Solana Meme Coin Bonk Treasury Drained of $20 Million in 'Malicious' Governance Attack

BonkDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization tied to the popular Bonk meme coin on Solana, fell victim to a “malicious” governance attack that resulted in a roughly $20 million heist from its treasury. 

The team behind the meme coin and its various endeavors said it is working with centralized exchanges, network bridges, and the Solana Foundation as it navigates the situation. 

“During the investigation, BonkDAO identified the exchange wallets used to purchase BONK ahead of the proposal,” the meme coin account posted on X. 

“Law enforcement has been notified,” it said. “BonkDAO continues to work with relevant parties to recover funds and identify those responsible.”

Dubbed a “drain,” by the meme coin project, the incident took place around 4:00 a.m. ET on Monday, when more than 4.4 trillion BONK tokens, valued at $19.3 million at the time of writing, were transferred from the treasury wallet to an address ending in “JHvQ.” 

That event was highlighted as the second key instruction in a Bonk Improvement Proposal #76, a governance proposal submitted and passed using BonkDAO’s governance platform. 

Entitled “Sowellian BonkDAO,” the proposal sought to “implement Sowellian governance, install new members and council, rebuild from the ashes, monetize holdings, and stop the bleeding.” 

It also indicated that all “yes” voters would be eligible to receive BONK tokens. But the tokens that moved to “JHvQ”—a wallet identified by Solana blockchain explorer Solscan as being funded via a Bybit account—have not been distributed to any other parties. Instead, they were transferred around 3:30 p.m. ET to a different Solana address ending in “eh42.” 

As a result of the incident, crypto exchanges have taken action. South Korean exchange Upbit and American exchange Kraken have both paused deposits and withdrawals of the BONK token, with the former citing “user protection measures following the circumstances of a security incident.” 

BONK, once a top 100 crypto token by market cap, has fallen around 7% in the last 24 hours to trade around $0.0000043. That price is around 93% below its all-time high mark of $0.000058.