CZ's Pet Dog Broccoli Sparks PVP Battle, Retail Investors Become Liquidity Withdrawal Casualties?

Original Article Title: "CZ's Pet Dog Broccoli Ignites On-Chain PVP Battle, DEVs and Insiders Profit, MEME Social Experiment Sparks Controversy"

Original Article Author: Nancy, PANews

The day-long mystery of CZ (Binance Founder)'s pet name puzzle finally came to an end in the early morning of today (February 14), followed by an on-chain PVP battle themed around Broccoli, ushering in a large-scale stress test for the BNB Chain.

DEVs and Insiders Feast, Community Becomes Liquidity Exit Sacrifice

After TST was mentioned by CZ and saw a sudden surge, CZ's actions became the focus of MEME players' attention. On the morning of February 13, CZ tweeted expressing curiosity about the operation mechanism of MEME coins, questioning whether just sharing a pet's name and photo would lead to someone creating a related token, and pondering how to distinguish the "official" version. After understanding the relevant mechanism, CZ stated, "The way this works is quite interesting. Like handling major decisions as usual, I need to think for about a day. Should I respect his privacy or disclose the dog’s information for everyone? Well, I may also interact with a few MEME coins on the BNB Chain."

When someone suggested using a random dog photo, CZ responded saying, no, that would be deceitful. If it's done, it should be done right. It's just sharing a dog photo and name.

Subsequently, the entire internet began to guess CZ's pet dog's name and initiated ambushes on related MEME coins attempting to secure a spot early, with a few token market values skyrocketing to several thousand or even billions of dollars. And in the evening of that day, CZ teased that he would release the dog's photo in 3 hours (around 8 pm Dubai time). This kept MEME players on edge. After hours of waiting, CZ finally unveiled the pet dog Broccoli's photo and their story early on February 14, and he also stated, "I just posted a picture of my dog and name. I will not personally launch a Meme coin. It depends on the community to do so. The BNB Foundation may reward top MEMEs on the BNB Chain, provide LP support, or other rewards. Details are still being discussed. More to come."

Subsequently, the BNB Chain saw an instant surge of tens of thousands of MEME coins named after Broccoli, with countless players rushing into this broccoli-themed PVP battle. However, the BNB Chain did not withstand this wave of stress testing, with a congested network, lagging front end, and traps strewn across the field... MEME players unanimously complained about the poor experience. According to the page display, BscScan has currently paused block data updates for about 12 hours.

Meanwhile, as CZ did not disclose the CA (Contract Address), a large number of tokens with the same name emerged, causing confusion among investors. Even the official Bounce Brand renamed the pre-deployed MEME coin and joined the frenzy. The MEME experiment initiated by Broccoli also turned into a feast for developers/insiders, with a mix of tokenomics and insider trading. Investors became the sacrificial lambs of liquidity withdrawal.

“Rug pulls are happening everywhere, where they pumped a token's market cap to $400 million—enough to make people believe this is ‘the real deal project’ and faked all the data: holders, trading volume, even created a massive liquidity pool. Then, once retail FOMOed in and drove the price up crazily... they started selling, with some token valuations crashing from $400 million to $30 million in minutes, while insiders exited with over $43 million, ultimately leaving investors holding worthless tokens.” Web3 researcher Pi pointed out. According to on-chain data analyst Yu Jinjian, a Broccoli creator on BNBChain made a profit of $6.72 million by spending only 1 BNB, achieving a 9517x return in 24 minutes.

However, in the “CZ's Doggies” section of the Binance Web3 wallet, as of the time of writing, the highest-valued Broccoli coin was just reaching a billion-dollar market cap. Despite high market participation and hundreds of millions of dollars flowing in, these funds are still relatively distributed, and no consensus leader project has emerged.

MEME Social Experiment Sparks Controversy, CZ Responds Promising to Continue Learning and Building

While Broccoli was gaining market heat, CZ's MEME social experiment also stirred market controversy.

“This aggressive behavior will not continue.” Solana co-founder Toly tweeted.

Sonic Labs co-founder Andre Cronje suggested that if CZ indeed decides to engage in such projects, it would be best to directly release an official smart contract and share it, rather than letting the community create their own, which could lead to many people deploying dozens or even hundreds of contracts, thus scamming community members. To avoid indirectly causing harm to the community, it would be best to have him launch a fair version himself.

Crypto researcher CM pointed out that without a CA issuance, community-driven governance is not impossible, but the issue lies in conducting a social experiment in a relatively fair environment, or at least giving the majority of people some gaming experience. BNB Chain lacks the early Solana-like environment where everyone worked together to grow the cake; instead, it quickly divides the hard-earned cake. This type of change requires some leadership and organization; it is relatively challenging to achieve solely through community initiatives. Personally, I prefer building applications but do not rule out the MEME path. What I dislike is the reduced cost of malfeasance and the lack of a sustainable environment that brings about a sense of security.

“There is an interesting psychological term called ‘Plausible deniability,’ which describes CZ's current state tonight. I tried to bring in CZ's thoughts; he might be thinking: I just posted a few dog pictures, just like hundreds of millions of dog lovers worldwide—I did nothing wrong. Even though I am helping my chain, conducting an interesting social experiment, I am dedicated, I am innovative. However, he selectively downplays the fact that his identity has a considerable impact on the community. He is entirely capable of deducing everything that will happen tonight. Letting a myriad of dogs compete is not even a zero-sum game but a negative-sum game, benefiting numerous whales, manipulators, insiders, and small conspiracy groups while most people lose out. Although posting a dog picture may be fine for an average social media user, for a cryptocurrency exchange CEO, one cannot consider oneself ‘innocent.’” Nothing Research partner 0xTodd stated.

CZ also responded to the community controversy by stating, “Wasn't MEME supposed to be entirely community-driven? I did not want to be part of issuing/operating a MEME coin because I had no experience, and I did not anticipate this becoming a stress test. However, it was interesting to see both breadth stress testing (creating a large number of new MEME coins) and depth stress testing (an address with significant transaction 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 continue to learn and build.”

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