Attackers drained millions in BONK tokens after exploiting a governance proposal.
BonkDAO investigates governance exploit after multimillion-dollar treasury loss
Photo Credit: Unsplash/FlyD
Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) responsible for memecoin Bonk (BONK) revealed that an unidentified party had stolen $20 million (roughly Rs. 189.86 crore) worth of the cryptocurrency through what was claimed to be an attack on a “malicious governance proposal.” The Bonk project stated via X post that they had reported the attack to law enforcement and were in the process of “recovering funds and identifying who is behind it.” As per BonkDAO, both of the parties involved managed to drain off $20 million (roughly Rs. 189.86 crore) worth of tokens from the treasury of the project.
One such dog-related memecoins, alongside other memecoins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB), was BONK, which was launched in December 2022 by its developers who airdropped 50 percent of its total supply. BONK's price fell around 7 percent in the first 24 hours amidst reports of the attack, reaching approximately $0.05 (roughly Rs. 4.74).
BonkDAO was the target of a malicious governance proposal resulting in an estimated $20M worth of BONK tokens being drained from the BonkDAO treasury.
During the investigation, BonkDAO identified the exchange wallets used to purchase BONK ahead of the proposal. BonkDAO is…
However, according to reports, the market value of the leading memecoins like DOGE, SHIB, and Pepe (PEPE) has recently reached its lowest point in two years at around $22 billion (roughly Rs. 2,08,846 crore) before rising above $26 billion (roughly Rs. 2,46,818 crore) in July.
As per data from CoinMarketCap, the market cap stood at $25.3 billion (roughly Rs. 2,40,173 crore) when this report was published and has fallen by over 54 percent over the past 12 months.
In May, DxSale, the memecoin launch platform, disclosed that it lost $7.3 million (roughly Rs. 69.30 crore) worth of tokens in a hack attack on the BNB Chain. While the sleuths have been able to track the address belonging to the hacker, according to one expert, the infrastructure used in the theft makes tracking tough.
The second quarter of 2026 is already the most hacked quarter on record in terms of the number of attacks, with 83 hacks of crypto protocols, per analysis from market insights provider Unfolded based on data from DefiLlama. KelpDAO's $293 million (roughly Rs. 2,774 crore) hack and Drift Protocol's $280 million (roughly Rs. 2,652 crore) exploit were the largest incidents of the quarter. The numbers indicate an increase in hacking attacks, despite the overall losses not surpassing their previous all-time highs.
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