The DAO was the first major decentralized investment fund. The hack led to a contentious hard fork of Ethereum — the main chain reversed the theft (creating modern ETH), while a minority kept the original history (Ethereum Classic). The fork established a critical precedent: 'code is law' has limits when enough value and social consensus align.
attack·June 17, 2016
The DAO Hack
An attacker exploits a reentrancy bug in The DAO, draining 3.6M ETH ($50M at the time).