BonkDAO, the community governance group tied to Solana meme coin BONK, said a malicious governance proposal drained an estimated $20 million worth of BONK tokens from its treasury.
X user c4lvin, who appears to be a researcher at Four Pillars, a crypto research firm, identified BIP #76, titled "Sowellian BonkDAO," as the malicious proposal behind the drain.
The proposal pitched itself as a governance reset. The text called to "implement Sowellian governance," install new members and a new council, "rebuild from the ashes," monetize holdings and "stop the bleeding." It also said all YES voters would be eligible to receive tokens.
But the proposal's second listed action was the key part. After "Add Metadata," it instructed BonkDAO to send about 4.4 trillion BONK to the wallet address 9bxW...JHvQ.
- BIP #76 passed with 882.3 billion yes votes, or 99.9%, against 710,848,288 no votes, or 0.1%.
c4lvin
That makes the incident look more like governance capture than a simple wallet compromise. BonkDAO said it identified exchange wallets used to buy BONK ahead of the proposal, suggesting the attacker may have accumulated voting power before pushing through a treasury-draining vote.
BonkDAO said it's working with exchanges, bridges and the Solana Foundation to manage the situation. The group also said law enforcement had been notified and that it is trying to recover the funds and identify those responsible.
- BONK fell 10.2% over the past 24 hours after the disclosure, according to data from CoinGecko.