YZi Labs secured three board seats at CEA Industries (Nasdaq: BNC) on June 24 after the activist investor and the company signed a cooperation agreement ending a months-long proxy contest over the company's BNB treasury mandate.
Under the deal, three directors join the board: Ella Zhang, managing partner and head of YZi Labs; Alex Odagiu, YZi investment partner; and Matthew Roszak, co-founder and chairman of blockchain infrastructure firm Bloq. The six-member board retains existing directors Carly E. Howard, Annemarie Tierney, and Glenn Tyranski. Both parties will jointly identify one additional independent director.
CEO David Namdar will remain through a transition while the board forms a search committee for a permanent replacement. Odagiu has been named interim president, reporting to the board.
YZi Labs agreed to terminate its consent solicitation, withdraw its books-and-records demands, and accept standstill and long-term voting provisions.
CEA holds what it describes as the world's largest corporate BNB treasury. YZi Labs, formerly known as Binance Labs, invested approximately $100 million in CEA in July 2025 when the company pivoted to hold BNB as its primary treasury reserve, positioning itself as the BNB equivalent of MicroStrategy's Bitcoin strategy. The activist campaign began in November 2025 after YZi alleged the existing board was not executing on that mandate. CEA responded with a poison-pill shareholder rights plan and in May 2026 sued its asset manager, 10X Capital, to void their partnership.
YZi-aligned directors now hold a majority of seats on the board of the only publicly listed BNB-focused treasury company. BNC closed at $2.27 on June 24, down 64.7% year-to-date. The stock was up nearly 20% in pre-market trading on June 25 to approximately $2.72.
"The next generation of digital asset treasury companies will not be defined only by what they hold, but by how thoughtfully they govern," Zhang said in the press release.
