Overview
The DAO hack was a critical event in 2016 where a vulnerability in a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) on the Ethereum blockchain led to the theft of $50 million in Ether. This incident forced a controversial hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain, creating Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC), and profoundly impacted the development of smart contract security, decentralized finance (DeFi), and regulatory approaches to cryptocurrency.