Exploring Aragon, the pioneering DAO infrastructure and comprehensive governance
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Exploring Aragon, the pioneering DAO infrastructure and comprehensive governance
Aragon remains steadfastly committed to pushing the boundaries of DAO exploration.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsThis research article is presented by ThePASS team, with special thanks to Aragon Growth Guild for proofreading. The PASS is a pioneering DAO aggregator and search engine, currently the largest source of DAO data, playing a key role in providing insights and analytics for DAOs.
Introduction
The birth of DAOs stems from a simple idea: humans should use technology as a liberating tool to unlock all goodwill and creativity, rather than as an instrument to enslave and exploit one another. Although DAOs remain experimental to date and have yet to establish best practices beyond web3, it is precisely this uncharted territory that makes the mysterious blue ocean so fascinating.
Today, we begin an in-depth exploration of one of the largest DAO frameworks—Aragon—as infrastructure fully enabling the realization of DAOs.
Overview of Aragon
The failure of The DAO in 2016 dealt a significant blow to the DAO space and the broader cryptocurrency history, slowing down the development of the DAO industry. For a considerable period afterward, the DAO landscape remained dormant until the arrival of DeFi Summer.
Aragon is one of the earliest DAO projects in the Ethereum ecosystem. It successfully conducted an ICO in May 2017, raising 275,000 ETH (worth $25 million at the time, approximately $450 million at the time of writing). This was then the fourth-largest crowdfunding sale in history. Aragon provides templates to launch a DAO successfully within minutes, with modular applications allowing further customization.
It wasn’t until 2020, with the influx of DeFi users, that a surge of DAO experiments emerged during the bull market. These included ambitious social-type DAOs (with global membership reaching thousands) and NFT-focused DAOs facilitating small-scale investments and collections. Over time, many DAOs faded away, but those that endured have become shining stars in the blockchain space. The momentum behind DAOs continues to grow steadily.
For DAOs, Aragon has been a pioneer in their evolution. Open-source code on the Aragon network and a suite of ecosystem developments provide ready-to-use tools for individuals to create and manage new forms of DAOs. Projects such as Lido, Decentraland, API3, NFTX, and others have used Aragon to launch and scale their initiatives.
With over six years of experience developing DAO frameworks, coupled with a keen understanding of the industry’s need for greater modularity and adaptability, Aragon stands at the forefront of exploring the product roadmap for DAOs.
As a result, instead of offering pre-configured on-chain operational templates for organizations, Aragon has built a novel, modular, and user-friendly DAO framework, allowing each organization to customize according to its unique needs. In March 2023, Aragon launched its new modular technology stack:
● Aragon App: A no-code platform for creating and managing DAOs. The application offers communities a simple, easy-to-use on-chain base for creating proposals, voting, and onboarding new members.
● Aragon OSx: A modular DAO framework centered on security and flexibility. Aragon OSx serves as the foundational governance layer, enabling organizations to adapt through plugins that can be installed or uninstalled to modify organizational logic.
Aragon App
Compared to governance platforms like Snapshot or multisig wallets like Safe that focus on specific aspects of the DAO lifecycle, Aragon aims to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end solution for building DAOs from inception to maturity. Every proposal, vote, and action occurs on-chain, rather than relying on off-chain snapshots or the security of a trusted group of signers.
Until recently, the most active DAOs were either DeFi protocols or web3 infrastructure hosted on general-purpose platforms. By contrast, the current wave of DAOs represents a treasure trove of purpose and ideas, with diverse requirements. As DAOs gain popularity, Aragon’s strength lies in offering a streamlined and comprehensive toolkit for DAO creation and management, covering the full spectrum from 0 to 1 and beyond.
Aragon Stack
Aragon Data Analysis
Overview
In nearly six years since its inception, over 7,000 DAOs have been built using Aragon. These DAOs collectively manage an astonishing $12 billion in assets (including stETH), have proposed around 23,000 proposals, and received over 45,000 votes from more than 6,000 voters—averaging about seven votes per voter.
While raw data may not immediately convey impact, in the following sections, we will delve into each specific subcategory, uncovering Aragon’s developmental journey and offering insights into its future prospects.
Aragon Data Overview
DAOs
Looking at the number of DAOs across different blockchains, it's clear that as an early project, Aragon was the go-to framework for launching DAOs on Ethereum prior to 2020. However, starting in June 2020, high gas fees on Ethereum forced many DAOs to migrate to alternative blockchains or adopt off-chain governance solutions like Snapshot.
