Why YZi Labs Is At War With the World’s Largest BNB Treasury Company

YZi Labs, the VC firm linked with Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, is not at all at good terms with the largest BNB treasury, CEA Industries listed as BNBC at NASDAQ.

The month-long disgagreements have now publicly escalated into a governance fight with Yzi Labs alleging the company of “poising the pill”. It has shown strong disagreements with the company’s pivot awat from BNB-centric digital asset treasury (DAT).

In a Jan. 7 post on X, YZi said the company’s pivot away from BNB-centric DAT threatens shareholder rights, transparency and fiduciary responsibility.

It is blasting the company for adopting defensive measures, including a poison pill and bylaw amendments, that it says entrench current management and deny investors a fair say. However, it framed its campaign as a defense of shareholder democracy, announcing a consent solicitation to expand CEA’s board.

Here’s what YZi is alleging, why it objects to the DAT strategy, and how the dispute could play out.

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What YZi is alleging

YZi’s X post and its related SEC filings lay out several specific charges:

The main reason for the disagreement between why that our labs and CA stems from token strategy. from that CA could be considering alternatives or considering other tokens from its commitment as a pure BNB treausry.

YZi points to CEO David Namdar’s remarks at a November industry conference (Cantor) and to other management activity as evidence CEA had contemplated switching or promoting other DATs such as Solana. This in YZi’s view, contradicts CEA’s commitment to a BNB-focused DAT strategy and  undermines investor confidence.

This comes as CEA first publicly announced its strategic pivot to a BNB-focused treasury in early August 2025, when it closed a $500 million private placement to fund the initiative.

The round was led by 10X Capital with support from YZi Labs which holds around 2.15 M shares of CEA.

It then adopted BNB as its primary treasury reserve asset and rebranded its Nasdaq ticker to “BNC” to reflect this new direction.

But now YZi says CEA’s board has adopted a poison pill and changed bylaws in ways that “frustrate and delay stockholders’ ability to act by written consent”. With this, it is effectively blocking shareholder remedies and insulating management from accountability.

The VC Firm has also pointed to promotion and capital-raising activity by senior management and a board member for other DAT ventures while they run CEA. The board has delayed the 2025 annual meeting past its anniversary date and is taking steps that could manipulate timing or the nomination/election process.

Why it matters for BNB

The issues becomes significant as per its latest disclosure, BNC holds approximately 515,554 BNB tokens in its digital asset treasury. This makes it one of the largest publicly disclosed corporate BNB treasuries in the world.

Interestingly, this development comes at a time when digital asset treasury (DAT) models remain firmly in focus. While many continue to question the sustainability and profitability of businesses built around reliance on digital assets, several DATs such as Strategy, Metplanet, have continued to operate, scale, and actively engage with market volatility. Recently only, ETH treasury Bitmine announced massing earnings from staking.

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