2023 Wrapped

2023 was a big year for Aragon. This week, we're taking a moment to look back at everything we built together.

Dec 22, 2023

2023 was a big year for Aragon.

From shipping a new tech stack to teaming up with industry leaders to restructuring the project, 2023 has been a year of building on new ground. Here’s a wrap-up of our year and what we’re proud to have built together.

Top 3:

Broke ground with a new end-to-end tech stack: Aragon OSx and Aragon App. This tech stack stems from extensive research to address the challenges and limitations of legacy DAO frameworks. This was a monumental launch for Aragon: the first launch since 2021, marking a new team and new products positioned to be future-proof. Aragon OSx powered novel innovation, including a multichain governance plugin with zkSync and LayerZero.
Joined forces with leading industry players to make it easier to launch and operate DAOs. Some of these partnerships included hosting the DAO Global Hackathon, building a proof of concept for Nouns DAO private voting, launching a course on DAOs with the Ukrainian Government, and onboarding a new cohort of DAO Experts.
Restructured the Aragon Project. Following the Aragon Association’s decision to dissolve and allow for ANT Holders to redeem their tokens, the torch was passed to new leadership that will enable teams to go into 2024 with laser-focus on the mission.

Let’s take a look back at our 2023:

Going into 2023, it was our goal to launch a tech stack that enables anyone to build and manage DAOs, no matter their technical skills, web3 background, or financial means. There is a desperate need in the industry for the technology to be easier to use and lower cost in order to reach mass adoption.

In March, we launched our new modular tech stack for DAOs: Aragon OSx and Aragon App.

This was a monumental launch: the first launch for Aragon since 2021, and the mark of a new era for Aragon with a new team working on new products designed for today’s industry needs.

Here’s a deeper look at the layers in the stack and what we did in each:

Aragon OSx: modular DAO framework with security at its core

DAOs need a way to adapt, even after being deployed on an immutable blockchain. We set out to build a DAO framework that is modular, so developers can work with composable building blocks rather than a monolithic design.

These building blocks are plugins, which are smart contracts that you can install and uninstall into your DAO to change its governance logic. At the core of each DAO on Aragon OSx is its permission management system, which manages permissions to these plugins. The combination of the permission manager and the plugins is what enables lean, secure, and adaptable DAOs.

One of our goals with Aragon OSx is to make it easier to build custom and novel onchain governance designs with network effects. We are working to make it possible for all developers to easily and safely build the plugins they need, deploy custom DAOs, and integrate with the ecosystem—and for this to be easily reusable for DAOs that follow. So we released two tools:

Aragon SDK: a software development kit designed with dApp builders in mind, you can quickly and easily build a custom DAO.
Aragon OSx CLI: a command line interface making it easier to build, deploy, and manage plugins.

We also built custom governance designs, including:

Multichain Governance with zkSync and Layer Zero to make it possible for organizations to govern assets and permissions across chains from one mainnet DAO deployment.
Optimistic Dual Governance, a lean governance design that gives key stakeholders a veto safeguard, while allowing teams to work efficiently.

We recently deployed an upgraded version of the Aragon OSx smart contracts and are excited to expand custom governance designs on OSx in the new year.

Aragon App: easy-to-use homebase for your DAO

It was our goal to make it possible for anyone to launch a DAO in under 10 minutes and one dollar. The Aragon App, built on top of Aragon OSx, does that. In less than a year, 3,000 DAOs have been launched with the App.

The Aragon App is a user-friendly, no-code platform for anyone to create and manage a DAO. When launching your DAO, you are guided through the steps to select your blockchain, add DAO information, define membership, and set up governance.

From supherphiz.eth

Here’s how we made DAOs more accessible with the Aragon App:

Deployed on multiple chains: Ethereum, Polygon, Base, and Arbitrum. Each chain offers different benefits for different DAO builders.

From Sandeep Nailwal

Improved UX for identifying your DAO: You can make your DAO your own by adding branding details. This includes a name, logo, description, and if you’re on Eth mainnet, a custom dao.eth subdomain.

Designed human-centric governance: Our goal is to make it easy to define your governance standards with confidence. So, while DAO builders choose their governance settings, we offer helpful tips in the App so they can decide what works for them. Then, after they deploy the DAO, they can create proposals with programmable actions—such as to mint tokens, send assets, edit governance settings, pass smart contract updates, connect to external contracts, and more—all with ease.

