Punk Protocol
Summary
Punk Protocol was an Ethereum-based DeFi project that positioned itself as a decentralized annuity and pension service. On August 10, 2021, it suffered a critical smart contract exploit due to a missing access-control modifier in its CompoundModel contract, resulting in approximately $8.95 million in stablecoin losses; roughly $5 million was partially recovered via a white-hat frontrunner who retained a $1 million bounty. The project launched without a security audit, has published no meaningful updates since late 2021, and its PUNK token currently trades at effectively zero volume, indicating the project is dormant or abandoned.
Connected Entities
1 entitiesTimeline(8 events)
2021-06-01
Punk Protocol announces fair launch; team led by pseudonymous contributors 0xJohnny and 0xMateo; contracts described as pending audit
2021-08-10
Smart contract exploit occurs; attacker uses delegateCall to exploit unprotected initialize() function in CompoundModel, draining approximately $8.95 million in USDC, USDT, and DAI
2021-08-10
White-hat frontrunner bot intercepts approximately $6 million of the drain before the attacker can secure it; stolen USDC routed through 1inch and Tornado Cash
2021-08-11
Punk Protocol publishes incident report; suspends deposits and withdrawals; commits to unconditional compensation of all affected users
2021-08-13
White-hat actor returns approximately $4,954,250 in USDT and DAI after retaining approximately $1 million DAI as a finder's fee
2021-09-01
Punk Protocol publishes compensation plan; issues 4,041,504 peUSD tokens to affected users; freezes 3,150,000 PUNK contributor tokens pending full recovery; announces NFT drop and protocol revenue as funding mechanisms
2022-01-01
Last known substantive public communications from Punk Protocol; Medium blog activity ceases
2026-05-27
PUNK token reports $0 price and zero trading volume; project appears dormant; Recovery Fund completion status unconfirmed
Decision Log
- hash: 7uWx2DEDHSLuiE16xHAu7wCk9nf1GiPamtxe6tpi5x6W
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:55 AM
last updated: 5/27/2026, 6:18:17 PM
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