Nearly three years after a devastating hack that drained $7 million from the DAO Maker crypto fundraising platform, victims are still awaiting the compensation they were promised by the project's developers. The incident, which occurred in August 2021, has left investors feeling betrayed and demanding answers from the team behind the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

DAO Maker, a Prague-based platform designed to facilitate fundraising for Web3 protocols through token offerings, was exploited due to a private key compromise, as acknowledged by the development team at the time. In the wake of the hack, the project vowed to compensate affected investors, initially airdropping 500 USD Coin (USDC) to each victim and promising further reimbursement through an IOU token called "USDR."

According to the original compensation plan, outlined in now-deleted Medium posts, each USDR token was supposed to be redeemable for $1 plus a 10% interest in the form of DAO tokens, the platform's native cryptocurrency, within one year. However, multiple investors have come forward claiming that the promised USDR redemptions never materialized, leaving them with worthless tokens and unrealized losses.

One investor, identified as "Red Drac" on Telegram, recounted losing $2,000 in the hack. While they received the initial 500 USDT airdrop and 1,500 USDR tokens, the latter were never allowed to be redeemed as promised. Another victim, Zztelecom, shared a similar story, having received 500 USDR but finding the tokens trading at a steep discount of 20-40% on the secondary market, rendering the promised redemption valueless.

The situation took a more concerning turn when DeFi researcher SOMA Analytics alleged that DAO Maker actively covered up its failure to fulfill the compensation plan. According to the researcher, the project forced through a proposal using its large token supply to cancel the USDR redemption process, subsequently deleting the proposal to remove evidence of its actions.

SOMA Analytics claims that a mysterious user named "Dante.eth" proposed three options for handling the USDR redemption, none of which aligned with the original 1:1 redemption promise. The option to redeem USDR at only 50% of its par value allegedly passed, with a mere six wallet accounts casting over 61% of the votes in favor of the proposal.

The researcher asserts that these six wallets were created shortly before the vote and received substantial DAO token allocations, suggesting they belonged to the project's development team or individuals holding a large percentage of the token supply. Despite the vote, SOMA Analytics alleges that even the 50% redemption never materialized, leaving USDR holders with essentially worthless tokens.

DAO Maker's continued operation and the substantial market capitalization of its DAO token ($153 million, according to CoinMarketCap) have only added to the frustration of hack victims who feel they were misled and abandoned by the project. As the crypto community awaits a response from the DAO Maker team, this saga serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of transparent and ethical practices in decentralized finance.