Binance Wallet TGE oversubscribed: how allocation works, what your BNB actually buys and where the refund goes
Your fill depends only on your share of the BNB committed; points just get you in. Unused BNB returns to the Keyless Wallet, and a Prime Sale may hand you a Key first with tokens landing later in the exchange's Alpha account.
Binance Wallet TGEs and Pre-TGE sales are oversubscribed sales. Every wallet can commit up to a cap, and the tokens are split by how much you committed compared with everyone else's total. Speed doesn't matter, and committing 3 BNB does not mean buying 3 BNB worth of tokens. Only a pro-rata slice of your BNB gets used. The rest comes back to your Binance Keyless Wallet after the subscription closes.
So if 3 BNB bought you a handful of tokens, the usual explanation is a heavily oversubscribed round; nothing went wrong on your side. This page covers the maths, the refund, where the tokens land and the cases where the official pages say you get nothing. Point thresholds and deductions are covered in which events spend your points.
Committed 3 BNB, spent a fraction: a worked example from the YieldBasis sale
The YieldBasis (YB) Pre-TGE Prime Sale on 13 October 2025 published every number you need except the final total: a raise of $2,500,000 in BNB, 25,000,000 YB on offer at $0.10 each, a cap of 3 BNB per Binance Wallet user and pro-rata allocation.
The event page never said how much BNB came in, so two figures below are assumptions for illustration only: a BNB conversion price of $1,000 (making the raise 2,500 BNB) and 50,000 BNB committed in total, which is 20 times oversubscribed.
| Committed | YB received | BNB actually used | BNB returned |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 BNB | 1,500 | 0.15 | 2.85 |
| 1 BNB | 500 | 0.05 | 0.95 |
| 0.3 BNB | 150 | 0.015 | 0.285 |
At 100 times oversubscribed, the same 3 BNB would use 0.03 BNB and return 300 YB. The cap stays fixed and the crowd sets your result, so the same person can get very different fills from one round to the next.
Gas is not in the table. The subscription is an on-chain transaction with its own network fee, and that fee is not part of the refund.
How Binance Wallet TGE oversubscription allocation works
The rule comes from question 1 of the help centre page Frequently Asked Questions on Binance Wallet TGEs, Pre-TGEs, and Booster Campaigns: users subscribe up to the capped amount per wallet, tokens are allocated proportionally to the total amount deposited by all participants, users may manually claim their allocated tokens when the subscription ends, and any unused funds will be refunded. Question 3 of the Pre-TGE section applies the same model to Pre-TGEs.
Oversubscription = total BNB committed by everyone ÷ BNB the round is raising.
BNB you actually spend = your commitment ÷ oversubscription.
Tokens you get = tokens on offer × your commitment ÷ total committed.
One consequence: when nearly everyone commits the full cap, nearly everyone gets the same amount, roughly the tokens on offer divided by the number of wallets. Committing in the first minute or the last changes nothing.
Neither the FAQ nor the YB page explains what happens to allocation and refunds if a round is undersubscribed.
The token price is set from BNB's previous-day open, not the live price
The YB page has a line that is easy to skim past: Binance Wallet uses the previous day's opening price of BNB on CoinMarketCap to calculate the subscription price, and the actual subscription price may differ from the real-time BNB price when you subscribe.
In practice, the BNB-per-token rate is fixed before the sale opens. If BNB moves on the day, your token count per BNB does not. When you run the formula yourself, use that previous-day open. Whether other rounds use the same method is something to check on each event page; this wording was only confirmed on the YB page.
Where do unused BNB go after a Binance Wallet TGE, and do you have to claim them
The refund goes back to the Keyless Wallet you subscribed from, as BNB on BNB Smart Chain. It does not go to your exchange Spot account, so not seeing it there is expected.
The official wording differs from page to page on whether you need to press anything:
- FAQ question 1 (TGE): users may manually claim allocated tokens; unused funds will be refunded.
- FAQ, Pre-TGE question 3: claim tokens in the wallet's [Assets] tab; unused subscription funds will be automatically refunded.
- YB event page, How to Participate: you will be able to claim your allocation of tokens and unused funds once the subscription period ends. Higher up, the same page says excess BNB will be automatically refunded.
