Aragon Association Dissolves and Returns $115M to ANT Holders

The crew behind considered one of crypto’s oldest initiatives has elected for a tough reset.

The Aragon Affiliation (AA), the authorized entity which oversees the undertaking and the Aragon DAO, is shutting down. As a part of the method, the undertaking’s ANT tokens may be redeemed for 86,343 ETH, price over $115M on the time of writing. This accounts for 87% of the treasury’s non-native belongings.

The speed of alternate is mounted at 0.0025376 ETH per ANT token – presently price $4.56 – and the redemption window is open for a 12 months. ANT dropped 6% to $4.60 on the information and is buying and selling roughly consistent with the redemption worth.

Aragon supplies tooling for decentralized organizations (DAOs) and launched in 2016 after elevating roughly $25M price of ETH within the ANT token sale. Heavyweights like Lido Finance, DeFi’s largest undertaking by TVL, use Aragon’s tooling to run their DAOs.

Aragon’s treasury made headlines in Might as an opportunistic group of buyers purchased up ANT tokens, which have vastly underperformed in opposition to the ETH held within the undertaking’s treasury since peaking in December 2021. The concept was to make use of the ANT to vote to redeem the tokens for ETH, a doubtlessly worthwhile transfer that AA controversially nixed.

Now, the AA is permitting the redemptions to proceed.

There’s an irony to Aragon’s struggles. The undertaking’s founders designed Aragon to revolutionize how organizations ran, however in the long run, encountered among the identical struggles that it aimed to assist different operations to beat.

Aragon just isn’t shutting down, nonetheless. A brand new entity known as the Product Council will take management of Aragon’s IP, infrastructure, and “operational runway.”

“For builders and builders, this modifications nothing,” Aragon mentioned. “The Aragon Venture will proceed its mission by doubling down on constructing resilient onchain governance tooling and infrastructure.”

The council is seeking members. events needs to be builders of Ethereum infrastructure and have expertise with Aragon merchandise.

Aragon has had rocky moments up to now — a wave of resignations hit the undertaking in 2021 underneath murky circumstances.