The most famous attack on any blockchain project. The DAO hack was a re-entrancy attack on one of the earliest Decentralised Autonomous Organisations.
Problems and Purpose
Background History and Context
The DAO was probably the earliest DeFi project and its spectacular failure likely delayed the development of DeFi. The DAO pursued an automated investing strategy and had a decentralised system of governance.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Methods and Tools Used
The DAO's smart contracts were vulnerable to a re-entrancy attack and this vulnerability was used to drain $60 million worth of ETH from the fund. This was about 40% of the total funds they had raised.
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The magnitude of the hack made it a crisis for Ethereum and resulted in a hard fork of the Ethereum chain, to recover the lost funds. This was controversial within the Ethereum community and those who were opposed to the fork maintained Ethereum Classic as the continuation of the original Ethereum chain.