Aragon Ships Its Tech To Arbitrum Despite Bitter Project Infighting

Aragon is continuing to ship products despite its DAO and association readying to do battle in court.

On Nov. 30, the Aragon OSx team announced the launch of OSx, its DAO infrastructure, alongside the Aragon App on Arbitrum, the leading Ethereum Layer 2 network. The deployment enables Arbitrum-based decentralized autonomous organizations to leverage its DAO management software.

“Arbitrum is by far the most adopted rollup in the EVM ecosystem, both in terms of TVL and protocols launched on the network,” said Ivan Fartunov, Head of Ecosystem at the Aragon Association. “Arbitrum communities can now launch a DAO in under 10 minutes and manage their assets in a transparent and user-friendly app.”

Aragon said its technology is used by more than 7,000 DAOs managing assets exceeding $16B across Ethereum and its Layer 2 ecosystem.

Aragon infighting

Aragon’s latest product launch comes despite the devolving dispute between the Aragon Association, the team that maintains Aragon’s software, and ANT tokenholders.

In May, the Aragon Association nixed a governance proposal seeking to transfer control of its treasury to tokenholders, claiming it had come under attack from “Risk-Free Raiders” — a group accused of buying up undervalued governance tokens in a bid to access treasury assets for a profit.

The association moved to “repurpose” its treasury into a grant program to protect the assets, but faced widespread criticism from web3 advocates who accused the Aragon team of disregarding the interests of ANT tokenholders and failing to honor DAO-based governance.

The Aragon Association capitulated in early November, announcing it would shut down and enable ANT redemptions for 87% of its non-treasury assets. The association said it would retain $11M to finance ongoing obligations and launch a new “Product Council” overseeing Aragon’s products moving forward.

However, on Nov. 20, ANT tokenholders voted to sue the Aragon Association and fund the legal action with 300,000 USDC. The proposal accused the association of seeking to withhold $50M as part of the token redemption plan that it unilaterally put together without consulting tokenholders with a vote.

“The current Aragon OSx team will continue to ship product and this has no impact on the team’s ability to advance Aragon’s mission,” the Aragon OSx team told The Defiant. “A few RFV Raiders passed a proposal (while most ANT holders had already redeemed) to pursue legal action challenging the Aragon Association’s decision to deploy 87% of its treasury to allow all ANT holders to redeem their tokens for ETH.”

They added that the current Aragon OSx team is a separate entity from the Aragon Association that is “committed to advancing Aragon’s mission by shipping new products independently of the Aragon Association’s decisions and potential legal disputes.”