BNB Chain said it is pursuing legal action against a former employee it accuses of using a wallet created for a company tutorial to launch and profit from a memecoin called Asteroid Shiba, or ASTEROID.
In a statement posted on X at 6:10 a.m. ET on Saturday, BNB Chain said the former employee had retained unauthorized access to the seed phrase of a wallet used in a token-launch tutorial. The company said the person is no longer employed by BNB Chain and that it is cooperating with relevant authorities.
The allegation places a company-controlled tutorial wallet at the center of a rapid memecoin launch, raising questions over how long test-wallet credentials should remain usable after public demonstrations are completed. Seed phrases give whoever holds them complete control over a wallet and its assets, making their retention a major operational risk even when the address was originally intended only for educational material.
Tutorial wallet linked to tst token launch
The wallet had previously been used to launch TST, a test token featured in a BNB Chain tutorial video released in February 2025. The video briefly revealed the token’s name, prompting speculative trading in a token that was never intended as an official BNB Chain project.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the former chief executive of Binance, later posted about the episode while emphasizing that TST was not endorsed by BNB Chain. The attention nevertheless drove the token’s market capitalization above $50 million, according to the supplied account of the event.
BNB Chain and Zhao issued multiple warnings that TST was a test asset rather than a project backed by the network. The company removed the tutorial video after the trading frenzy, while the team also deleted the private key associated with the creator address. Zhao said at the time that the creator wallet held 0.13% of TST’s total supply.
Deleting a private key does not eliminate access if another party has retained the seed phrase, which can generate that key and control the address. BNB Chain said the former employee retained the wallet’s recovery phrase and later used that access to regain control of the creator address.
Lookonchain tracks concentrated asteroid purchases
Onchain analytics group Lookonchain said the former employee deployed ASTEROID from the tutorial wallet, then used four newly created wallets to buy 796.7 million tokens — 79.67% of its total supply — for roughly $10,000.
Lookonchain said those four buying wallets were separate from the tutorial address that initiated the token launch. That distinction points to a structure in which the launching wallet established the token’s apparent connection to the earlier BNB Chain tutorial, while other wallets accumulated the bulk of the supply.
The analytics group reported that the four wallets later sold 718.8 million ASTEROID for 1,103 BNB, worth about $638,000 at the time of sale. Lookonchain estimated the profit at approximately $628,000, while noting that the attribution of the wallets to the former employee had not been independently verified.
BNB Chain’s statement did not provide a token-by-token transaction record, identify the former employee, or specify whether it had verified the wallets cited by Lookonchain. It also did not say what legal claims it plans to bring, where a case could be filed, or which authorities are involved.
Existing asteroid shiba project rejects connection
The newly launched ASTEROID also appeared to copy an existing project using the Asteroid Shiba name. The pre-existing project said in an X post that it had no affiliation with the token issued through Flap, a memecoin launch platform.
That project said the newer token copied its name and rewards model. Similar branding can be especially potent in thinly researched memecoin markets, where traders often act on token names, social-media posts and perceived links to well-known ecosystems before examining the contract address or issuer.
The account is particularly sensitive because the launch came from an address previously associated with BNB Chain educational content. A wallet’s transaction history is public on a blockchain, allowing traders to see that it was used in a tutorial or interacted with recognizable network addresses. That history can create an appearance of legitimacy without establishing that the token itself has official backing.
BNB Chain had already encountered that dynamic with TST. A token created as a tutorial example gained a large speculative following after its name became public, despite repeated disclaimers from the company. The ASTEROID case suggests that a publicly known test address can remain valuable to anyone who retains its credentials, even after the original team considers the wallet retired.
Wallet controls face renewed scrutiny
The dispute also illustrates a practical weakness in crypto operations: a private key or seed phrase can outlast an employee’s role, a tutorial’s removal, and a company’s internal intent to retire an address. Onchain assets do not recognize employment termination or revoked software permissions. Control follows the cryptographic credentials.
For companies publishing technical tutorials, the incident adds weight to practices such as using one-time demonstration wallets, moving or revoking assets after a video is recorded, and ensuring no individual retains a recoverable seed phrase once the content is finished. Publicly visible test wallets may attract attention precisely because their history is easy to verify, while their current controller may be difficult to identify.
BNB Chain’s planned legal action will determine whether the company can connect the alleged wallet activity to a specific former employee and whether authorities treat the use of retained wallet credentials as a form of unauthorized access. In the meantime, the episode leaves traders with a straightforward risk marker: a familiar wallet history or a recognizable project name does not establish that a newly launched token is official.
Worried about wallet safety after this case? Learn how to secure seed phrases in our guide Crypto Wallet Mistakes to Avoid.
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