Ethereum Revives $220M Security Fund from 2016 DAO Hack

The original DAO, responsible for one of Ethereum's most defining early crises, is being revived as TheDAO Security Fund. This fund will use over $220 million in unclaimed assets from the 2016 recovery process to finance security initiatives on the network.

The original DAO launched in 2016 as an experiment in decentralized governance and raised one of crypto's largest early treasuries before a reentrancy bug allowed an attacker to drain about 3.6 million ETH, worth over $130 million at current rates. The community backed a hard fork to restore the funds, while opponents continued on the original chain, which became Ethereum Classic.

The recovered ETH was not all claimed by original DAO token holders, and a large portion remained idle for nearly a decade. Those funds are now being redirected toward the ecosystem's security needs.