This Week:

BonkDAO Treasury Loses $20M In Governance “Hack”

BonkDAO, the DAO behind the Solana meme coin BONK, lost roughly $20 million after an attacker exploited its onchain governance process. The actor passed a proposal designed to drain the protocol after buying a enough voting power to push the measure ahead. Around 4:00 a.m. ET on Monday, more than 4.4 trillion BONK tokens were transferred out of the treasury wallet under the authority of Bonk Improvement Proposal #76, titled "Sowellian BonkDAO," which the attacker had engineered to pass by pre-purchasing voting tokens on centralized exchanges ahead of time. The proposal's stated goals, to "implement Sowellian governance, install new members and council, rebuild from the ashes, monetize holdings, and stop the bleeding," actually masked the treasury drain as a legitimate governance action. BonkDAO has since identified the exchange wallets used to acquire the voting tokens and says it's coordinating with centralized exchanges, network bridges, and the Solana Foundation to trace and potentially recover the funds.

Strategy Sells $216M in Bitcoin to Fund Dividends

Strategy, the Michael Saylor-led firm best known for its aggressive corporate Bitcoin accumulation, reversed course this week by offloading a chunk of its holdings. Between June 29 and July 5, the company sold 3,588 BTC for approximately $216 million, marking the first notable divestment under its newly disclosed "BTC Monetization Program." The proceeds are earmarked to cover dividend payments on Strategy's preferred stock and to replenish its dwindling cash reserves, rather than to signal any broader bearish shift in its Bitcoin strategy. Even after the sale, Strategy remains one of the largest corporate holders of Bitcoin in the world, with 843,775 BTC still on its balance sheet alongside a $2.55 billion U.S. dollar reserve.

Washington Moves On SEC Safe Harbor and Clarity Act

Regulatory momentum picked up in Washington this week on two separate but related tracks. The SEC indicated its long-promised crypto "safe harbor" rule, designed to give token projects breathing room from securities enforcement while they decentralize, could be formally introduced as soon as this month, which would kick off a public comment period on the proposed framework. Seperately, the newest version of the Clarity Act, the comprehensive crypto market-structure bill, may drop as soon as next week after Senate Banking and Agriculture Committee staff worked to merge their respective drafts into a single unified text. The bill still faces a steep climb to passage, requiring 60 votes to clear the Senate, meaning Democratic lawmakers must approve of whatever compromise language emerges from the merged committees.

Tunnel Timeline: Rough Dates for the Final Two Phases

Two phases remain before the tunnel is complete: the ZK side of the Ethereum tunnel and the ZK side of the Bitcoin tunnel (the hBitVM design). The team's current estimate has the Ethereum side landing toward the end of Q3, with hBitVM following in Q4. Both dates carry the usual caveat that ZK engineering timelines can shift.

Protocol Engineering Progress

The op-geth hardening release is close, with internal testing and minor tweaks underway; the migration to PopMiner version two will follow once that ships. Separately, Fast Track is coming together, with PRs in review. On the ZK proving side, the team is optimizing the Oxygen ZK VM guest against edge-case denial-of-service scenarios in Bitcoin blocks, similar in spirit to the old quadratic ECDSA script-verification issue, and gathering worst-case performance data to help price jobs correctly on the proving marketplace.

Community Quest Platform Search Continues

Guild-related issues persist, so the team is evaluating alternatives, including Zealy and another platform suggested by a community moderator. Beta testing continues on the current setup in the meantime, with a switch planned before any public launch.

While serving as a vibrant hub for the community, Hemi’s Discord is also where you can earn from a $HEMI prize pool by competing in onchain games.

Season 5 of Hair Games Launches with New Leaderboard

Place 3 arcade style games to rack up points and climb the ranks:

Void Striker — Space Invaders-style action!

Space Huggers — The ultra-bloody mobile shoot’em up!

Need for HAIR — Our completely wild racing game!

When it comes to the leaderboard, you spoke and we listened. 

We've decided to create a single prize pool of 30,000 $HEMI distributed across the top 15 players. Now, whether you're 3rd or 14th, you always have a reason to fight for a better rank and a bigger reward!

Rewards are distributed by leaderboard rank as follows: 1st place receives 6,000, 2nd 4,000, 3rd 3,000, 4th 2,400, 5th 2,200, 6th 2,000, 7th 1,700, 8th 1,500, 9th 1,300, 10th 1,200, 11th 1,000, 12th 900, 13th 800, 14th 600, and 15th 400.

Hemigo Of the Month

For the month of June, the prestigious Hemigo of the Month award goes to community member Omni3387. Their longstanding project commitment and consistent high quality Hemi-related posts set Omni3387 a tier above, and as a token of our appreciate, we are honored to bestow the ultra-rare, not-for-retail-sale, collector merchandise: it’s the exclusive Special Hemigo of the Month Hoodie!

Who may win July’s prized hoodie is stull up in the air, so join Hemi’s Discord for your chance to win and become part of Hemi’s growing community.

Midweek with Max covers ongoing engineering, community, and marketing updates.

Catch the full recap.

Join Hemi’s Discord to send questions for Max ahead of next week’s AMA.

Next week, Protocol Engineering Office Hours return to streaming on X, YouTube, and LinkedIn, at their normally scheduled time every other Wednesday at 8:00 AM PDT, 11:00 AM EDT, and 15:00 UTC.

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