The Sentinel: A Phemex 6th Anniversary Legend

He saw the button before anyone else complained about it.

New Phemex app update dropped Tuesday morning. He installed it right away because he always does. Someone has to actually check this stuff.

Opened the app, went straight to the trading interface. There it was: new "Market Buy" button right next to "Cancel All Orders." Same size, basically the same color, barely any space between them.

Stared at it for a second thinking, someone's going to fuck this up badly.

Pulled up Discord.

The Post

He didn't write some essay about it. Just posted in the community channel:

"@here new update has the market buy button right next to cancel all orders, no spacing, same colors. someone's gonna fat finger a trade during volatility and be fucked. needs spacing + different colors or confirmation dialog for market orders over [X amount]"

Added screenshots. Highlighted the buttons.

Went to make coffee.

Came back to 50+ reactions. Comments rolling in. "holy shit almost just did this." "GOOD CATCH." "yo @phemex this is bad."

Hour later, Phemex Product Manager in the thread: "Thanks for flagging. Sending to design team now."

Not a canned response. Not "we'll look into it." Actual acknowledgment with action.

Six hours later, next update: buttons separated, different colors, confirmation dialog added.

Fixed. Exactly like he said. Fast.

2022: The Year Platforms Stopped Listening

He wasn't always the guy doing this. That started in 2022.

Celsius. Community was screaming about withdrawal issues for weeks. Reddit posts, Twitter, Discord — everyone saying the same thing. "Withdrawals are taking days." "Something's wrong." "Anyone else having issues?"

Celsius support kept saying: "All systems normal."

Then they froze everything. Then bankruptcy. Community was right the whole time. Platform just didn't want to hear it.

Three Arrows Capital. People were posting about weird liquidations, suspicious on-chain movements. Got called FUDsters.

3AC collapsed. Community was right.

Terra/Luna. Discord was full of people asking questions about the peg mechanism. "What happens if arbitrage fails?" "Has anyone modeled a bank run?"

Mods were banning people for "spreading FUD." Do Kwon was calling critics "poor" on Twitter.

Death spiral. $40 billion gone. All the questions were the right questions. Nobody wanted to answer them.

FTX was the worst. Community members posting about weird wallet movements, balance sheet issues, customer fund concerns. Got dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

November, FTX collapsed. Everyone they called crazy was right.

He watched all of it. Communities trying to protect themselves while platforms either ignored them or silenced them. People losing everything because platforms treated feedback as noise.

Fuck it. Someone has to actually pay attention to this stuff.

The Daily Grind

Every day in Phemex Discord and Telegram. Same shit.

New account, 10 minutes old: "Hello ser, I am official Phemex support, please provide seed phrase to verify account."

Him: "That's a scammer. Phemex will never DM you first. Block and report."

Five minutes later, different person: "Someone DMed me about a withdrawal issue, is this support?"

Him: "No. Scammer. Phemex support doesn't DM first. Check the pinned message."

Someone posts: "Is this wallet address legit?" with a screenshot of an obvious phishing site.

Him: "No. That's not the official site. Check the verified link in the channel description."

"I accidentally sent USDT to my BTC address, can I recover it?"

Him: "What network did you use? If it's a supported network, contact support with your TxID. If not, it's probably gone."

"This bot promises 50% daily returns on Telegram, is it real?"

Him: "If someone's promising 50% daily returns, what do you think?"

"I sent my coins to the wrong network."

"I clicked a link and now my wallet is empty."

"Someone said they can help me withdraw faster for a fee."

"Is this airdrop real?"

Same questions. Every single day. Different people making the same mistakes.

Most of them don't listen. They WANT the scam to be real. They WANT the 500% APY to be legit. They WANT to skip the security steps because it's annoying.

Then they come back after: "Why didn't anyone warn me?"

You were warned. You didn't want to hear it.

The Day He Almost Quit

March something, 2023. Some guy in the Telegram.

Him: posts warning about a fake Phemex phishing site making the rounds. "Don't click links from random DMs. Always verify the URL."

