Vida recap earns $1 million through BROCCOLI714 hacking incident

On January 1st, Vida, founder of Equation News, recapped on the X platform that they earned 1 million USD from the BROCCOLI714 hacking incident this morning. By noticing that BROCCOLI714’s volatility within 1800 seconds exceeded 30%, they immediately closed their previously set arbitrage positions. Originally, each with 500,000 USD, the arbitrage hedge positions turned into spot holdings worth 800,000 USD, with a contract value of 500,000 USD. By closing all arbitrage positions immediately, they pocketed 300,000 USD. Subsequently, they discovered that on the CEX, the bid 10% depth for BROCCOLI714 spot showed a 5 million USD buy order, while the bid 10% for the contract only had a 50,000 USD depth. The order book on the CEX main site showed a market cap of 40 million USD for BROCCOLI714, with bids totaling 26 million USD, leading to the inference that either a user account was hacked or a bug in the market-making program. After confirming that the hacker had 26 million USD in the spot order book, Vida understood that their goal was to trigger a surge in the spot market to lift the contract price and then exit via the contract. They confirmed that as long as the hacker did not withdraw buy orders from the spot market, the price of BROCCOLI714 would continue to rise. Vida then chose to attempt to go long on the BROCCOLI714 USDT perpetual contract every 5-10 seconds on the trading terminal. If the order was successful, it indicated that the circuit breaker mechanism had passed, and the contract would be blown up. They successfully waited for this opportunity and added about 200,000 USD to their long position at an entry cost of 0.046 USD per contract. After the hacker withdrew orders mid-way, Vida believed they had been sanctioned by the risk control department. At 04:20:52.732 Beijing time on 2026-01-01, Vida began selling all previously accumulated and subsequently chased BROCCOLI714 spot and contract positions at all costs. Using an initial 200,000 USD position and an additional 200,000 USD, they ultimately cashed out 1.5 million USD.