Monthly Aragon DAOs Created on Ethereum (by version)
In September 2021, Aragon expanded to Polygon, where the number of deployed DAOs quickly surpassed that on Ethereum. This can serve as an indicator of builders adopting Layer 2 solutions within their communities. The new Aragon tech stack—App and OSx—was launched on Polygon at the end of March 2023, significantly improving global developer accessibility to DAOs. Notably, when deploying on Polygon, the cost of creating a proposal can be as low as five cents or less. Aragon has actively extended its reach to other Layer 2 ecosystems, including deployment on Base in August 2023.
Monthly Aragon DAOs Created by Chain
Considering Aragon’s product iterations, since the release of the new tech stack in March 2023, Aragon App has rapidly overtaken the old tech stack as the preferred platform for launching new DAOs. Notably, even amid a bear market, the number of DAO creations has risen against the trend.
Monthly Aragon DAOs Created (by version)
Defining an active DAO as one that proposes at least one proposal per month, it is evident that the number of active DAOs on Ethereum did not experience a significant decline after June 2020, unlike the sharp drop in newly established DAOs. Moreover, the number of active DAOs on Polygon is on par with that on Ethereum. This may suggest that a significant portion of DAOs newly created on Polygon may later face limitations in activity.
Monthly Active Aragon DAOs (by chain)
Proposals
The number of proposals and active DAOs across chains shows similar patterns. On Ethereum, monthly proposal counts grew steadily since Aragon’s inception, peaking at around 800 in June 2020, before beginning a decline.
Later, in September 2021, Polygon took the lead, maintaining a monthly proposal volume of around 500 throughout 2022, though showing a downward trend since 2023.
Monthly Proposals by Chain
Since the launch of the new tech stack in March 2023, proposal activity from the previous Aragon client has gradually transitioned to Aragon App, which now maintains around 200 proposals per month.
Monthly Proposals by Version
When DAOs are grouped by the number of proposals, it is notable that two-thirds of DAOs have never made a proposal. Among those that have proposed, the majority created fewer than four proposals. This could be due to the current bear market, with many DAOs experimenting with Aragon’s new tech stack; however, actual decision-making needs may not be widespread.
Distribution of Aragon DAOs by Proposal Count
Votes
Vote count and number of voters reflect the level of governance activity within DAOs. Both metrics show trends similar to proposal counts. On Ethereum, both votes and voters experienced sustained growth, followed by a gradual decline, eventually stabilizing at a steady level.
Currently, Aragon sees approximately 500 votes and 200 voters per month. Compared to other governance tools like Snapshot or Tally, Aragon still lags somewhat in terms of user numbers and activity levels.
Monthly On-Chain Votes on Aragon by Chain
Monthly On-Chain Voters on Aragon
Fortunately, Aragon has chosen to move beyond simple proposal-voting frameworks and adopt a more innovative approach. Governance within DAOs is a complex framework requiring more sophisticated and modular structures. Some DAOs must track reputation and engagement, others require strong incentive mechanisms, while others need robust debate and dispute resolution tools.
The diversity of DAOs drives demand for more modular architectures and interoperability with best-in-class DAO tools, allowing DAOs to choose based on their specific needs. Thus, Aragon developed a new tech stack to address these demands and challenges. With Aragon OSx, DAOs can flexibly use plugins to add or remove custom functionalities, including governance, asset management, membership handling, and more.
Treasury
As expected, the majority of DAO treasuries on Aragon are concentrated on Ethereum. Treasury size grew steadily starting in 2018, surged during the DeFi Summer of 2020, peaked in November 2021 at over $1.7 billion, and gradually declined during the subsequent bear market, stabilizing around $500 million.
Aragon Treasury by Chain
Among DAOs created on Ethereum using the Aragon client, Lido and Aragon itself hold the largest treasuries, together accounting for over 80% of total treasury value. Following closely are API3, Altered State Machine, and Decentraland, representing projects in infrastructure, NFT, and GameFi sectors respectively. This highlights the diversity of projects using Aragon.
Aragon Client Treasuries on Ethereum
The newly launched Aragon App is still in its early stages, with limited mainstream protocol deployments or migrations. Leading the way are the Aragon Association and Eagle Ops, both sub-DAOs established by Aragon itself to support protocol development.
Distribution of Aragon Client and App Treasuries
Conclusion
Aragon is an ambitious crypto project. As an ancient framework among early DAO builders, Aragon has witnessed the explosive growth of the DAO space and faced challenges competing against more convenient and simpler tools. Nevertheless, Aragon remains steadfastly committed to pushing the boundaries of DAO exploration.
Crypto analysts often view Aragon as an experiment in public management and governance, one that may ultimately evolve into an almost perfect governance system. One day, it might become the appropriate foundation for a new public order for future generations.
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