Some media reported on November 3rd that the DAO management platform Aragon and Aragon DAO had been dissolved. However, according to BlockBeats, it was discovered that in reality, Aragon had only made major updates, and it was the Aragon Association committee responsible for managing the funds raised in the network token sale that was dissolved. Aragon will continue to focus on product development in the future.
Aragon is transitioning away from “human governance”
The Aragon Association committee can be considered as the legal steward of the Aragon project, responsible for managing the funds raised in the Aragon network token sale. According to the official website, Aragon’s founders, Luis Cuende and Jorge Izquierdo, serve as co-founders and executive directors of the Aragon Association committee.
Aragon is a decentralized governance solution for the Web3 community and organizations. It was founded by Luis Cuende and Jorge Izquierdo in 2016 with the aim of enabling organizations, entrepreneurs, and investors to conduct business without legal relationships. The open-source stack developed by Aragon supports the deployment of DAOs, community management, dispute resolution, and enterprise-level voting, all without intermediaries, with the goal of creating better online, borderless, and transparent organizations.
Aragon has made significant contributions to the development of the DAO industry and can be considered the largest DAO platform in history. For example, it developed aragonOS, a DAO framework that tests governance at software speeds. Today, aragonOS supports Ethereum-based DAOs such as Lido and Curve, helping these projects manage over $16 billion in assets. The Aragon App developed by Aragon is a user interface that allows anyone to deploy and manage DAOs without the need for coding.
As for the reasons for the major updates, Aragon explained in an official announcement that the Aragon Association committee had continually disappointed all DAO members, its community, and regulators over the past year. The committee had engaged in actions that directly violated its responsibilities over the past six months.
The biggest controversy revolves around where the remaining funds should go. Aragon stated in its official announcement that the remaining funds would be used for product development. At the same time, the Aragon Association has deployed 86,343 ETH to a redemption contract on the Ethereum mainnet, allowing ANT holders to convert their ANT to ETH at a fixed exchange rate of 0.0025376 ETH/ANT.
Crypto researcher DCF GOD strongly disagreed with Aragon’s decision, pointing out that the team would take 100% of the unclaimed funds for themselves. DCF GOD listed several possible solutions for Aragon, including allocating new tokens to the dead supply, allowing all treasury assets to be permanently claimed, burning the dead supply to increase the claim value for everyone, or distributing the dead supply among those who claim it again.
Despite the idea behind DAOs aiming to have organizations fully controlled by code, in reality, many DAOs still involve excessive human participation and decision-making. This excessive human involvement is the root cause of the trust crisis DAOs face.
While the concept of DAOs is to automate certain governance processes and make them self-executing without human intervention, in the Ethereum whitepaper, a true DAO should be a decentralized autonomous organization that does not rely on human coordination. Even Bitcoin, which comes closest to the definition of a DAO, only partially achieves this concept. Strictly speaking, although many organizations claim to be DAOs, they have not yet achieved true autonomy and self-governance. DAOs need to be decentralized and “dehumanized”.
Meanwhile, after so many years, DAOs are still contemplating this issue: should major decisions in blockchain projects be made by a few individuals or should they follow the path of community governance and smart contract execution?
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Blockchain, Smart Contracts, and DAOs are fueling an online “infinite game”.
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