CZ tests on-chain perpetuals by longing MUBARAK on APX Finance to check for MEV issues

Changpeng Zhao conducted a 24.7 leveraged long trade on Mubarak to test for MEV issues, triggering a surge in the token’s price.

On Mar. 23, Binance founder and former CEO opened a 24.7x leveraged long position on Mubarak (MUBARAK) with 0.04 BNB as collateral on APX Finance. The transaction was reported on X by on-chain analyst ai_9684xtpa, to which CZ replied “Doing a little on-chain testing on Sunday, as usual. Nothing to be excited about.”

Despite CZ’s downplaying, ai_9684xtpa reported that in the 7 minutes since opening the position, APX (APX) surged by 26%, from $0.64 to $0.081, while MUBARAK rose by 5.5%, from $0.146 to $0.154. The trade was conducted using a public donation address and the position has now been closed.

This market reaction aligns with a familiar trend—whenever CZ trades or tweets, buying pressure follows. Recently, Zhao purchased 20,150 MUBARAK for 1 BNB (valued at $600 at the time), which sent MUBARAK surging, briefly claiming the top spot on BNB Chain’s memecoin rankings by market cap and trading volume soaring past $180 million, as reported by Root Data.

However, Zhao’s perpetuals trade on MUBARAK was conducted as a test, as he later explained in his post on X, stating “Just trying the experience, also trying to see how if there is still MEV.”

Zhao has yet to share any findings from his testing related to Maximal Extractable Value. His perpetuals test follows his Feb. 7 poll on X, where he asked whether BNB Chain should eliminate or significantly reduce MEV issues.

Although MEV is more commonly associated with the Ethereum (ETH) network, BNB Chain users have also faced significant losses due to MEV—where validators reorder or rearrange transactions waiting to be included in the block to maximize their profits. In 2024 alone, BNB users reportedly lost around $1.5 billion due to MEV.