Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are generally entities that operate based on smart contracts. This is another option of the blockchain implementation. Financial transactions and rules have a code in a blockchain. This eliminates the need for central management. A particular DAO was created as a project in 2016. The name is DAO, or Genesis DAO.

History of Decentralized Autonomous Organization

The Slock IT team developed the DAO programming framework. It was possible to purchase DAO tokens during the creation period by sending ETH to a unique address. The ratio was set at 100 DAO per 1 ETH. It was an unexpected success, and 12.7 million ethers were collected (by then, at the rate of about $150 million). With the price of Etherea rising to $20, the coins selected were worth over $250 million back then.

Hack

The platform enabled the financing of exciting projects using Decentralized Autonomous Organization tokens. The owners had voting rights and a share in the profit. The idea was good, and it still is. Unfortunately, on June 17, 2016, there was a hack. During the first few hours of the attack, 3.7 million ETHs were stolen. It was about $50 to $70 million at the time. The developers of the project made several fatal mistakes. Due to the size of the project, they negatively affected Ethereum itself, on which the DAO stood.

Fork

The developers, the community, and the Etherea team quickly took control. They started to work on a solution. The hacker could not complete the attack because the funds were in an account covered by a 28-day holding period. An Ether hard drive has occurred to return resources to the pre-hack state.

However, part of the Etherea community did not agree with such a procedure. Mainly because it violated the blockchain’s principle of decentralization and immutability. Therefore, the network split. A fork of Ethereum Classic (ETC) was created.

End of the project

In September 2016, the Decentralized Autonomous Organization Poloniex tokens were delisted. In December, Kraken joined. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subsequently dealt a final blow. It may have seemed like a “grace” blow in the context of previous events. It stated:

“The tokens were offered and sold by a “virtual” organization known as the “DAO”. Therefore, they are subject to federal securities laws. The report confirms that issuers of distributed securities based on a distributed ledger or blockchain must register these securities’ offers and sales. This unless a valid exemption applies. Participants in unregistered offers may also be liable for breaches of securities laws”.

This is the end of the DAO project, but the consequences remain.

Consequences of the first Decentralized Autonomous Organization

Many have criticized the fork Vitalik Buterin and other Etherea developers. Although they have chosen a procedure that has eliminated much of the future problem. Many eth coins came under the control of a hackerOtherwise, it could cause chronic problems with this cryptocurrency. The hard fork has also saved the resources of a large number of investors.

However, it has been shown that in some cases, someone can and even must intervene in the blockchain directly. It somewhat undermines principles such as decentralization and immutability.

DAO has shown that it is not a very good idea to give something the same. At least as as a whole superset of similar projects. It provides a valuable lesson. Platform security is a critical prerequisite for crypto world survival. We already know that the poor security of one project can jeopardize the platform itself.

As for the US SEC, current projects are trying to find ways to avoid being classified as “security”. Such as using a particular utility value that prevents the Howey test from passing. Like the usefulness of tokens in a blockchain platform.

Conclusion

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations was a transparent and flexible decentralized venture capital fund. About a month after its inception, however, the hacker found a bug in the code. It stole about a third of the total amount of ETH that the fund withdrew from investors.

As a result, ETH dropped from about $20 to $12. Then, the network broke. It divided the platform into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). In the second most vital cryptocurrency history, this is a very significant scar that the platform has suffered. At the same time, it is another critical point in the history of cryptocurrencies.