Given the mixed wording, revisit the event page after the subscription closes. If there is a claim button, use it; if not, check the BNB balance in the wallet's Assets tab. "Automatically refunded" is not a reason to never look, and a slow refund is not yet a reason to open a ticket, since a claim is itself an on-chain transaction and congestion delays it.
The YB page warns that subscriptions may fail or be delayed depending on the blockchain and the project, and that if a subscription does not go through, Binance holds no responsibility for the outcome or any gas fees incurred. Fees paid on a failed transaction stay spent.
Pre-TGE gives you a Key first; the tokens arrive later in your Alpha account
After a regular TGE, what you claim in the wallet is the token itself. The YB Prime Sale added a step. Per its event page, you claim a Key representing your allocation on the campaign page, and the actual YB tokens are airdropped on the TGE date directly to your Binance Alpha 2.0 account on the exchange, where you can trade them.
The page is blunt about the Key: it is an on-chain token in your wallet that only proves a successful subscription, is not tradable and has no monetary value. Not every Prime Sale uses Keys: question 4 in the same FAQ's Prime Sale section says Keys are not used in every Prime Sale campaign and depend on that round's mechanism.
That explains two "where are my tokens" moments. Before TGE day, a Key and no tokens is the normal state; for YB the sale ran on 13 October and Alpha and DEX trading opened on 15 October at 10:00 UTC. On TGE day, the tokens are in the exchange's Alpha account, not the wallet. The difference between the two is covered in Web3 Wallet is not your exchange account, and how to find the distribution record in airdrop says distributed but not in your wallet.
Pre-TGE tokens can also be locked. Question 2 of the FAQ's Pre-TGE section says the lock-up is set by the project, may not be disclosed in advance, and there is no guarantee of when the tokens can be traded or transferred.
Binance Wallet TGE allocation is zero: cases the event page spells out
A tiny ratio still produces a tiny allocation. A clean zero, or a claim that will not go through, usually traces back to one of these notes on the YB page:
- An imported external wallet. Imported wallets do not qualify; only backed-up Keyless wallets created in Binance Wallet can take part. FAQ question 1 also says "backed-up Binance Wallet (Keyless)".
- A Keyless address that has been exported. Any exported Keyless address will not qualify for claiming the subscribed tokens. This bites at the claim step, not necessarily at subscription.
- The subscription transaction failed. Check the wallet's transaction history for that commit.
- Not enough Alpha Points during the subscription period. If your score is lower than you expected, see Alpha Points not rising after a buy.
- Flagged behaviour. The page lists money laundering, wash trading, bulk account registrations or logins, self-dealing and market manipulation as grounds for disqualification.
- Your region. The risk warning at the top says the activity may not be available in your region; how those limits stack up is in airdrop region restrictions, layer by layer.
Do you lose points? The FAQ and the event page disagree
Question 7 in the FAQ's Booster section says Pre-TGEs require a minimum Alpha Points threshold and consume points. The YB event page says participating will not consume any of your points.
Both are official, and they are from different dates: the YB sale was in October 2025, the FAQ was last updated on 27 April 2026. Whether points are spent, and how many, is written per round; the points-spending page lists figures from several rounds. Before you confirm, read the Participant Eligibility line of that round's event page.
Points only get you in. Once you are in, your allocation depends solely on the BNB committed, not on how high your score was. Why the entry score keeps moving is covered in the TGE score line.
How much BNB to keep in the wallet before subscribing
For a 3 BNB cap you need the 3 BNB plus gas for the subscription, and more gas if the claim is a manual transaction. The BNB has to be on BNB Smart Chain inside the Keyless Wallet; BNB in your exchange Spot account must be moved over first. The YB page recommends topping up in advance because the network can get congested during the campaign.
That BNB is tied up until the round settles. If it used to sit in Simple Earn on the exchange, it is outside HODLer airdrop snapshots while it is in the wallet; see which balances HODLer snapshots count.
Sources: Binance help centre, Frequently Asked Questions on Binance Wallet TGEs, Pre-TGEs, and Booster Campaigns (English version updated 2026-04-27), and the Binance Wallet YieldBasis Pre-TGE Prime Sale page, both checked on 2026-10-23. The 3 BNB cap, $0.10 price and 25,000,000 YB are that round's figures.