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On June 17, 2016, Ethereum faced its first major smart contract disaster. A project called The DAO had raised about $150 million in ETH through one of the earliest crypto crowdfunding campaigns. But the contract contained a critical bug called a reentrancy vulnerability. An attacker repeatedly triggered the withdrawal function before balances were updated. This allowed them to drain roughly 3.6 million ETH, worth about $50 million at the time. The Ethereum community faced a difficult choice: • Accept the loss and keep the blockchain immutable • Or reverse the exploit with a hard fork In the end, Ethereum chose to fork the chain. That decision created two networks: • Ethereum (ETH) • Ethereum Classic (ETC) 🧠 Lesson: Smart contracts are powerful — but even a tiny bug can change blockchain history. 👉 Save this story. 👉 Follow CryptoNexus for real crypto education. #cryptonexus #ethereum #daohack #cryptohistory #smartcontracts #blockchain #web3