(The
Decentralized
Autonomous
Organization) A venture capital fund based on smart contracts on Ethereum. Launched in 2016, an attack on The DAO caused a third of the ether (ETH) to be put into an account and held for 28 days. To recover the funds, Ethereum was split into two blockchains. The DAO was disbanded the same year it debuted. See
Ethereum and
DAO.