Narrow Escape ⚠️
10 years ago, Ethereum faced its darkest moment, and survived! And now against all odds, TheDAO has managed to return with the reclaimed funds a decade later, enabling the community to play a role in strengthening Ethereum's security. They are an icon of how far the ecosystem has come, in the face of adversity.
bit_ter
Based in Singapore, bit_ter has been building worlds in his head for as long as he can remember. His biggest project, titled Unbreakable Hue, is a comic about guiding voices that live inside people's minds called Daemons. Those who ignore them become monsters that cause public havoc. But learn to befriend them and you'll gain powers instead. It took home the Grand Prize at the CLIP Paint Studio x Pixiv Global Comics Award and has been exhibited at NFTNYC 2024 and 2025. He found Web3 during early 2020 in an unexpected way, someone he met through a dating app! Coming from a point where he was ready to quit making comics, the space has given him a reason to keep creating. bit_ter's story illustrates that the NFT space can provide hope and opportunity to countless illustrators, and we're very proud to collaborate together for this edition!
Skills
TheDAO Security Fund
TheDAO was one of Ethereum's earliest and most ambitious experiments in decentralized coordination, and ended up as a one of the most landmark events in all crypto history. In 2016, after attracting 12% of the ETH supply into it's code, a vulnerability in TheDAO's smart contracts led to millions of dollars worth of ETH being exploited, triggering a crisis that ultimately resulted in Ethereum's emergency hard fork, and the conception of Ethereum Classic. The event became a defining moment in onchain history, shaping how the ecosystem thinks about governance, security, and protocol responsibility to this day. Now, nearly a decade later, TheDAO has returned in a completely different form. In early 2026, over 75,000 ETH in long-idle, unclaimed funds from the original TheDAO were activated. Not to cash out, but to create a long-term security endowment for Ethereum. Overseen by long-time Ethereum contributors including Vitalik Buterin, Griff Green, and Taylor Monahan, the fund lets the community divert funds towards those protecting Ethereum and it's apps. What was once remembered as a cautionary tale has now become infrastructure designed to protect Ethereum for the long term!