Tens of millions of dollars in DAO funds remain unclaimed one month after Ethereum fork

Rage Comment : It has been a month since Ethereum implemented a hard fork. On that day, users withdrew funds at an astonishing rate, but the withdrawal rate has continued to decline since then and is now almost static. Experts have analyzed that there are still tens of millions of dollars of Ethereum in these unclaimed accounts. Although the anonymity of Ethereum transactions makes it difficult to determine the cause, analysts have proposed several possible reasons by collecting data. Among them, users' panic about the FBI's involvement and unfamiliarity with the withdrawal process are considered to be the main reasons.

Translation: Annie_Xu

A month ago, Ethereum executed a hard fork, transferring 11.6 million ether to new accounts and only making them available for withdrawal.

At that time, the total amount of digital currency waiting to be claimed by investors was US$145 million; and within a few hours after the hard fork, nearly half of the funds were claimed.

However, now the withdrawal speed has dropped to almost zero.

The balance of withdrawal accounts fell from 2.39 million ether to 2.29 million ether (ETH) last week. At this rate, there are still $25.9 million in ether that has not been claimed.

The following chart shows the remaining ETH in The DAO over the past 30 days (in millions of ETH):

Who are the owners of these ethers and why are they willing to leave their money there?

Although Ethereum’s anonymity makes it impossible for us to know, there are still multiple analysts collecting data to find out the reasons.

The latest published data shows that 31% of accounts that can withdraw Ethereum have withdrawn funds.

Matthew Tan, founder of ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan, who has been tracking the number of accounts since The DAO launched in May, said he thought the amount of unclaimed ether was unlikely to change.

“People who know how and want to withdraw their money have already done so.”

Breaking down the numbers

Tan’s Etherscan account shows that all accounts associated with The DAO have been cleared, including the hacker’s Dark DAO account and the White Hat attack account.

The new DAO investor smart contract was supposed to allow customers to withdraw their funds, but the account balances were not reset to zero.

Within hours of The DAO withdrawal account being created, 41% of the funds were not withdrawn; within two days, this number increased to 60%; and now it has reached 80%; however, the withdrawal rate has dropped to 0.4% per day.

Researchers have now launched an investigation into this.

For example, after The DAO was launched in May, data analyst Thomas Rush has been using the EthSlurp tool to extract relevant transaction data and analyze the data with other researchers. Rush also wrote scripts to analyze The DAO's withdrawal data.

According to Rush’s findings last Tuesday, 13,701 accounts still have balances, but most of them are concentrated in the hands of 25% of large account holders. Based on this calculation, these accounts account for 27.09% of all The DAO’s ether.

But he stressed that this was only an approximation.

The following figure shows a DAO withdrawal account with a balance

Bokky Poobah, a data analyst at New Zealand's Bok Consulting, also collated and summarized the data, but his conclusion was different. He believed that there were still 22,000 accounts waiting to be withdrawn.

On August 18, Poobah said that 8,632 accounts had balances of less than 1 ether, while five other accounts had $10.1 million in ether.

Thomas said:

"I think this number is close, but maybe not completely accurate."

"At least? Let us know what happened."

Ignorance, crime and fear

Analysts have identified three main reasons why the accounts still have balances: ignorance, crime and fear.

Tan said the withdrawal process is perhaps the biggest barrier preventing many people from accessing their funds.

According to an Etherscan survey, Tan said many people are still unclear about the processes they need to follow and how to interact with “multi-level contracts.”

But Ken Zatyko, a cybercrime investigator and founder of the Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory at the Defense Cyber ​​Crime Center, said illegal activity may be the reason the account has a balance.

Zatyko, a Deloitte executive and founder of blockchain security firm Buffalo Blockchain, said The DAO attackers have left many token holders worried that they will be investigated in the same way that Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road, a black market, was investigated.

“If the account holder used gambling sites associated with Ethereum, or made profits using crowdfunded Ethereum, they may want to wait until they are sure the FBI will not become involved.”

Rush agrees that people’s fear may be the biggest barrier to withdrawing their money.

He also mentioned that unexpected replay attacks continued to occur last month, and transactions were recorded on two Ethereum blockchains, which was a negative impact that Ethereum users did not expect.

Regardless of why withdrawal rates have been so slow, one thing is certain: since there is no backdoor into these accounts, either the ether is stored there forever or there is a way to recover the funds.