Made it possible to import existing tokens into the DAO: We know that some DAOs already have governance tokens, and they may want to migrate to the App. So, we designed a feature to import an existing token to a new DAO on the App without writing any code.

Launched delegated voting: Not every DAO member will want to vote on every proposal. So we built a feature to delegate your voting power to any other address and reclaim your voting power at any time.

Made it possible to update the base contracts of your DAO without writing any code: Every DAO on the Aragon App is built on Aragon OSx, the underlying DAO framework, which is upgradeable. Typically, smart contract updates require advanced Solidity experience, but we’ve made it possible to update the contracts by passing a proposal. This gives DAOs access to security and feature updates made by the Aragon team.

Stay tuned for many more updates coming to the Aragon App in 2024!

We partnered with industry leaders for a variety of initiatives, from hosting the DAO Global Hackathon to building private voting for Nouns DAO to creating a course about DAOs for Ukrainian citizens with the government of Ukraine. Here’s a look at some of our work in the web3 ecosystem and beyond:

Hosted the DAO Global Hackathon

We brought together web3 industry-leaders—from ENS to Snapshot to Lens—with the goal of bringing the lego thesis of DeFi to DAOs by solving problems with existing tools and composable solutions. Developers from all over the world submitted projects and dozens of prizes were awarded.

Built a Private Voting POC for Nouns DAO

Aragon ZK Research and Aztec joined forces to research private voting for Nouns DAO. They concluded their research with a proof-of-concept and both general and technical reports. They also developed two time-locked cryptography protocols to support their work.

Created a course about DAOs in Ukrainian

We partnered with the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation to launch a course that teaches Ukrainians how to create and manage DAOs. This course puts simple, easy-to-use tools into the hands of all Ukrainian citizens. We’re honored to work with one of the first nation states to bring web3 technology to their citizens.

Made building DAOs easier with the help of industry partners

At Aragon, we provide the onchain governance stack, but running your DAO from A to Z requires a lot more than just governance. So, we partnered with ENS, Push Protocol, Coinvise, and The Pass to make operating and participating in DAOs easier. Get a dao.eth subdomain when you launch on ETH mainnet with ENS, set up notifications for your DAO with Push Protocol, and make your DAO more discoverable with The Pass. We also showed you how to create an airdrop using Coinvise and manage your DAO’s token using Etherscan. We also celebrated our DAO builders with a custom POAP.

Grew the DAO Experts program

Running a DAO requires more than just onchain governance. This year we grew our DAO Experts program, which has been live for nearly two years now. We partnered with leaders across the industry to make sure there is a service provider equipped to help DAO builders at every turn—from demystifying legal wrappers to launching products in-house as a DAO to incentivizing and reminding DAO members to participate in governance.

From Indie DAO

Ran a jokerace to pick the next feature for Aragon….then built it

The winner was multichain governance, which we shipped a few weeks later. We had a ton of fun getting ideas from the community about what they want to see in the Aragon App. We were also inspired by how DAOs can use jokeraces to empower their community to make decisions.

ANT Holders can redeem their ANT for ETH

The AA deployed 87% of the treasury to a smart contract for all ANT holders to redeem their tokens for ETH. The redemption period will be open until November 2nd 2024 at 23h59 UTC. Moving forward, ANT will no longer have a role in the future of the project.

The Aragon Association voted to dissolve itself

The AA approved a full liquidation and dissolution of the association. None of the association members will have a role in the future of the project.

Reorganized into a Product Focused Structure

Following the AA’s decision, the Aragon team was reorganized into a product-focused structure, which will include a product council of infrastructure builders. The team has reduced costs and become more lean and focused. We look forward to working with the best and brightest in our industry to lead the project’s next chapter and are very optimistic for 2024!

Gathered at four team working offsites

The Aragon team gathered for in-person work four times this year. This allowed for greater alignment and productivity, staying connected to the mission, and sticking together through challenging times.

2023 was a year full of change and progress at Aragon. The team is more excited and ready than ever to continue the mission of building secure and modular tools for onchain governance.

Thank you to everyone who made 2023 a great year for Aragon. We can’t wait for what’s to come in 2024!

Happy holidays,

— Aragon X

The Eagle