Nearly a decade after one of crypto’s most defining crises, The DAO is returning to the spotlight, this time with a very different mission.
Griff Green, a longtime Ethereum developer and one of The DAO’s original founders, announced plans to repurpose unclaimed funds from the infamous 2016 DAO hack to create a new initiative focused on strengthening Ethereum’s security ecosystem. The project, called TheDAO Security Fund, aims to turn a painful chapter in Ethereum’s history into long-term support for safer infrastructure.
Unclaimed funds find a new purpose
Speaking in an interview with journalist Laura Shin, Green explained that a portion of the funds set aside to reimburse victims of the DAO hack were never claimed. These funds were originally intended to cover “edge case” losses that occurred after Ethereum’s emergency response to the exploit.
EXCLUSIVE 🚨
— Laura Shin (@laurashin) January 29, 2026
Nearly 10 years after the DAO hack, unclaimed ETH is being used to create a $250M Ethereum security fund.https://t.co/JTgHPOAblZ
According to Green, about 20% of those assets remained untouched. What was once roughly $6 million in ETH has grown significantly with Ethereum’s price appreciation and is now estimated to be worth around $200 million.
“Basically, there’s a lot of money sitting in random contracts that were supposed to be returned to people affected by the hack,” Green said.
With no clear claimants remaining, he and the Ethereum Foundation agreed the funds could serve a broader public good.
How the DAO Security Fund will work
The new fund will draw from two main sources: approximately 70,500 ETH held in an ExtraBalance Withdrawal contract and around 4,600 ETH worth of ether and DAO tokens from The DAO’s Curator Multisig. Both pools, according to a blog post released Thursday, lack identifiable owners who can reasonably claim them.
TheDAO Security Fund
Rather than distributing the ETH directly, the fund will stake the assets and use the generated yield to finance operations. This structure is designed to preserve the principal while providing ongoing support for Ethereum security efforts.
TheDAO Security Fund will operate in collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation and aligns with its broader “Trillion Dollar Security” initiative, which focuses on making Ethereum resilient enough to support global-scale economic activity.
Funding decisions and governance
Allocations from the new fund will rely on community-driven mechanisms rather than top-down decisions. Green said funding rounds will use tools such as quadratic funding, retroactive public goods funding, request-for-proposal processes, and ranked-choice voting. The Ethereum Foundation’s Grants Management team will define eligibility criteria for each round.
Giveth, a public goods funding platform co-founded by Green, will also play a role in helping allocate the security budget.
To guide the effort, the fund has appointed a group of well-known Ethereum security figures as curators. The list includes Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, MetaMask security lead Taylor Monahan, ZK expert Jordi Baylina, and SEAL 911 contributor pcaversaccio, among others.
A reminder of the DAO’s legacy
The DAO originally launched in 2016 as a decentralized venture capital fund and quickly raised about $150 million worth of ETH. Within weeks, a vulnerability in its smart contracts was exploited, leading to one of the most contentious moments in blockchain history.
To recover the stolen funds, the Ethereum community voted to hard fork the network. That decision resulted in two chains: today’s Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, which maintained the original chain under the principle that “code is law.”
Green noted that while the hack helped kickstart Ethereum’s smart contract security industry, many risks remain unresolved.
“There are so many phishing attacks and wallet drainings,” he said, adding that user-facing security has seen limited improvement over the past several years.
Turning a setback into progress
“The DAO is back,” Green acknowledged, noting that the phrase may still make some people uneasy. “But this time it shouldn’t be so scary.”
By redirecting unclaimed funds toward improving security, the initiative aims to address ongoing threats while honoring lessons learned from Ethereum’s earliest growing pains.
