A BonkDAO governance proposal led to the transfer of 4.42 trillion BONK from the treasury, and the episode was not described as a classic hack. The proposal, listed as BIP #76, was submitted through Realms, a governance system used in the Solana ecosystem. Its purpose was to move the tokens from the BonkDAO treasury to an external address. The smart contracts were reported to be intact, and the token-weighted voting mechanism functioned as designed.
One wallet gained near-total voting control before the deadline
Reports said the wallet that executed the move bought roughly 1% of BONK’s total supply through Binance and Bybit, spending about $4.4 million. Those tokens were deposited less than 25 hours before voting closed, giving that single wallet control of 99.9% of the voting power. The proposal then passed, sending tokens equal to about 5% of BONK’s circulating supply to the designated address.
Participation was extremely limited. Of 18,500 eligible wallets, only seven voted. That level of turnout left the process vulnerable to a single large holder, putting fresh attention on the weaknesses of token-weighted governance when engagement is thin.
Schwartz says valid on-chain execution may still face court scrutiny
Ripple CTO David Schwartz rejected the idea that “code is law” settles the issue. He said that when shared assets are redirected, state courts look beyond whether the transaction was valid on-chain. They also examine the economic harm caused and the responsibility of the people involved.
According to Schwartz, following smart contract rules does not automatically make a transaction legitimate. He warned that moving shared treasury funds in this way could be treated as corporate fraud. He also said that if a DAO is not registered as a legal entity such as an LLC, common law may treat it as a general partnership. Under that view, participants who supported the proposal could be seen as breaching fiduciary duties owed to other token holders.
He added that courts focus on the damage caused, not on whether the asset involved is a meme coin. In his view, the law does not create special carve-outs for that class of digital asset.
BonkDAO says law enforcement was notified
BonkDAO representatives said law enforcement agencies were formally notified. The project team is working with the Solana Foundation and several centralized exchanges to analyze on-chain data, trace the withdrawn assets, and assess whether recovery is possible.
Legal observers cited in the source said the case could become an important reference point in debates over accountability in DeFi. The blockchain record, in this instance, is being treated not as cover, but as a transparent trail of activity.