Nearly a decade after one of crypto’s most infamous hacks, a huge stash of unclaimed Ethereum is no longer just gathering dust.
According to longtime Ethereum advocate Griff Green, those stranded tokens from The DAO hack are set to be repurposed into a new security-focused fund designed to make the network stronger and safer.
Speaking on Thursday during an interview with Laura Shin on the Unchained podcast, Green said there’s still a surprising amount of money locked up in contracts that were meant to compensate victims of the 2016 exploit—but never quite made it back to them.
The 2016 Hack That Changed Ethereum Forever
The DAO, short for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, was once one of Ethereum’s boldest early experiments.
That promise came crashing down in June 2016, when an anonymous attacker exploited a flaw in its code and drained more than $50 million worth of Ether at the time.
The fallout was historic. Ethereum’s community made the controversial decision to hard fork the blockchain to recover the stolen funds.
That move didn’t sit well with everyone, and it ultimately split the network into two chains we still know today: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
Why Some Funds Were Never Claimed
While the hard fork returned most of The DAO’s Ether to token holders, the process wasn’t exactly user-friendly.
Green explained that some tricky “edge cases” were handled separately through a multisignature wallet he helped manage.
That pool initially held about $6 million.
Over the years, more than 80% of that Ether was claimed.
But the rest? It stayed put. Thanks to Ethereum’s rise in value, that leftover balance is now worth roughly $200 million—far too much to ignore.
Turning Idle ETH Into Active Protection
Instead of letting the remaining funds sit indefinitely, Green says the plan is to put them to work.
The idea is to stake the Ether and use the yield to fund projects that directly improve Ethereum’s security.
In his view, it’s a fitting evolution. The DAO, after all, played a huge role in pushing Ethereum to take security seriously in the first place.
Before the hack, smart contract audits were rare. Afterward, they became an industry standard.
Making Ethereum Feel Safer Than a Bank
Green’s vision goes beyond small fixes.
His goal is ambitious: to reach a point where people feel more confident storing assets on Ethereum than in a traditional bank.
To get there, the fund won’t just hand out grants in the usual way.
Instead, it will experiment with governance and distribution models that stay true to The DAO’s original spirit.
That includes retroactive funding, quadratic funding, conviction voting, and ranked-choice voting—all aimed at backing the most impactful security work across the ecosystem.
A Full-Circle Moment for The DAO
In Green’s telling, there’s something poetic about how this story is unfolding.
The DAO helped expose Ethereum’s early weaknesses, and now, years later, it may help finance the solutions.
With a deep bench of developers and researchers already involved, the focus will be on figuring out not just what to fund, but how to fund it in a way that strengthens the entire network.
For a project once defined by a catastrophic failure, The DAO’s leftover Ether could end up playing a key role in Ethereum’s future resilience.
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