Author: Nancy, PANews
The day-long CZ (Binance founder) pet name riddle saga was finally unveiled in the early hours of today (February 14), followed by an on-chain PVP battle with Broccoli (broccoli) as the theme, bringing a large-scale stress test to the BNB Chain.
A feast for DEVs and insider players, with the community as the sacrificial lamb for liquidity exit
After TST was mentioned by CZ and saw a surge, CZ's moves became the focus of attention for MEME players. On the morning of February 13, CZ tweeted that he was curious about the operation mechanism of MEME coins, asking if just sharing a pet's name and photo would lead to the creation of related tokens, and questioned how to distinguish the "official" version. After understanding the relevant mechanism, CZ said "the way things work is interesting. Like handling major decisions, I need to think about it for about a day. Should I respect his privacy or make the dog's information public for everyone? Okay, I might even interact with a few MEME coins on the BNB Chain."
When someone suggested using random dog photos, CZ responded that no, that would be deception. If you're going to do it, do it right. It's just sharing a dog photo and name.
Subsequently, the entire network began guessing CZ's pet dog's name and began ambushing the relevant MEME coins in an attempt to "occupy seats" early, with some token market caps even being pushed up by thousands or even hundreds of millions of dollars. That night, CZ previewed that he would release the dog's photo in about 3 hours (around 8pm Dubai time), whetting the appetite of MEME players. After waiting for several hours, CZ finally announced the photo of the pet dog Broccoli and their story in the early hours of February 14, and he also said, "I just posted a photo and name of my dog. I won't personally issue a Meme coin. It's up to the community to do so. The BNB Foundation may provide rewards, LP support or other incentives for top MEME on BNB Chain. Details are still being discussed. More to come."
Subsequently, tens of thousands of MEME coins named after Broccoli emerged on the BNB Chain, with countless players rushing into this broccoli-themed PVP battle. However, the BNB Chain was unable to withstand this wave of stress testing, with congested networks, lagging front-ends, and scattered traps everywhere... MEME players complained that the experience was too poor. According to the page display, BscScan has currently suspended block data updates for about 12 hours.
At the same time, since CZ did not disclose the CA (contract address), a large number of tokens with the same name emerged, leaving investors dazzled, with even the official Bounce Brand renaming the MEME coin they had deployed in advance to join the craze. The MEME experiment triggered by Broccoli has also become a feast for DEVs (developers) and insider players, with a lot of crypto honeypots and insider trading involved, and investors becoming the sacrificial lambs for liquidity exit.
"Rug pulls are happening everywhere, they've pushed the market cap of a token to $400 million - enough to make people believe it's 'the real project' - and faked all the data: holders, trading volume, even created a huge liquidity pool. Then, once the retail investors FOMO in at the peak... they start selling, and some tokens have crashed from $400 million to $30 million in just minutes, with insiders walking away with over $43 million, leaving investors holding worthless tokens," Web3 researcher Pi pointed out. According to on-chain data analyst Yujin's monitoring, one Broccoli creator on the BNBChain spent only 1 BNB to make a profit of $6.72 million, creating a 9,517x return in 24 minutes.
However, the "CZ's Dog" section of the Binance Web3 wallet shows that as of the time of writing, the highest market cap among the many Broccoli coins is just over $100 million. Although market participation is high and billions of dollars have flowed in, these funds are still relatively dispersed and have not yet formed a highly consensual leading project.
The MEME social experiment sparks controversy, and CZ responds that he will continue to learn and build
While Broccoli has garnered a lot of market attention, CZ's MEME social experiment has also sparked controversy in the market.
"This kind of aggressive behavior will not last," Solana co-founder Toly tweeted.
Sonic Labs co-founder Andre Cronje suggested that if CZ really decides to participate in such projects, it would be best to directly launch the official smart contract and share it, rather than letting the community create it themselves, otherwise it could lead to many people releasing dozens or even hundreds of contracts, thereby defrauding community members. To avoid indirectly causing community losses, it would be better for him to launch a fair version himself.
Crypto researcher CM pointed out that not disclosing the CA and community-driven is not necessarily a problem, but the issue is that the social experiment needs to be built in a relatively fair environment, or at least let the majority have a bit of a gaming experience. BNB Chain lacks the environment where everyone works together to grow the cake like in the early days of Solana, but instead quickly divides up the cake that has been hard to pull in. This kind of change requires some leadership and organization, and it's difficult for the community to do it on its own. Personally, I prefer to build applications, but I don't rule out the MEME path, what I hate is the reduced cost of malice and the lack of a sustainable environment that brings a sense of security.
"There's an interesting psychological term called 'plausible deniability', which describes CZ's state tonight. I try to put myself in CZ's shoes, he might be thinking: I just posted a few photos of my beloved dog, just like the billions of dog lovers in the world, I have no wrongdoing at all. I'm even helping my chain, doing an interesting social experiment. I'm very professional, I'm very forward-looking. But he selectively downplays the fact that his identity has a huge impact on the community. He is fully capable of deducing everything that would happen tonight. Let a thousand dogs compete, this is not even a zero-sum game, but a negative-sum game, with countless crypto honeypots, traps, insiders and small conspiracy groups profiting handsomely, while the majority suffer losses. Although posting a dog photo is no problem for an ordinary person posting on their friend circle, for a crypto exchange CEO, he absolutely cannot think of himself as 'blameless'," said Nothing Research partner 0xTodd.
CZ also responded to the community controversy, saying, "Isn't MEME completely community-driven? I don't want to participate in issuing/operating a MEME coin because I have no experience and I didn't expect it to become a stress test. But it's interesting to see the breadth stress test (creating a large number of new MEME coins) and the depth stress test (a single contract address with a lot of trading activity). I think everyone was originally prepared for the latter. There is still a long way to go in terms of scalability. Progress is never smooth sailing. We are constantly learning and continuing to build.
