TheDAO Security Fund

TheDAO Security Fund uses the staking rewards from roughly 69,000 ETH left over from TheDAO in 2016 to pay for shared Ethereum security work: compilers, wallets, signing flows, formal verification, incident response and core protocol and L2 security. Seven curators, including Vitalik Buterin and Griff Green, set budgets and sign payouts, and ETHSecurity Badge holders, a group of security experts, steer where money goes.

Round Two works as a co-funding board run by Giveth. You propose an initiative as an RFP (teams compete once it is funded) or as a grant (a named team with a head start). Approved initiatives are listed publicly, ecosystem backers pledge or donate to each initiative's own Safe, and in mid-November Badge holders allocate the fund's remaining budget to fill gaps. Unfunded initiatives end when the round closes at the end of January 2027.

The fund does not make one-off grants and will not pay for your own audits. Every initiative must put at least a third of its budget on adoption milestones that show outside parties use the result, and the fund expects roughly 25% or more of each goal to come from other stakeholders.