[Bancakes]

There was a tabletop dishwasher not too long ago that had proprietary capsules. A dude bought industrial detergent and filled them up with a syringe for 100x cheaper.

[Jiejeing]

That is a bit reductive, you also need the tools to write to the chip that the capsule is full, otherwise it is useless.

[Bancakes]

It turned out to be a simple I2C memory, and the author wrote 999999 to it, IIRC.