BNB Chain sues after ex-employee mints Asteroid Shiba

BNB Chain has filed a lawsuit after a former employee allegedly used retained access to a wallet created for a tutorial to deploy the memecoin Asteroid Shiba and sell most of its supply for about 1,103 BNB (roughly $638,000).

In a post on X on Saturday, BNB Chain explained the wallet was set up to demonstrate how to launch tokens on the network and that the former employee kept the wallet’s seed phrase after leaving the company. The organization said it will pursue legal action over the unauthorized use of the address.

Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain traced the token deployment to the tutorial address and reported that four newly created wallets purchased 796.7 million ASTEROID tokens, equal to 79.67% of the total supply. Those wallets later sold about 718.8 million tokens for 1,103 BNB.

BNB Chain wrote, “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.” Binance founder Changpeng Zhao reshared the post on X, calling the former employee “basically a scammer” and advising users to “Stay SAFU.”

A seed phrase is a set of words that gives full access to a cryptocurrency wallet. BNB Chain noted the address was intended for instructional use and that keeping the seed phrase after employment ended allowed the alleged misuse.

The company did not provide details on the specific legal filings or the jurisdictions involved when it said it would seek recourse.