On August 18, 2021, the Aragon DAO held a contentious vote regarding the management of their crypto treasury. During the discussion, at least six Aragon DAO members were banned from the platform for violating the organization’s code of conduct and community guidelines. The bans sparked outrage and debate within the DAO community, illustrating the ongoing challenges faced by decentralized organizations in maintaining order and accountability.
Aragon is a popular decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that is built on the Ethereum blockchain. The platform allows users to create their own DAOs, with the ability to manage funds, make decisions, and vote on proposals using the platform’s native token, ANT. DAOs have become increasingly popular in recent years, offering a new approach to decentralized governance that relies on transparency, community participation, and decentralized decision-making.
However, DAOs are not immune to the challenges of human behavior, including conflicts of interest, power struggles, and inappropriate behavior. To address these issues, many DAOs have established codes of conduct and community guidelines that aim to promote respectful discourse, ethical behavior, and accountability. Aragon is no exception, and the platform has established a set of guidelines that all members are expected to follow.
During the crypto treasury discussion, tensions ran high as members debated the best approach for managing the platform’s funds. According to reports, at least six members were banned from the platform for violating the code of conduct. Some members were reportedly making inappropriate comments in the platform’s chat channels, while others were accused of attempting to manipulate the vote or engage in other unethical behavior.
The bans were immediately controversial, with some members arguing that they were unjustified and violated the principles of decentralization that underlie DAOs. Others argued that the bans were necessary to maintain order and ensure that the discussion remained productive and respectful.
One of the challenges faced by DAOs is the lack of clear lines of authority and accountability. Traditional organizations typically have hierarchical structures that allow for clear decision-making and enforcement mechanisms. However, DAOs are designed to be decentralized, with decision-making distributed among the members. This can make it difficult to enforce rules and maintain order, particularly when there is disagreement or conflict among members.
Some DAOs have attempted to address this issue by establishing governance structures that include elected leaders or administrators. However, this approach can be controversial, as it can give certain members more power than others and can undermine the principle of decentralized decision-making.
The Aragon bans highlight the ongoing debate within the DAO community regarding the best approach to maintaining order and accountability. Some argue that strict enforcement of community guidelines is necessary to prevent bad actors from undermining the platform’s integrity and effectiveness. Others argue that such enforcement can be subjective and prone to abuse, and that DAOs should rely more on community norms and peer pressure to ensure ethical behavior.
Ultimately, the success of DAOs will depend on their ability to balance the benefits of decentralized decision-making with the need for transparency, accountability, and ethical behavior. The Aragon bans provide an example of the challenges faced by decentralized organizations, and the ongoing efforts to find solutions that work for all members. As the number of DAOs continues to grow, it will be fascinating to see how the community addresses these challenges and evolves to meet the demands of a rapidly changing digital landscape.
Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Aragon has been embroiled in controversy this week, as it banned a number of community members from its discussion platform. The move came in response to a heated discussion about the project’s finances, which saw some community members making what were deemed to be inappropriate comments and using inappropriate language. According to Jessica Smith, Aragon’s head of communications, the influx of chatter and new members came during a pivotal, yet long-delayed, effort to move Aragon’s sizable treasury under community control.
As a result of the incident, Aragon condemned the behavior of what it called “coordinated actors” from within its community, claiming they were connected to past governance interventions in other DAOs. The platform then made the decision to ban a number of community members who had questioned its leadership, processes, and status as a bona fide decentralized autonomous organization. Speaking to CoinDesk, most of the affected individuals claimed to be investors in ANT, months-long members of the Discord, or both.
In banning these individuals, Aragon has brought to light the uneasy tension that exists between the ideal of a DAO’s “power to the people” versus the reality that a few stakeholders can often wield outsize influence. Aragon’s Discord moderators have the power to set (or rejigger) the conversation by banning dissenters and deleting their opinions, actions that run contrary to the idea of “censorship-resistant” cryptocurrency.
Aragon builds software to support DAOs, where token owners have a say in business decisions. Aragon’s own community of ANT holders voted nearly a year ago to have more direct influence over how the project spends its treasury, which holds cryptocurrencies worth more than $70 million. However, the transfer from direct control to community control has been anything but smooth. After months of delays, Aragon’s power brokers finally started moving money into a new structure under DAO control on the very day the moderators began the mass banning.
Jessica Smith confirmed that all banned members of the Aragon Discord community were also members of ROOK, another DAO that recently dissolved its structure after activist investors called for the project to return capital to its token holders. CollinM11, a member of both ROOK and Aragon, suggested that the mass ban began after a prominent member of the Rook community tipped Aragon’s Discord into a discussion of risk-free value (RFV). RFV is better known in traditional finance circles as “book value.”
Wismerhill, an activist investor who championed Rook DAO’s collapse, disputed any similarities between the two DAOs, saying that Rook’s product development has been stagnant for months, while Aragon is actively building and has mechanisms to return value to its token holders. “Aragon is only interesting because they could do buybacks” of ANT tokens, he said.
The bans remain temporary, although Smith did not give a timeline for their reinstatement. The incident underscores the complex nature of decentralized governance and DAOs. While ostensibly designed for democratic decision-making and community participation, DAOs are still subject to the same tensions of power distribution as any other governance structure.
