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The DAO logo

The DAO

Hacked

DeFi · born 2016 · ✝ 2016

The $150M smart contract that forked Ethereum in two.

An early venture DAO that raised a record sum, then was drained via a reentrancy bug — forcing the Ethereum hard fork that created ETH and ETC.

Peak
$150M raised
Cause
Hacked
Year of death
2016

☠️ Cause of death

A reentrancy vulnerability in the withdrawal function let an attacker recursively drain funds before balances updated.

📓 Lessons left behind

  • —Checks-effects-interactions exists because of this.
  • —Immutable code means immutable bugs.
  • —Audits and formal verification are not optional at scale.

🌱 The idea that survived

Modern DAO tooling & audited contracts

Battle-tested frameworks (OpenZeppelin, Safe, Aragon) plus mandatory audits turned the DAO concept into safe, governable infrastructure.

#reentrancy#smart-contract#ethereum-fork