Ethereum OGs revive the DAO with $220 million security fund, Unchained reports

Some key Ethereum members, including co-founder Vitalik Buterin, are reviving one of the network’s oldest and most symbolic chapters: The DAO.

More than 70,500 ether $ETH$2,961.90 that have sat untouched since the 2016 DAO hack — long considered Ethereum’s defining existential crisis — will be redeployed into a roughly $220 million Ethereum security initiative, Unchained reported.

According to the report, $13.5 million will be allocated to security grants distributed through DAO-style mechanisms including quadratic funding, retroactive public goods funding, ranked-choice RFPs and other governance processes under a new entity, The DAO Fund.

The remaining 69,420 $ETH will be staked to generate an endowment for Ethereum security efforts. The investment is expected to yield roughly $8 million annually at current rates.

The move marks a symbolic and practical return to DAO-based coordination nearly a decade after the original experiment fractured the community and led to Ethereum’s historic hard fork.

“TheDAO is back,” the project wrote on X. “A decade later, we’re opening a new chapter”