Aragon, the platform for building and running decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), has implemented a number of safeguards to protect its treasury in response to a coordinated attack focused on draining value from the project.
In the wake of the attack and in order to mitigate against the risk of further action, Aragon Association has “adjusted its plan to transfer additional funds to Aragon DAO.”
Funds currently held by the DAO, “valuing 300,000 USDC, will remain onchain.”
Aragon Association will continue “moving funds if deemed safe to do so and can halt any planned transfers at its sole discretion if deemed unsafe.”
Moving forward, the entire treasury “will be decentralized, but under safer conditions via balanced economic incentives and mission alignment.”
Aragon was “founded with the mandate to build decentralized governance infrastructure to underpin a new type of social structure and organization.”
Since then, the project has “developed and delivered on its roadmap, bringing to market tools and technologies designed to empower users to set up their own DAOs.”
Most recently, the project “launched a new tech stack, comprising of aragonOSx and the Aragon App, which enables people to quickly and easily deploy DAOs using either a few lines of code with the SDK or via the no-code app.”
Since launching in 2016, more than 5,000 DAOs have “been built and more than USD $12 billion TVL is secured in Aragon smart contracts.”
Joan Arús, Executive Director, Aragon, said:
“Progressive decentralisation is an ongoing process and the recent decision to adjust the transfer of funds from the Aragon Association to the Aragon DAO was an essential action taken to protect the future of Aragon and its community. Having foreseen the risk of a 51% attack and by taking the necessary steps to safeguard against it, we have secured Aragon’s future and ensured that the project continues to deliver impactful technology that people use to effect social change.”
As noted in the update:
“The road to achieving sustainable, decentralized, automated governance is not without its obstacles but we remain committed to moving the treasury into the hands of Aragon Network Token (ANT) holders when it is safe to do so, for the purpose of advancing the project’s mission. However, attacks like this one are an existential threat to all DAOs and serve to illustrate that projects must not rush towards the ideal of decentralisation at the expense of security.”
Community members who wish “to submit proposals relating to the governance of the Aragon DAO are welcomed to do so by sharing them on the Aragon forum.
As noted in the update, Aragon “builds flexible and secure tools that enable anyone to launch and manage Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).”
In 2017, Aragon created “the first DAO framework, which has since evolved to power the creation of over 5000 DAOs and secure the governance of over 12B in value for leading projects like Lido, Decentraland, API3, and NFTX.”
Aragon recently “deployed the new modular Aragon OSx protocol and no-code Aragon App on Ethereum and Polygon.”
Driven by the mission to enable everyone to experiment with governance at the speed of software, Aragon aims “to build a hyperstructure for governance.”
The Aragon Project is “safeguarded by the Aragon Association and is in the process of progressively decentralizing its governance to Aragon Network Token (ANT) Holders.”