New BROCCOLI Half-Hour Speedrun 50M, Reviewing the "Broccoli War" Triggered by the Donation
Making memes is still about charity, and doing BSC is still about CZ.Author: Penny, BlockBeats
On the afternoon of February 18, the previously quiet narrative of "CZ's Dog" suddenly became active, with a new $BROCCOLI issuance around 6 PM, rapidly rising in a short time, reaching a market cap of 50M within an hour and a half, and currently stabilizing around 10M. The explosive popularity of this token is not only a renaissance but also closely related to the recent $LIBRA and "charity relief."
Event Background: CZ's "Broccoli Night" and the Meme Coin Carnival
After CZ announced on February 13 that his pet dog was named "Broccoli," dozens of similarly named meme coin projects quickly emerged on the BNB Chain, with the market cap once exceeding 400 million dollars. This naming was not only due to its phonetic similarity to "Blockchain," but also because of the community's fervent adoration for CZ's personal influence, creating a speculative phenomenon known as "Broccoli Night." However, behind this carnival lurked whale manipulation, community fragmentation, and a crisis of trust.
Charity Activities and CZ's Involvement: From Argentina's Presidential Coin Incident to "Heartfelt Airdrop"
The origin of the matter can be traced back to the Argentine President Milei's coin incident, where many investors in the crypto space suffered significant losses. In response, a university student KOL spontaneously initiated a $50,000 charity dinner assistance plan on the BNB Chain to compensate all victims (with priority given to students). Subsequently, CZ expressed support for this project, transferring 150 BNB (approximately $100,000) to the publicly disclosed charity address of the KOL, and co-initiated a "BNBCHAIN Stablecoin Airdrop for $LIBRA Losers." However, this act of kindness unexpectedly became the "catalyst" for whale manipulation—CZ's disclosed donation address was seen by speculators as an "official endorsement signal," triggering a new round of meme coin speculation.
After the donation address was disclosed, according to Ai Yi's monitoring, an investor who made a profit of $460,000 on BROCCOLI (0x6d5…714) created a new token BROCCOLI (0xa14…aab) and transferred 150 BNB and the new token to CZ's donation address. The specific operation included: creating the new token 13 minutes after CZ disclosed the donation address, and transferring 80% of the token supply (approximately 797 million tokens) to CZ's address 2 minutes later, while liquidating all remaining tokens ending in 714, and transferring the profit of 150 BNB back to CZ's address. The actual market cap of this new token is approximately $7 million, representing 20% of the displayed market cap. Currently, the investor holds 10.62 million tokens as the developer address, making them the largest holder of this token.
After the new token with the suffix aab backstabbed the old token with the suffix 714, the whales of the 714 community began to retaliate, transferring 10 million 714 tokens to CZ's address at 19:50 (UTC+8) that evening. The market cap of the 714 token briefly rose from $96 million to $126 million, but then fell back, currently stabilizing around $70 million. This action was both a protest from the community against the new token and revealed the essence of "market cap management" relying on whale games within the meme coin ecosystem.
On the morning of the 19th, CZ tweeted that the BNB received at the donation address was more than what he donated, and there were also many other tokens. He stated that he would not keep a penny and was most likely to donate to those who suffered losses on TST or some Broccolis. He emphasized, "This is not an endorsement of any token, so do not overinterpret this."
Although CZ has repeatedly emphasized that "no meme coins have been issued," he did mention after the "Broccoli War" that the process of attracting traffic to the BNB Chain had negatively impacted many retail investors due to a lack of understanding of the meme issuance process and community operations, for which he expressed deep regret and promised to improve the performance of the BNB Chain and formulate incentive policies for meme coins. However, his social media activity and the disclosure of the donation address objectively provided material for speculators to exploit. There are over a hundred tokens with the same name "BROCCOLI" on the BNB Chain, and the Binance Web3 wallet even featured a dedicated "CZ's Dog" section to list the top four projects by market cap on the first day (which has since been closed), highlighting the platform's tacit approval of the traffic dividend.
Additionally, in this incident, whales exploited information asymmetry, liquidity manipulation, and community sentiment to harvest retail investors, reducing the so-called "decentralized community consensus" to a capital game, and underscoring the essence of meme coins as a "refining ground."
The "Broccoli War" is not only a microcosm of meme coin speculation but also reveals the vulnerability of the cryptocurrency market in times of fervor—when charity becomes a speculative hotspot, and community consensus is reduced to whale chips, the industry urgently needs to build a healthier ecological foundation from the perspectives of technology, governance, and regulation. "When you try to make money quickly, you often end up losing. When you give money away, you will receive more in return." This is CZ's reflection in response to the donation incident tweet. CZ's statements and the BNB Chain's upgrade commitments may be a starting point, but real change still requires time to validate.
