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The DAO

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Summary

The DAO was a decentralized autonomous organization launched on the Ethereum blockchain in April 2016 that raised approximately $150 million in Ether — the largest crowdfunding to date at the time — before being drained of 3.6 million ETH (roughly $50–60 million) on June 17, 2016, via a reentrancy vulnerability in its smart contract code. The hack triggered an acrimonious debate over blockchain immutability and led to a contentious hard fork of the Ethereum network on July 20, 2016, splitting it into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). In 2017 the U.S. SEC concluded that DAO tokens constituted unregistered securities, marking a landmark regulatory precedent for the entire crypto industry.

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□The DAO
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    Timeline(14 events)

    30 April 2016

    The DAO token crowdsale launches on the Ethereum blockchain, created by Slock.it developers led by Christoph Jentzsch.

    12 May 2016

    The DAO crowdsale surpasses $50 million raised — the largest crowdfunding in history at the time.

    15 May 2016

    Crowdsale exceeds $100 million in Ether raised.

    28 May 2016

    Crowdsale closes with approximately 12 million ETH (~$150 million) raised from the sale of 1.15 billion DAO tokens.

    9 June 2016

    Developer Peter Vessenes publishes a blog post warning of recursive-call vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts.

    12 June 2016

    Slock.it's Stephan Tual publishes a post claiming The DAO is not at risk from the known recursive-call vulnerability.

    16 June 2016

    IC3 researchers publish further warnings about recursive-call vulnerabilities in Ethereum contracts.

    17 June 2016

    Attacker exploits reentrancy vulnerability in The DAO, draining 3.6 million ETH (~$50–60 million) into a child DAO contract subject to a 28-day holding period.

    17 June 2016

    Vitalik Buterin proposes a soft fork to blacklist attacker addresses; ETH price drops sharply from ~$20 to ~$13.

    16 July 2016

    Community vote on the hard fork: approximately 87% of participating ETH supports the fork, representing only 5.5% of total supply.

    20 July 2016

    Ethereum hard fork executed, moving drained funds to a recovery contract. Ethereum Classic (ETC) emerges as the continuation of the original unforked chain.

    September 2016

    DAO tokens delisted from major exchanges including Poloniex and Kraken; The DAO considered defunct.

    25 July 2017

    U.S. SEC issues investigative report concluding DAO tokens were unregistered securities; no charges filed but landmark precedent established.

    22 February 2022

    Forbes journalist Laura Shin alleges former TenX CEO Toby Hoenisch carried out the 2016 hack, based on Chainalysis blockchain analysis. Hoenisch denies the claim.

    Provenance & Audit Trail
    Anchored on SolanaVerify on-chain13 Wayback Archivessrc:defillama

    Decision Log

    This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain (1 event). 13 of 19 cited source URLs have an Internet Archive snapshot.

    full audit log →version history →

    model: claude-sonnet-4-6

    generated: 5/4/2026, 2:55:01 AM

    last updated: 8/29/2026, 8:45:07 PM

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