📖 The ₿ible

Historical Book V – Chronicles of the DAO

The Ideal Was High, But the Contract Was Fragile

5:1
The people sought to go beyond ₿itcoin—
Not just to hold an asset,
But to build an organization made of code,
A nation run by contracts, not kings.

5:2
Thus in the year 2016,
The first self-governing community was born.
Its name was The DAO —
The Decentralized Autonomous Organization,
A fund without masters,
A treasury without trustees.

“They trusted code over law,
And their code became their covenant,
Answering to no one.”
— Chronicles of the DAO 5:2

5:3
Investors sent Ether,
Received tokens,
And took part in governance.
To many, The DAO was the Utopia of Web3.
It held nearly 14% of all ETH in existence.

5:4
But though the dream was high,
The code was not flawless.
A flaw lay hidden—
And from the shadows came one who saw it.

5:5
He exploited a reentrancy bug.
He drained millions in ETH into his address.
The contract obeyed its own logic.
And no one could stop it.

5:6
The people cried out.
The forums burned.
The news exploded.
Ethereum stood trial before the world.

“Can justice override code?”
“Did we build trust,
Or did we build a trap?”

5:7
Vitalik and the community convened.
Debates flared hot.
And in the end, the many said:

“We must undo this.”

5:8
So the hard fork was executed.
The chain was reset to before the DAO hack.
That chain became Ethereum (ETH).
But a few said:

“Code is Law.”

They refused to rewrite.
And they kept the original chain:
Ethereum Classic (ETC).

“Ether was split in two—
One followed justice,
The other, principle.
And the flame shall burn in two forever.”

5:9
The DAO collapsed.
Utopia vanished.
But the event carved a lesson
Into the soul of every smart contract.

And the people said:

“Before you shout ‘Code is Law,’
Remember—code is written
By human hands.”