Ethereum's Censorship Resistance Fight Enters a New Era with Pectra Upgrade

The DAO hack of 2016 marked a significant turning point in Ethereum's history. On June 17, 2016, an attacker exploited a recursive call vulnerability in The DAO's smart contract code, siphoning off 3.6 million Ether worth $50 million at the time.

Members of the community debated the ethics of the attack because it didn't violate the rules as coded. Griff Green organized a volunteer group called The White Hat Group to recoup funds before more wallets were hacked. Eventually, most participants favored a hard fork to restore approximately all funds to the original contract.

This decision split the blockchain on July 20, 2016, at block 1,920,000. Ethereum reversed the hack to return funds to original owners, while Ethereum Classic maintained the original unaltered transaction history.