Reentrancy (3 of 7)

The most prominent early project on Ethereum, emerging within months of genesis, was the DAO -- a project to form a decentralized autonomous organization, in which members pay in ether in order to vote (and invest) in various project proposals that the DAO would support. Members could also withdraw their funds or "split" from the DAO under certain timing constraints. Its popularity exploded. Illustrated in this original are many incoming transactions into the DAO, much of it from exchanges, and in May 2016 it rapidly exceeded $100,000,000 in equivalent ETH. A famous bug was found in the DAO code, one that was also found in other token projects. This bug was a reentrancy bug -- an attacker could recursively withdraw ether before the DAO contract updated its balance sheet. So with enough gas for a transaction (and DAO tokens), an attacker could do this reentrancy many times, withdrawing thousands of ether in a single transaction. In June 2016, an attacker did just this, and drained about a third of the DAO's ether. This reentrancy is shown in the dark "petal" of this graph -- and the first attacker became known as the "Dark DAO" contract. A team associated with the DAO worked together to withdraw the remaining ether, shown in the white petal, and now known as the "White Hat DAO". These actions did not resolve issues with the DAO, which contained well over 10% of all ether. It eventually summoned drastic action, illustrated in the next original of Series 2.

Nodes and edges are taken directly from a subset of on-chain data, thousands of these transactions with the DAO, shown at the center right. Edges are rendered with a unique flower-graph approach, encircling the DAO with its most common transacting wallets, which are positioned on a circumference. The DAO not only had a massive economic impact on Ethereum, it also figured centrally in many of its philosophical ingredients: decentralized organizations, token sales and applications, open communities, and ultimately the immutable nature of a blockchain itself.

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Ethstory, Original 3 in Series 2: "0xBB9bc (Branching)"

It is in Ethereum's nature to expand and diversify, to branch and bring into existence new varieties, new experiences. This second series "0xBB9bc (Branching)" is brighter than the first, signaling a kind of "turning on the light," actualizing and perceiving these rapidly branching projects. All 4 originals were generated using thousands of pieces of data drawn from primary sources, including Ethereum documentation and on-chain activity.