The Aragon Association, the governing entity of the aragonOS software, is set to dissolve, as declared in a blog post dated November 2. In the process of disbanding, the Association will distribute a significant portion of its assets to its tokenholders. The liquidation involves an allocation of 86,343 Ether (ETH), worth approximately $155 million based on the current exchange rate, from its treasury directly to those holding ANT tokens.
The distribution mechanism will be a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. Tokenholders will be eligible to redeem 0.0025376 ETH, equivalent to about $4.57 at current prices, for each ANT token they submit to the redemption smart contract. Once all redemptions have been processed, the Association has planned to destroy (burn) any ANT tokens within the contract and will then cease to exist. The blog post specified that following this event, the ANT tokens will lose their functionality.
Furthermore, $11 million of the Association’s funds are earmarked for transfer to the Aragon Shield Foundation. This action is to ensure that any outstanding obligations are fulfilled and to provide a buffer against potential regulatory risks. Following the dissolution, the team intends to reform as a conventional “company” and maintain its commitment to evolving the Aragon product suite. Additionally, the establishment of a “Product Council” is anticipated, which will be tasked with steering product development decisions.
Aragon is known for developing aragonOS and the Aragon App, tools that facilitate the creation and management of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) without the need for intricate coding.
The decision to unwind the Aragon Association was propelled by a series of internal challenges. These included the complexity of its bureaucratic structure, misalignment among stakeholders, and unsuccessful attempts at governance reform which led to heightened internal tensions. The Association had considered an emergency measure to place the treasury under direct control of ANT holders. However, the disparity between the treasury’s value and the token’s market capitalization made this move impracticable. Consequently, the decision was made to redistribute the treasury assets to tokenholders and dissolve the entity.
This resolution follows an event in May where a faction known as the “Risk Free Value (RFV) Raiders” sought to commandeer the Aragon treasury by acquiring a majority of ANT tokens and leveraging them to override the Association’s decisions. The Association labeled this maneuver a “51% attack” and subsequently abandoned its initiative to decentralize governance to ANT holders. On August 9, despite these challenges, the team launched a Base network variant of their DAO-creation tools.
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