Vitalik is one of the guardians of TheDAO Security Fund.
Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
In the history of Ethereum, nothing is more iconic than "The DAO" in 2016. It was not only the most incredible crowdfunding project in Ethereum's history, but also the protagonist of the hack that led to the split of the Ethereum community and the birth of "Ethereum Classic (ETC)".
Ten years later, The DAO, the name that nearly destroyed Ethereum, is returning in a different way by launching "The DAO Security Fund," which will transform the more than 75,109 Ethereum (worth more than $220 million) left over from the incident into a long-term fund focused on building Ethereum's security.
Historical Retrospective: A Crowdfunding Myth Leads to an Ecological Crisis
Let's rewind to 2016. At that time, TheDAO set a crowdfunding record with a funding of $150 million, attracting as much as 14% of the Ethereum supply.
The vision of this decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) thrilled the entire crypto ecosystem, but it was quickly met with a catastrophic attack. Hackers exploited a recursive call vulnerability in a smart contract to steal a large amount of funds, prompting the Ethereum community to make a highly controversial decision—to implement a hard fork to recover the stolen assets. This move also directly led to a split in community ideology, resulting in the creation of Ethereum Classic (ETC).
However, restoring funds is never a simple matter. While the hard fork solved the redemption problem of standard DAO tokens, it couldn't handle all edge cases. Therefore, a group of senior members of the Ethereum community voluntarily formed "TheDAO Curator Multisig" to take on the responsibility of resolving these complex legacy issues.
The DAO Security Fund was thus established.
Griff Green, former community manager of TheDAO and current co-founder of Giveth, was one of the core members of TheDAO's multi-signature wallet management team. According to an official announcement, as early as August 2016, these core administrators clarified an important intention: if the remaining funds in these peripheral scenarios remained unclaimed after January 31, 2017, they would be used to support the security of Ethereum smart contracts.
Then, these funds simply "slept" quietly for nearly a decade. Griff Green told Unchained, "Today in 2026, we've never touched these funds, and the price of Ethereum has increased their value dramatically. It's a truly dramatic turn of events—the 'remaining funds' from back then are now worth far more than TheDAO's initial $150 million crowdfunding campaign."
The DAO Fund's goal: To safeguard Ethereum's security.
According to the official announcement, TheDAO Security Fund's funding primarily comes from two sources, totaling over 75,109 ETH (worth $220 million):
- There are approximately 70,500 ETH in the ExtraBalance contract, which can still be claimed by eligible individuals.
- The DAO Curator Multisig contains approximately 4,600 ETH and some DAO tokens, valued at around $13.5 million, and there is no clear claimant for this portion.
The DAO Security Fund has a clear and well-defined operational and usage plan: 69,420 ETH allocated from the ExtraBalance contract will be staked, and the staking returns will form a perpetual donation fund to provide long-term financial support for Ethereum security development. The staking returns will be combined with 4,600 ETH in TheDAO Curator Multisig to jointly fund various Ethereum security-related projects. Simultaneously, the ExtraBalance withdrawal contract will retain a portion of ETH to ensure that the rights of legitimate claiming users are not affected.
In terms of funding scope, TheDAO Security Fund's core objective is very clear—to prioritize the security of the entire Ethereum ecosystem, covering all dimensions of security construction: from wallet user experience optimization and smart contract security auditing to security incident response and Ethereum core protocol security upgrades, and then to the security protection of Layer 2 networks and cross-chain bridge ecosystems, all work that helps improve Ethereum's security level is included in the fund's funding scope.
In addition, the fund will rely on the optimization directions and opportunities in the current security field identified by Trillion Dollar Security of the Ethereum Foundation, and combine this with continuous communication with ecosystem partners to determine the specific scope and focus of each round of funding.
Regarding the funding allocation mechanism, TheDAO Security Fund adheres to the principles of openness and bottom-up governance. It will adopt diverse methods such as quadratic financing, retrospective funding, and ranked voting based on Request for Proposals (RFP) to carry out funding work in rounds, allowing ecosystem participants to jointly participate in the funding allocation decision-making.
Currently, the fund has assembled a professional guardianship team to provide professional guidance and supervision for the fund's operation and funding decisions. The team members are all senior practitioners and security experts in the crypto ecosystem, including Ethereum founder Vitalik, MetaMask security engineer Taylor Monahan, Zisk, Giveth co-founder Jordi Baylina, security expert pcaversaccio, ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande, and Dappnode CEO Pol Lanski.
summary
The DAO Security Fund is not without controversy, with its core disputes revolving around two main issues: the legitimacy of using these legacy funds for the security fund and the degree of decentralization of the fund's governance mechanism.
Should this enormous asset be considered "private property" belonging to all original token holders, or has it been identified as ownerless property and thus used for "public interest"?
These controversies not only continue the ideological differences within the Ethereum community sparked by The DAO incident in 2016, but also reflect the deep-seated contradictions in the governance of the current crypto ecosystem—the balance between the decentralized philosophy and actual operational efficiency and compliance of asset disposal remains a topic that the entire industry needs to continuously explore.
But putting aside the controversies, The DAO's ten-year cycle, from the crowdfunding myth and ecological crisis in 2016 to the security fund and ecological protection in 2026, is itself a microcosm of the development of the Ethereum ecosystem. It has witnessed Ethereum's growth from immaturity to maturity and has also demonstrated the resilience and community power of the crypto ecosystem.
refer to:
https://paragraph.com/@thedao.fund/thedao-security-fund-activating-75000-eth-for-ethereum-security
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