Aragon community voting to transfer treasury funds after dissolving old DAO

Quick Take

  • The DAO dissolution means the Aragon community needs to decide on what to do with the treasury funds.
  • Aragon is dissolving the old DAO for a new one that allows for delegated voting.

The Aragon community is voting on what to do with the treasury funds held by AN DAO after it transitions from its old DAO structure to one that incorporates delegated voting as part of its architecture.

Aragon is a blockchain project that provides tools for users to create and manage DAOs on the Ethereum network. The project is made up both a non-profit organization called the Aragon Association and a decentralized autonomous organization called Aragon Network DAO or AN DAO.

This vote is one of two ongoing polls within the Aragon community. The second vote is to determine what happens to the charter of the Aragon Network DAO (AN DAO) when the new DAO emerges. Charter, in this case, refers to an agreement that was used to establish the AN DAO. With the transition to a delegated voting DAO, a new charter will be created for the new decentralized organization.

The move from AN DAO to the new structure will enable delegated voting. AN DAO was deployed on Aragon Govern, a smart contract system for creating DAOs. DAOs created with Aragon Govern do not support vote delegation, according to the Aragon forum post. Hence, the reason for the transition to a new DAO that supports vote delegation.

In this context, vote delegation is when holders of a project’s token that confers voting rights transfer those rights to other community members to vote on their behalf.

According to the Aragon governance proposal, this transition brings up issues concerning what to do with the AN DAO charter treasury. “The potential termination of the AN DAO Charter opens up significant risk regarding the balance of funds held in the AN DAO Treasury,” the proposal on the Aragon forum stated.

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Voters have to choose whether or not to transfer the AN DAO treasury balance to the Aragon treasury as soon as the new DAO structure emerges. This remaining balance on AN DAO amounts to $557,000 based on the project's financial report published in August. 

"The remaining balances are simply operational funds transferred by the Aragon Association to the AN DAO over time," Jessica Smith, head of communications at the Aragon project told The Block. Meanwhile, the Aragon treasury itself holds $166 million, half of which is in the form of the USDC stablecoin. The treasury also holds $46 million in ether and $25 million in wrapped bitcoin.

Data from the voting page show that 67% of participants are in the favor of the treasury transfer. The vote will end on Oct.5.

Update: This article has been updated to specify that the Aragon treasury and not the AN DAO treasury is worth $166 million, along with a comment from Aragon's head of communications.


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Osato is a news reporter at The Block as part of the crypto ecosystems team that focuses on DAO governance, staking, blockchain layers, and DeFi. He was previously a news reporter at Cointelegraph. Based in Lagos, Nigeria, he enjoys crosswords, poker, and attempting to beat his Scrabble high score. Follow him on Twitter at @OsatoNomayo.