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<p>BonkDAO lost about 20 million dollars on Monday following a governance attack that the team describes as malicious. An adopted proposal allowed transferring 4.4 trillion BONK tokens to the address of a suspected attacker. Will investigators be able to recover the funds?</p>
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  <h2 class="in-brief--title" id="in-brief">In Brief:</h2>
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   <li>BonkDAO lost $20 million in a malicious governance attack on July 6, 2026.</li>
   <li>The approved proposal, dubbed “Sowellian BonkDAO,” resulted in 4,400 billion BONK tokens being sent to a suspected attacker.</li>
   <li>Kraken and Upbit suspended BONK deposits and withdrawals following the incident.</li>
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<h2 id="h-how-did-the-governance-attack-drain-the-treasury-on-solana">How did the governance attack drain the treasury on Solana?</h2>
<p>The incident occurred around 4 AM Eastern Time on Monday, amidst the buzz around <a href="https://www.cointribune.com/en/solana-meme-coins-boom-2025/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">memecoins on Solana</a>. More than 4.4 trillion BONK tokens, worth about 19.3 million dollars at the time of writing, left BonkDAO’s treasury wallet.</p>
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<p>The protocol uses an on-chain voting system to validate its governance proposals. This architecture, designed to decentralize decisions, allowed the attacker to have their text adopted without centralized human intervention.</p>
<p>Improvement proposal number 76, titled “Sowellian BonkDAO”, notably planned to “<em>rebuild from its ashes</em>” and reward favorable voters. However, BonkDAO confirmed on X that the suspicious address, funded by a Bybit account according to Solscan, did not redistribute any tokens.</p>
<p>The token was then transferred further. Around 3:30 PM Eastern Time, the funds reached a second Solana address ending in “eh42”.</p>
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<h2 id="h-what-are-the-consequences-for-exchanges-and-the-bonk-price">What are the consequences for exchanges and the BONK price?</h2>
<p>Upbit and Kraken reacted quickly. Both platforms suspended BONK deposits and withdrawals as soon as the incident was announced.</p>
<p>The South Korean platform justified its decision by measures to protect users after a security incident. Moreover, <a href="https://decrypt.co/372862/solana-meme-coin-bonk-treasury-drained-20-million" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">BonkDAO says it is collaborating with law enforcement</a> and Solana ecosystem cross-chain bridges to trace the funds.</p>
<p>At the same time, the incident renews the debate on the security of on-chain votes in crypto DAOs. Several projects have already suffered similar attacks, usually through the massive purchase of governance tokens before a key vote.</p>
<p>The token dropped about 7% in 24 hours, around 0.0000043 dollar. However, this level remains 93% below its all-time high of 0.000058 dollar.</p>
<p>BONK reached this peak in December 2024, during the memecoin boom on Solana. At that time, the token was among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.</p>
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<p>BonkDAO promises regular communication as the investigation progresses. Holder confidence will now depend on the project’s ability to recover the funds. Other <a href="https://www.cointribune.com/ecosystemes-blockchain/dao/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">crypto DAOs</a> might nonetheless review their voting mechanisms after this governance flaw.</p>

Solana : Bonk DAO Loses Nearly 20 Million Dollars in a Sophisticated Attack

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