Aragon is one of the most promising open source projects in the crypto world. This project is aimed at developing a blockchain infrastructure that allows to create DAOs or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. If you want to learn more about this project, in this article we tell you all about how it works.
The Aragon project is a development framework oriented to allow its users to easily and quickly build projects that require DAO structures. For this purpose, the project has its own token called Aragon Network Token or ANT. Below we will see everything related to this cryptocurrency and how it works.
History of Aragon
Aragon has its origins in 2016 when developers Luis Cuende and Jorge Izquierdo decide to create a blockchain project that helps users to develop and manage DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) through blockchain technology. To do so, both developers share the same goal of facilitating the creation of new self sustainable and efficient infrastructures.
The final whitepaper of the project was released on April 20, 2017. This whitepaper reflected the characteristics and objectives pursued by Aragon. On May 17 of the same year, Aragon surprised many users with an ICO or Initial Coin Offering. This ICO was scheduled to end as soon as the sales target set by the company was reached.
The ICO was very successful, raising a total of $25 million in Ethers (ETH) in just 30 minutes. Moreover, just 15 minutes after the opening of the ICO, the cryptocurrency had reached a market capitalization of about $24,750,000. Thanks to this ICO, the project was able to continue its development.
A year later, specifically in June 2018, the Aragon development team was already testing the set of smart contracts that contribute to the functioning of Aragon, AragonOS. Just a few months later, on October 30, Aragon 6.0 was launched on the Ethereum mainnet.
In August 2019, after an audit on the DAO creation templates or Aragon DAO Templates, another damaged part of the ANT system was audited. In November of the same year the team announced the launch of the new Aragon Network and its token called ANJ (Aragon Court). This launching meant a before and after in the project since it was possible to elevate complete functionalities of the network.
The use of the new token was essential for Aragon Courts. This functionality was intended for dispute resolution in the system. This phase of the project completed its launch in February 2020.
Currently Aragon has become a widely recognized project. The total supply of the coin is 30 million tokens. Below we will see what aspects of its operation make it so special.
How does Aragon (ANT) work?
As we already know, Aragon’s main objective is to facilitate the creation of DAOs with users who want to make use of the values and resources of this system. All this is possible thanks to unique functionalities developed by Aragon to achieve it.
Aragon Client
This part of the project is currently known as Aragon Govern since V2 of the protocol. It is a functionality oriented to the creation of DAO within the Aragon network. Its goal is to develop a DAO where users can choose various templates with governance modules that help them to easily adapt to the needs of the community.
Aragon Client templates are also known as Aragon DAO Templates. These options allow you to quickly select certain capabilities chosen by the users to integrate them into the DAO being developed at the time.
To start creating the DAO there are a set of settings that must be entered. These settings such as voting can be modified later by all those who have the DAO token.
When all the parameters are implemented, the DAO contract gas rates are paid, it is deployed on the Ethereum network and goes on to have its own DAO address. The Aragon Client tool is somewhat easy to use, but very powerful and full of options to explore. In addition to the configuration options, Aragon allows you to develop custom configuration options increasing flexibility in the creation of DAOs.
Aragon Court
In addition to Aragon Client, the project surprised all its users with another great feature called Aragon Court. This is a system that allows users to resolve disputes in all organizations that are hosted on the Aragon network and cannot be resolved through smart contracts.
This functionality aims to provide a decentralized justice system but also compensates all those users who want to be part of the Courts as Judges. Jury members have the task of analyzing the documents of certain disputes and vote according to their position in the dispute.
To become part of Aragon Court users must exchange their ANT coins for ANJ tokens. These tokens must be wagered or frozen in special contracts on the network. As in most cryptocurrencies, the more tokens a user bets, the more chances he has to be selected as a member of the jury. To make the conversion we can use other tokens such as DAI, USDC or ETH.
To gain access to the system we must have at least 10,000 ANJ blocked and then choose which Aragon Court cases we want to solve. When the case is solved, the members of that jury receive a reward in ANT coins and the DAO updates the results through software programming.
It should be noted that the Cortes de Aragon works in a rather peculiar way. Jury members use the “Rule of Plurality” to vote. They do not pronounce impartially, but vote based on what they expect the rest of the jury to do.
When a dispute starts, a part of the jury tokens is blocked until the end of the dispute. This is to encourage them to reach a consensus. Jury members who do not vote in favor of the final result have their blocked tokens removed. On the other hand, members who vote in favor of the final decision are rewarded with dispute fees and tokens in ANJ of the jury that voted against.
Vocdoni
Vocdoni is another tool that Aragon added to its project. This is a decentralized voting platform. Such a blockchain voting system is decentralized, secure and anonymous. Its main objective is to enforce the European Union’s GDPR rules regarding the use of user data.
Vocdoni also allows the creation of voting systems tailored to the needs of users through the use of its development stack and a powerful API. All this with the aim of making available to users a secure, transparent and anonymous voting tool that allows democracy among citizens, developers or whoever needs this tool.
Aragon Network Token (ANT)
As we already know, Aragon has its own ERC-20 token. Aragon’s native token is called Aragon Network Token. Each token owned by a user represents a part of the governance power in the system. The more tokens a user owns, the more voting power he/she has.
The ANT token issuance is limited to a maximum total of 39,609,524 ANT tokens. Aragon Network Token was created thanks to the ICO on May 18, 2017 and was the reason why it managed to raise $25 million. Thanks to this investment the project continued its development. Since then the ANT token has become a token of interest for many investors which has contributed to the growth of its market capitalization.
It should be noted that ANT is not a token for exclusive use on the platform, in fact, to participate in the Aragon Courts we have to change the token to ANJ and thus we can earn rewards as part of the jury. The ANT token can also be used in the Aragon DAO as a decision power and in decentralized exchanges.
If you are interested in learning about another similar project that attempts to create juries that dispense justice in a decentralized manner, check out our article on What is Kleros? The cryptocurrency court.