Three days later, same guy: "I lost 5000 USDT clicking a link someone sent me. Why didn't anyone warn me about this?"

Him: "I literally posted a warning about this three days ago. You reacted to it with a thumbs up."

Guy: "Well you should have been more clear."

He just stared at his screen. Typed out "I'm done with this shit" and hovered over send.

Didn't send it. Closed Telegram instead. Went for a walk.

Came back an hour later. New message in Discord: "Hey man, thanks for the security guide you posted last week. Almost fell for a scam but remembered what you said. Saved me."

Whatever. At least someone listened.

Why Phemex

He's tried other platforms. Most of them treat community feedback like it's spam.

Report a bug? Silence. Suggest a feature? Ignored. Point out a design flaw? "Working as intended."

Support tells you to submit a ticket. Ticket sits there for weeks. Nobody reads the Discord. Product managers don't engage.

Phemex is different. Not perfect, but different.

When he posts detailed feedback, someone actually reads it. When he reports something, it gets flagged. When he suggests fixes, sometimes they show up in the next update.

The user testing group invitation after the button fix wasn't PR. They actually wanted feedback from people who use the platform every day. Real input from real users before features go live. He's been in three testing cycles since then. Some suggestions get implemented. Some don't. But someone's actually listening, actually asking.

After Celsius ignored withdrawal warnings, after Terra banned people for asking questions, after FTX treated critics as enemies — he knows what the alternative looks like.

Phemex isn't perfect — no platform is. Some bugs take longer to fix than he'd like. Some feature requests don't make the roadmap. But here's the difference: product managers actually show up in Discord. They respond to feedback. They iterate fast when something matters.

And they put their money where their mouth is.

He saw the announcement for their new bug bounty program. It wasn't some token gesture; it was a serious commitment, with rewards scaling all the way up to $500,000 for extreme vulnerabilities.

• Extreme: $30,000 – $500,000

• Critical: $5,000 - $30,000

• High: $2,000 - $5,000

• Medium: $600 - $2,000

• Low: $50 - $600

To him, that wasn't just a security budget. It was a public declaration. It was the platform saying: "We want you to find our flaws. We will reward you for making us stronger."

That’s the opposite of the platforms that collapsed. They silenced criticism. Phemex incentivizes it.

A platform that actually listens—and pays for criticism—is less likely to catastrophically fail, because someone's paying attention to the warning signs.

The Work Never Stops

Still in Discord every day. Still answering the same questions. Still warning about scams that keep evolving.

Yesterday it was fake support DMs. Today it's a phishing site that looks exactly like Phemex except one letter in the URL is different. Tomorrow it'll be something else.

Scammers are relentless. Newbies keep making the same mistakes. The guy who ignored three warnings will lose money and blame everyone else.

But every few weeks, something like the button fix happens. Community points out a problem. Platform actually responds.

Someone posts: "omg thank you, I was literally about to click that link."

That's why he keeps doing this.

Not because platforms are grateful. Most aren't. Not because people appreciate it. Most don't.

Because he was the newbie once. Almost sent funds to a scam address. Someone in a Telegram group stopped him mid-transaction. Explained how to verify. Took five minutes to actually help instead of just calling him an idiot.

He thinks about that sometimes. That person probably doesn't even remember. Probably helped hundreds of people. Just another day in community moderation.

But for him, that five minutes meant he didn't lose everything his first week in crypto.

So he does the same thing. Helps the newbies. Warns about scams. Reports bugs. Posts detailed feedback about buttons that are too close together.

Most people won't listen. Most warnings get ignored. But some won't. Some will.

And when the community spots something that matters — like buttons that could cause expensive mistakes — Phemex actually fixes it. Fast. That's rare in crypto. That's what makes the difference between platforms that survive and platforms that collapse.

A great platform isn't one without flaws. It's one where the community can actually help fix them, and the platform actually listens.

He's still here because Phemex is worth the work.

And because someone has to actually check the updates.