Ethereum's $100 million 'Ghost Fund' resurrected: Originating from the 2016 DAO hack, will this rewrite the security landscape?

January 30 News, the “Ghost Funds” that have been silent for nearly a decade are returning to the spotlight. ETH that was unclaimed in the early Ethereum The DAO hacker incident has now been restructured into a brand-new cybersecurity dedicated fund, aimed at providing long-term protection and stable support for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ethereum developer and community member Griff Green recently disclosed that these assets, originally used to compensate victims but long stranded in smart contracts, will be incorporated into a plan called the “DAO Security Fund.” The funds will generate returns through staking and will be continuously reinvested into security audits, emergency response, and infrastructure protection, rather than being distributed in a one-time payout.

Looking back to 2016, The DAO, as a decentralized venture capital project, raised over $150 million worth of ETH but was attacked via a reentrancy vulnerability, resulting in the transfer of approximately 3.6 million ETH, which triggered a historic hard fork of Ethereum, leading to the creation of Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains. Although most of the funds were returned after the fork, a portion of ETH from complex cases remained unclaimed for a long time. At current prices, this balance is valued at nearly $200 million.

Green stated that approximately 70,500 ETH and related DAO tokens will form the core of the fund. The plan aligns with the Ethereum Foundation’s “Trillion-Dollar Security” goal and adopts a decentralized governance approach, including quadratic funding, retroactive public goods funding, and various DAO voting mechanisms. Oversight members include Vitalik Buterin, Taylor Monahan, Jordi Baylina, and representatives from the SEAL 911 team.

From the early vulnerability crises to now supporting core networks for DeFi, NFTs, and real-world asset tokenization, Ethereum’s security needs have undergone a fundamental transformation. The reutilization of DAO ghost funds symbolizes the ecosystem drawing strength from historical wounds to build a more robust defense for the future. This is not only a restart of funds but also a milestone in the evolution of blockchain security.