user experience through fun content design. On one hand, it used social media interactive activities to enhance user participation, sense of engagement, and spread, strengthening brand recall. On the other hand, it set up simple surveys to collect genuine user feedback in a light and direct manner. Combined with Ponke's rebellious yet adorable unique personality, this content not only increased the fun factor of the activities but also accumulated valuable user insights for the brand, bringing users closer to LBank through lighthearted interaction.

From an operational perspective, the goal of such activities isn't just short-term user acquisition; it serves a longer-term growth structure. On one hand, it leverages an IP with social propagation capabilities to enter meme and community content scenes, reaching potential users at a lower cost and reducing customer acquisition costs. On the other hand, it uses mechanisms like trading tasks to enhance real user engagement, with products and activities then completing the conversion.

From a dissemination mechanism perspective, this is precisely an IP leverage-style propagation structure.

Character-type IPs naturally possess narrative and emotional expression capabilities. When content is actively shared, adapted, or even remixed by users, what the brand gains is no longer single-point exposure but a propagation amplification with network effects. Brand influence itself becomes a growth lever.

This combination of "content ignition + activity hosting" means the attention brought by the IP no longer stays at the brand level but is further converted into actual user growth.

Evidence shows this strategy has already begun to show results. After the event launched, topics related to LBank and Ponke quickly spread on social media, with a noticeable increase in community discussion. Related event page visits and interaction volumes have continued to climb, with the attention brought by the IP rapidly converting into actual platform traffic.

In the second half of incremental competition, LBank is shifting from a platform providing trading infrastructure to a cultural participant capable of engaging in and shaping crypto cultural narratives. This narrative-driven growth loop is allowing LBank to execute a textbook example of leapfrogging the competition.

Brand Awakening, Starting with This "Mad Monkey"

There are no outdated brands, only outdated communication methods.

That rebellious-looking yellow monkey, wearing an LBank uniform, "raising hell" on social media, is awakening a long-lost, vibrant brand vitality. This "decentralized, content-heavy, light-on-hard-ads" crossover collaboration isn't just a marketing experiment; it opens a new path for exchange brand competition.

LBank's move, to some extent, also reflects its ambition to rewrite the rules.

In an era of highly fragmented attention, a brand no longer just needs to be seen; it needs to be discussed, shared, and remembered. And LBank might be precisely laying the groundwork for this new competitive logic in advance: when exchanges start competing not just for liquidity, but for users' cultural identification and emotional resonance, the true brand war of the industry begins.

If there's a starting point for this change, perhaps it is this "mad monkey."