As someone who took part in the initial Ether offering I was curious about the DAO hype and thankfully saw right through the bubble of naive idealism and saw the fact that slockit was behind it as being very dubious. I used the hype to sell some ether in the run to the DAO. The benefits while cool sounding were wishful thinking and the perception that DAO tokens were risk free yet built on a very risky first generation of an open language led to stupid amounts of money going into it, making it probably one of the best targets for a hack in a while.