Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | 0xAyA

On November 2, DAO solution providerAragonofficially announced its dissolution.

Aragon will provide 86,000 ETH to holders of its token ANT (Aragon Network Token) for exchange, at a rate of 0.0025376 ETH/ANT (about 4.55 USDT, which is close to the current market price), and the remaining funds will be used for product development.

Aragon, one of the earliest DAO projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, successfully held an ICO in May 2017, raising 275,000 ETH, making it the fourth largest ICO in history at the time. Aragon provides templates that allow users to launch their own DAO in minutes and further customize it using modular applications.

The Aragon Association, the manager of Aragon, stated that due to legal restrictions, especially regulatory risks arising from token speculation and market manipulation, the decision to dissolve could not be put to a public vote, but the opinions of the Aragon governance forum were considered. Nevertheless, the dissolution of Aragon had been foreshadowed.

Financial Opacity Sparks Controversy

Just last month, members of the Aragon DAO initiated a proposal demanding that the project update and disclose its financial situation of $160 million, or face legal action.

The tension between investors and the Aragon Association dates back to June 2022. At that time, Aragon investors voted to transfer control of the project's $160 million funds to the voting DAO by November 2022. However, these funds were never transferred, and the Aragon Association also stopped publishing transparency reports on financial expenditures. Aragon DAO members expressed frustration with the lack of transparency from the Aragon Association and demanded a response from the organization.

Aragon is not the first to come under fire for financial opacity—In January 2021, Aragon's parent company CEO Jorge Izquierdo announced his resignation and tweeted, "I have resigned as CEO of Aragon One, I am sorry for the problems the team has faced, and given that our proposals will not be executed, I don't think I can do better."

One week before Jorge's resignation, 12 people, including John Light, who was responsible for autonomous business, announced their departure from the team. John posted an open letter on GitHub, calling on the Aragon Association to publicly disclose financials and meeting records for external oversight. Additionally, he called for ANT holders to participate in community governance.

Revoking Token Voting Rights Raises Concerns

In May of this year, the Aragon Association stated that the Aragon DAO had been subjected to a 51% attack by a coordinated group called the "Risk-Free Value (RFV) attackers," related to the dissolution and liquidation of Rook DAO. This group included a large asset management company, Arca Capital Management. There is evidence to suggest that Arca's involvement was to gain economic benefits from Aragon, so the Aragon Association revoked the voting rights of ANT token holders to counter the "51% attack" initiated by investors such as Arca.

In response, Jeff Dorman, Chief Investment Officer of the cryptocurrency hedge fund Arca, stated in a blog post, "The narrative of a 51% attack is actually incorrect. We are token holders, and we want to use our tokens to participate in governance. Arca staking tokens drives active participation by token holders."

Furthermore, in response to the Aragon Association's claim that groups like Arca have disrupted many DAOs and their communities, Arca stated that they did not attempt to dissolve Aragon, and Arca did not invest in Invictus, Rook, Rome, or Temple. The Fei Labs team proposed the dissolution themselves, and the Rook team initially proposed the split of the "Incubator DAO," all of which were efforts by token holders to achieve the best outcome.

Regardless of the facts, the revocation of voting rights for ANT token holders by Aragon is an undeniable fact, and the relationship between the community and the team has become increasingly tense as a result.

Sell Out or Dissolve

According to a conversation screenshot between an employee of the investment firm Arca and other stakeholders, the Aragon Association considered selling itself to an undisclosed bidder at an unknown price in June.

A screenshot from June 12th shows that the proposed acquisition transaction was expected to take several weeks, and the transaction price would be higher than the book value. If the transaction was not successful, Aragon planned to re-evaluate the proposals from the stakeholders. The screenshot comes from a 24-page investigative report on the Aragon Association written by the cryptocurrency trading company Patagon Management LLC, which accused the Aragon Association of years of mistakes, including squandering $180 million worth of crypto assets, and questioned whether the organization complied with Swiss nonprofit laws.

The report did not detail the circumstances of any sale negotiations but indicated that stakeholders had explored various mechanisms for redeeming ANT.

However, Aragon ultimately chose to dissolve on the spot and use the treasury funds to redeem ANT tokens, bringing one of the earliest attempts at a DAO to an end.

For the current market, the narrative of DAO seems to have been long forgotten. And the ongoing debate has once again been raised: Do people need a true decentralized and community-governed "hero," or a highly centralized decision-making "villain"?

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。