Ethereum OGs revive The DAO with $220M security fund

Some key Ethereum members, including co-founder Vitalik Buterin, are reviving one of the network’s oldest chapters by redeploying more than 70,500 ether into a roughly $220 million Ethereum security initiative, Unchained reported on Jan. 29, 2026.

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

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

The ether being redeployed sat untouched since the 2016 DAO hack — long considered Ethereum’s defining existential crisis — and 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.” The report does not specify a timeline for grant awards or the full governance rules for The DAO Fund.

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