BONK faces $20 million treasury drain after attacker spends $4 million to pass malicious proposal

The sequence began on June 30, when an anonymous wallet submitted a proposal to transfer the treasury’s holdings to a wallet it controlled, per Chainalysis. To pass, the proposal needed yes votes equal to 1% of BONK’s supply, the quorum, or minimum participation, required for it to take effect.

Over July 4 and 5, a separate wallet acquired exactly that much, spending about $4.4 million to buy BONK on the exchanges Bybit and Binance and, by one account, borrowing more through DeFi lending platforms, according to Lookonchain.

Titled “BIP #76 – Sowellian BonkDAO,” the proposal passed with just seven wallets voting, against more than 18,000 members who did not, a turnout of 2.9%.

It cleared quorum by the narrowest margin, 882.38 billion BONK in favor against an 879.95 billion threshold, almost exactly the stake the attacker had spent days assembling.

The 99.9% “yes” result was effectively a single voter agreeing with itself. Its written pitch reads less like a governance motion and more like a boast, promising to “rebuild from the ashes, monetize holdings, stop the bleeding,” with a line noting that “all YES voters are eligible to receive tokens.”

Beneath it sat the only instruction that should have turned heads – a transfer of 4.43 trillion BONK to the attacker’s wallet.

By July 6, the voter held just enough. It cast its entire stake in favor of the proposal, which then passed, and shortly after, about $20 million in BONK automatically moved out of the treasury into the attacker’s wallet.