Since launching the first DAO framework in 2017, Aragon has been at the forefront of advancing onchain governance. Our journey over the past seven years has provided valuable insights, leading to the development of our next-generation tech stack: Aragon OSx and Aragon App.
Consolidating our product portfolio is essential to maintaining our focus and momentum. By concentrating our efforts on the most impactful governance technology – Aragon’s DAO framework – we can continue to innovate in onchain governance and drive adoption. This is why we are making some changes to our legacy product support.
We are sunsetting front-end support for Aragon Court, Govern, and Voice on December 1, 2024.
Users with ANT activated in Aragon Court can withdraw their ANT, and users with ANJ activated in the first version of Aragon Court can withdraw their ANJ and convert it to ANT. All token holders can redeem ANT for ETH until November 2, 2024 in the Aragon Association’s ANT Redemption Initiative. The front ends of Aragon Court will only be deprecated after the redemption initiative has concluded.
Why We’re Sunsetting These Products
In 2021, Aragon introduced Aragon Court, Govern, and Voice. This product line aimed to address high gas costs and voter apathy through a more efficient, but disputable, governance process:
- Aragon Voice: Functioned as the legislative branch, where token holders could propose and signal offchain votes for free.
- Aragon Govern: Operated as the executive branch, responsible for enacting the community’s will with onchain transactions.
- Aragon Court: Served as the judicial branch, resolving disputes that arose when Govern’s transactions contradicted Voice’s signaling.
While these products introduced novel concepts and captured headspace, they were too prescriptive and complex for broad adoption compared to the success of the aragonOS protocol and Aragon Client application. After doubling down on evolving the aragonOS line, Aragon’s flagship DAO framework, and receiving positive market feedback on this direction, the time is right to fully shift our focus to modular solutions that offer the flexibility needed in an increasingly complex onchain landscape.
Aragon Client will be supported until active DAOs are safely migrated to the new Aragon stack.
Aragon Client is the user interface for aragonOS, the industry’s first DAO framework. Thousands of DAOs, including industry leaders like Lido, Curve, and Decentraland, have been built on this framework. However, adapting and evolving these DAOs has been challenging due to the rigidity and lack of updates of the original frameworks.
We have addressed some of the biggest pain points and re-architected Aragon’s DAO framework with Aragon OSx from the ground up, making it easier for DAOs to design their own custom governance and safely evolve over time. We are committed to supporting aragonOS and Aragon Client users throughout this transition. Our team is ready to assist with migration solutions, ensuring a smooth and secure move to the new stack.
If your DAO relies on the Aragon Client front-end, contact us to explore migration solutions. We’re not leaving anyone behind.
Our team continues to focus on Aragon’s next-generation DAO framework: Aragon OSx. After just over a year, thousands of new DAOs have been launched on it, including the Polygon Governance Hub, various Morpho vault guardian DAOs, and a handful of other exciting custom development projects that have yet to be announced!
Our modularity-focused roadmap will start with a focus on:
- Staged Multibody Governance: One-size-fits-all solutions don’t work for onchain governance. Different organizations have different stakeholder groups with different needs and won’t be successful with a monolithic tech stack. For example, instead of a complex jurisdiction-based dispute resolution system like we had with Court, we’re developing modular building blocks across the stack that introduce multiple stages with their own governing bodies. This will allow projects to create custom governance models out-of-the-box that suit their needs, including but not limited to optimistic governance.
- Optimistic Governance: Optimistic governance remains an ideal solution to allow teams to operate quickly, overcome voter apathy, and yet still offer the checks and balances offered by more participatory forms of governance. Our staged governance model allows any governance process to become optimistic, allowing the DAO to specify any stakeholder group, such as token holders, as vetoers of a proposal.
- Frictionless onchain voting: We believe that free and frictionless onchain voting is table stakes. By leveraging censorship-resistant messaging bridges and storage proofs, we are working towards making seamless onchain voting a reality where DAO members can vote with any token, on any chain, for free, using a seamless UI.
Aragon’s greatest contribution is its DAO framework, one of two leading onchain governance frameworks in the industry. By continuing to evolve it into increasingly flexible and modular primitives, we are unlocking solutions to persistent governance challenges, paving the way for the next generation of onchain governance.
- Legacy Users: If you are using any of Aragon’s legacy products, including aragonOS and Aragon Client, please reach out to explore a migration solution. We are offering discounted migration solutions for Aragon Client DAOs.
- ANT and ANJ Holders: If you were an Aragon Court user, we urge you to withdraw your ANJ tokens as soon as possible and convert them to ANT. ANT holders should then redeem them for ETH. You have until November 2, 2024. The front-end will be supported for users to withdraw ANT or ANJ from Aragon Court until the redemption period. If you have any questions, please reach out to: ant@aragon.org.
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