Was It a Hack or Governance? BONK's $21M Treasury Vote Divides Crypto

An anonymous wallet spent $4.4 million buying BONK tokens over two days, then used that stash to push through a governance vote that allowed it to drain $21.2 million from the BonkDAO treasury. The incident, which saw the attacker walk away with a $16.8 million profit, has split the crypto community between those calling it a theft and those insisting the DAO did exactly what it was built to do.

According to blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain, preparations for the theft started on June 30 when the attacker filed a proposal asking BonkDAO to move 4.426 trillion BONK, worth about $21.2 million, to a wallet they controlled. To pass, the proposal had to be supported by at least 1% of the BONK supply, which stands at just under 88 trillion tokens.

From around July 4, the attacker bought 882.285 billion BONK on Bybit and Binance, an amount just enough to clear the 1% requirement (879.95 billion) to make a quorum. They then voted “yes” with all 882.285 billion BONK, passing the proposal, after which 4.426 trillion tokens were transferred to their wallet.

Chainalysis corroborated Lookonchain’s account, saying the attacker acquired tokens between July 4 and 5, buying some from exchanges and borrowing others through DeFi platforms. About 9 hours after voting, the attacker sent $188,000 to OKX while putting the rest in a new DAO, “BONK 2.0,” created to govern the stolen funds. The new DAO is controlled by the malicious voter, the exploiter wallet, and a third wallet with financial ties to the voter.

BonkDAO confirmed the treasury loss in a statement on X, saying it had identified the exchange wallets used to acquire voting tokens and notified law enforcement while coordinating with exchanges, bridges, and the Solana Foundation.

Following news of the theft, BONK token lost value, trading around $0.00000438 at the time of writing, a 7.4% drop in 24 hours but still up nearly 5% on the week.

The event continues a streak of DeFi losses, with CryptoRank reporting nearly $1 billion lost to bad actors this year. But not everyone agrees a crime occurred. World Liberty Financial advisor Ogle questioned why law enforcement became involved, arguing that someone legitimately bought tokens, proposed a vote, it passed with almost no opposition, and was executed. They noted that reports of the voting website being inaccessible during the period, if true, would raise separate concerns but don’t necessarily make the on-chain vote illegal.

Others disagreed. Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz argued that using voting control over a shared treasury for personal gain could amount to fraud because governance participants owe a fiduciary duty to other stakeholders. He added that BonkDAO’s lack of a formal legal wrapper could expose participants to partnership-style liabilities in some jurisdictions.

Source: https://cryptopotato.com/was-it-a-hack-or-governance-bonks-21m-treasury-vote-divides-crypto/