Tutorial Footage, Real Lawsuit: BNB Chain Sues Ex-Staffer Over Memecoin He Spawned From a How-To Clip 🧾

BNB Chain is taking legal action against a former employee who allegedly retained unauthorized access to a wallet created during a company training video and used it to deploy a new meme token. The blockchain ecosystem tied to the $BNB cryptocurrency disclosed the dispute in an X post on Saturday, August 1, 2026, and confirmed that lawyers and law enforcement are involved. BNB Chain did not name the individual, the token, or the jurisdiction where any filing has been made.

According to BNB Chain, the wallet was originally generated for a how-to tutorial demonstrating how to launch tokens on the network. After the employee left the company, BNB Chain said the individual still held the wallet's seed phrase — the short list of words that grant permanent ownership of a crypto address — and used it to derive a new private key. Months later, the same address reappeared tied to a freshly issued meme token. "BNB Chain did not create, authorize, promote or participate in the creation of this token and has no control over the token or wallet address," the team wrote. Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao reposted the statement, calling the ex-employee "basically a scammer" and urging users to "Stay SAFU."

Blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain alleged that the former employee deployed a meme token called Asteroid Shiba (ASTEROID) and used four newly created wallets to buy 796.7 million tokens, equal to 79.67% of the total supply. Lookonchain further alleged that those wallets later sold 718.8 million tokens for 1,103 BNB, worth approximately $638,000 at the time of the transaction. BNB traded at $579.62 as of Saturday, down 2% over 24 hours, with a market capitalization near $77.2 billion.

The case departs from typical crypto litigation centered on hacks or outright fraud, raising instead a question of whether retaining and reusing a wallet's seed phrase constitutes theft, breach of contract, or unauthorized computer access. BNB Chain has not disclosed further details, and the legal theory the company intends to pursue remains unspecified.