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Deadline Looms on Ethereum Classic DAO Withdrawals

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:55 PM
Paul Roy
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:55 PM

Holders of Ethereum Classic DAO tokens must withdraw by April 15th. Otherwise, their value will vanish.

There are still 1,609,982 ETC remaining to be withdrawn from the public “Robin Hood” Ethereum Classic (ETC) contract. After April 15th, this weekend, investors will no longer be entitled to withdraw 0.73 ETC for every 100 DAO tokens held since block 1,919,999.

If you are an early investor in the DAO, you could lose out if you don’t take action now.

The DAO Hack

The DAO was an open source “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” by the Jentzsch brothers – a duo involved in the German start-up Slock.it. The aim of the smart contract was to act as a decentralized investment fund and to provide a decentralized business model for traditional venture capital firms.

Despite their initially successful ICO in May 2016, which set the record for the largest crowdfunding campaign ever, the project ended in catastrophe.

In June last year, hackers gained access to 3.6 million ETH. At the time, the stolen Ether amounted to over US$50 million, making it one of the largest cryptocurrency heists of all time. The same amount is now worth a staggering US$157,312,800 at today’s prices.

The hack caused chaos among the Ethereum community, and eth’s price crashed soon after.

In the end, only a few lines of code by the Jentzsch brothers were found to blame, causing extreme embarrassment for the new cryptocurrency while raising questions regarding future Ethereum-based projects.

Ethereum’s Fork In The Road

In response to the attack, the majority of Ethereum holders voted for a hardfork in July last year. The hard fork was a manual intervention to restore virtually all funds to the original contract, which could then be withdrawn.

Although the purpose of the blockchain fork was to replace the existing token with its forked successor, some vocal critics of the move rejected the fork on philosophical grounds . They argued Ethereum Classic remains the “original” Ether currency.

Everybody who held Ether before the fork held an equal balance of each currency. Both Ether and Ethereum Classic are still actively traded today.

What is the DAO ETC Refund?

Not all of the ETC were drained by the DAO hackers. A group, known as the White Hat Group, were quick to drain 7 million ETC and voluntarily offered to refund their share of the drained ETC to the original investors.

The DAO to ETC smart contract is an Ethereum contract that facilitates the withdrawal. A similar contract exists on the Ether chain for DAO to ETH refunds.

So far, 6.7 million ETC has been withdrawn from the contract, which comprises roughly 80% of the total balance . But, only five days remains for original token holders to withdraw their remaining balance as the DAO to Ethereum Classic refund contract is set to self-destruct on April 15, 2017. The DAO To ETH refund contract does not have an expiry date.

The latest DAO refund information can be found here.

Featured image from Shutterstock.