Bonkler

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Bonkler (sometimes stylized as Bonklers) was an experimental on-chain generative art and auction project by the art collective Remilia Corporation, launched in 2023 on Ethereum. Designed as a "finance art" counterpart to Remilia's avatar projects, Bonkler minted one new piece per auction cycle and encoded redeemable reserve "shares" into each NFT based on its final sale price. Each day a new artwork was minted, combining ritualized scarcity with experimental game design before being halted by Bonkler 9/11 in September 2023.

Bonkler NFT #1, 2023.

History and concept

Conception

Bonkler was conceived by Charlotte Fang in August 2022, shortly after the public rise of Milady Maker. In his essay "A Critical Review of Nouns DAO," Fang argued that Nouns was structurally flawed due to its deflationary tokenomics. Because a new Noun is minted every day, each with equal voting rights, early holders inevitably face dilution of both voting power and market value.

Nouns is an experiment in punishing its earliest investors.

— Charlotte Fang, A Critical Review of Nouns DAO, 2022

Fang predicted that while early auctions might reach millions, long-term value would trend downward as later entrants gained equivalent voting rights at lower cost. He framed Bonkler as a conceptual fork of Nouns that would resolve these flaws while preserving the ritual of daily generativity—expanded into an experiment in trust, faith, and myth-building beyond the DAO-as-artwork model.

The project was publicly introduced in April 2023 with the manifesto "Bonkler: Critical Notes," framing it as "a World Fair for the internet" and "a year-long prank on price discovery." The design sets out to explore market dynamics as artistic medium via paced auctions and reserve-backed mechanics.

Launch

Record-breaking Bonkler NFT #64, 2023.

Bonkler was officially released in 2023 alongside Remilia's Milady Rave Tokyo event. The inaugural auction shattered records for the group, with early sources reporting the first Bonkler selling for 60 ETH on April 21, 2023, while other accounts cite over 65 ETH (approximately $110,000).

Each subsequent day, a new Bonkler was minted and auctioned, establishing a serialized rhythm that quickly became central to Remilia's cultural ecosystem. Among these daily auctions, Bonkler #64 broke all records at 75.2 ETH (approximately $131,000), marking the highest sale in the series. Fang described the project as "an ongoing liturgy," situating it as Remilia's most elaborate experiment in finance-as-art.

Auction mechanics

Bonkler ran sequential English auctions. Each auction lasted 23 hours and included a 15-minute extension if a bid arrived in the final 15 minutes. Bids increased in 0.1 ETH increments and were refunded on outbid. At the end of each auction, a new Bonkler was generated and minted.

Reserve-backed shares and treasury

When a Bonkler was minted, it was allocated redeemable "shares" proportional to its final sale price. Holders could burn their NFT to redeem ETH from the Bonkler Treasury corresponding to those shares. The Treasury was funded by each auction's final sale minus a 30% fee to Remilia. This design introduced an embedded reserve value and created a deflationary dynamic when NFTs were burned to redeem shares.

Artistic style and design

The visual direction is described by Remilia as a "citational collage-pastiche on a Bionicle base," with asset contributions from members of the Remilia Collective. The imagery extended Remilia's schizomorphic aesthetic lineage, producing algorithmically generated forms that balanced structural repetition with surreal variation. The aesthetic emphasized "hypercitation" and toy-shelf artifact sensibilities, positioning pieces as collectible objects rather than profile-picture identities.

Supply and rarity

The collection was intended to be capped at 400 items. Trait rarities were to be revealed gradually across the daily auctions via a hidden rarity algorithm, intentionally obscuring price discovery between aesthetic scarcity and embedded reserve value.

Technical aspects

• Platform: Ethereum
• Token standard: ERC-721 with reserve-backed redemption logic
• Smart contracts: Authored by the developer Vectorized
• Mint cadence: One generative piece per completed auction cycle
• Treasury: On-chain ETH reserve fueled by auction proceeds (less 30% fee)

Bonkler 9/11

Main article: Bonkler 9/11

On September 11, 2023, Bonkler's mints were halted when a Remilia developer diverted approximately $1 million in fees through an unauthorized contract. In coordination with Henry Sprite, Maxwell Roux, and Yojimbo, the group also seized Remilia's internal codebases and Twitter accounts. Fang announced the incident while simultaneously filing a lawsuit, describing it as an attempted coup.

Remilia stated that "the Bonkler reserves, main contract and NFTs are safe," confirming that only fee revenue was affected, not user assets or reserves. Community members dubbed the event "Bonkler 9/11." While Bonkler's reserves, NFTs, and metadata remained secure, the crisis forced a pause of the daily mint and effectively ended the project's serialized release.

Fang later confirmed that the stolen contracts were recovered but that the developer group had attempted to erase internal data.

Aftermath

Fang stated that a "Bonkler v2" upgrade was planned, designed to introduce collateralized loans and treasury deployment. However, daily minting has not resumed. Bonklers minted before September 2023 subsequently took on cult status as relics of the project's turbulent first iteration.

Community and reception

Early auctions drew high bids and attention in NFT media and analytics dashboards describing Bonkler as "reserve-backed" and highlighting its paced mint/rarity reveal model. Coverage and third-party trackers characterize it as an experimental finance-art design rather than a typical PFP series.

Community engagement centered around the daily auction ritual and related side concepts such as the proposed "Auctioncore" bidder airdrops to gamify participation. The collection was celebrated within Remilia culture as a response to Nouns DAO and a bold experiment in serialized generativity. Its ritualized daily cadence was understood as both art and economic game, extending the Milady Maker ecosystem.

Following Bonkler 9/11, the collection became symbolic of both innovation and betrayal. The crisis consolidated Fang's leadership and transformed Bonklers into cult artifacts, remembered as much for their mythic narrative as for their generative style.

Legacy

Bonkler is significant for:

• Offering a Remilia-native response to the deflationary flaws of Nouns DAO
• Establishing serialized generative minting as a cultural ritual
• Pioneering reserve-backed NFT mechanics with redeemable treasury shares
• Becoming a symbol of vulnerability and resilience after Bonkler 9/11

Though cut short, Bonkler remains a central artifact in the Remilia mythos—its NFTs regarded as both innovative artworks and relics of one of the collective's defining conflicts.

See also

• Remilia Corporation
• Milady Maker
• Redacted Remilio Babies
• Bonkler 9/11

External links

• Bonkler Contract
• Official Bonkler website