Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is hoping to boost the number of people testing its upcoming decentralized exchange (DEX) platform by giving away $100,000 in tokens.

Announcing the news on Twitter on Friday, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao said:

The initiative, he said, would help the exchange launch the mainnet, or live version, of Binance DEX more quickly.

According to Binance's website, the funds will be made available as prizes in a simulated trading competition kicking off next Thursday.

Exchange users who hold at least one Binance Coin token (BNB) in their account will be eligible to participate in the event. Each account can register up to 20 Binance Chain addresses and will receive 200 virtual BNB tokens for each address to use as starting funds for the competition.

The firm noted that the Binance Chain testnet will be reset before 08:00 UTC on March 7, clearing all existing asset balances. Once complete, trading for the competition will commence.

Binance is dividing the competition into two different events, with prizes in BNB for each.

Firstly, there's the "Token Competition for Healthy Price Volatility," which will see users compete to issue and list tokens on the testnet.

"The addresses that own tokens will be ranked in terms of the sum of each token price’s volatility over every five-minute interval on the 'Token'/BNB trading pair during the competition period," the exchange says.

There are three prizes up for grabs, ranging from 1,000–3,000 BNB.

Secondly, there an "Absolute Return Competition" event that will be ranked according to the absolute returns users achieve with their trading strategies on specific tokens. This one offers 20 prizes ranging from 50–1,000 BNB.

The BNB token is trading at just over $11 at press time, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Binance announced on Feb. 20 that the DEX was open for public testing, allowing users to create wallets and interact with the trading platform’s interface. At the same time, it revealed a blockchain explorer for the testnet of its Binance Chain network, which supports the DEX.

Binance image via Shutterstock