The DAO, on the Ethereum blockchain, operated for 28 days in 2016 before a bug in the wallet’s Smart Contract code allowed a hack – extracting $60,000,000 dollars (billions today) to be stolen before over 10,000 investors of The DAO knew what had happened.
Vitalik Buterin proposed a soft fork which would blacklist the Hacker. The Hacker communicated he would bribe miners with millions of Ethereum and hundreds of Bitcoin as a pay-off to stop any blacklisting. Seems like the Hacker was really the one in charge of the Ethereum network.
Before a soft fork could happen, another bug was discovered in the updated code. So a hard fork was proposed and done which rolled back the network to before The DOA attack. More than just Ethereum developers were needed to make this happen. Miners, exchanges, and node operators all had to agree to fork the software.
On July 20, 2016, at block 192,000, Ethereum did a hard fork. Funds were returned to The DAO and a new Smart Contract was implemented. (Huh, aren’t blockchains supposed to be immutable?)
Why is The DAO of 2016 on Ethereum so important? It Altered Blockchain’s History forever – that’s why. It shocked all the early pioneers of crypto to get serious about this ‘coin stuff’ – that’s why. It made coders and investors start to ‘see each other’ and work together for a more stable solution – that’s why.
The hard fork resulted in two separate Ethereum blockchains. Those who didn’t adjust their code to accept the hard fork to support The DAO – the pre-forked version — became known as Ethereum Classic (ETC) . Ethereum Classic allowed the Hacker to retain over 8 million ETC. Never really liked ETC.
The fork did more than just restore the funds of the members of The DAO, although I’m sure they were really happy about getting their coins back! It allowed the Ethereum network to remain alive on chain, to innovate – it allowed Ethereum to become the global community it is today. The fork allowed this emerging technology to continue its foray into the Wild West of Crypto. It encouraged other technologies that we love, like Hedera, to be developed. It also highlighted the dark side of crypto.
We all want a blockchain that is stable, a cryptocurrency that we can actually use in our lives, a decentralized way to conduct financial transactions… The DAO of 2016 started us on that path. And for that I am forever grateful that the concept of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) can be a real force for good today!
First and foremost, HelloFutureDAO will conduct itself with the same civility, humility and kindness that is the hallmark of the Hedera community; exemplified by Mance Harmon, Leemon Baird, and all of those at the HBar Foundation, Hedera and Swirlds. HelloFutureDAO is being built close to the original principles expressed by The DAO – collectivizing funds to build businesses and technologies seeking investment, that upon approval of the DAO’s governance structure, will give the stakeholders a position to shape how we can make the World a better place – A FORCE FOR GOOD – at the same time, reaping dividends and benefitting from a token price increase by representative ownership.
Join us on our journey ,Giddy up!
About the author:
HelloFutureDAO is a project being shepherded by Elisabeth Chase @Hello_Chase, founder of @HelloFutureBuzz – #SpacesHost with Ħashgraph Developers, Ħedera team, NFT Creators, Dapp devs+ every Thursday on Twitter Spaces.
