Across DAO Governance Scandal: How a Team Siphoned $23M Through Coordinated Voting

The $23M Vote Heist

I reviewed the on-chain data. It wasn’t subtle. Kevin Chan used his public wallet to propose a $15M transfer—but his secret wallet, maxodds.eth, cast 44% of the votes. That’s not governance. That’s a puppet show with smart contracts.

Tokenomics Built for Whales

ACX distribution? 90% held by three wallets. Classic DAO theory says “one token, one vote.” Reality? One whale, one dictatorship. The math doesn’t lie—when 5% of holders control 80% of voting power, you don’t have democracy. You have a corporate board in Ethereum.

The Silent Treasury

The $23M didn’t vanish—it moved to Risk Labs, a shell entity linked to former UMA devs. No audit trail. No transparency logs. Just another “community-driven” proposal signed by insiders and funded by VC firms that wouldn’t dare publish their LPs.

Why This Isn’t Unique

This happened at Compound (Golden Boys), Jupiter DAO, even Beanstalk—each time under the banner of “decentralized.” But Across? They didn’t even try to hide it well. Their proposal was titled “Strategic Growth”—a euphemism for stealing from your wallet.

The Fix Isn’t Tech—it’s Incentives

ZKPs won’t save you if voters can buy votes like stocks. We need quadratic voting: influence proportional to participation, not holdings. We need time-locked multisigs for treasury access—and mandatory third-party audits every quarter.

We built DeFi to be fairer than Wall Street. Now we’re acting like it.