This research article is presented by ThePASS team and thanks the Aragon Growth Guild for proofreading. The PASS is a groundbreaking DAO aggregator and search engine that is currently the largest source of DAO data and plays a key role in providing insights and analysis for DAOs.
introduce
The birth of DAO stems from a simple idea: Human beings should use technology as a liberating tool to release all human kindness and creativity, rather than as a tool to enslave and exploit each other. Although so far, DAO is still in the experimental stage and best practices beyond web3 have not yet been established. It is precisely because there are many unknown areas in the DAO ocean that we have not yet explored, which makes this mysterious blue ocean even more fascinating.
Today, we begin an in-depth exploration of one of the largest DAO frameworks, Aragon, which serves as the infrastructure required to fully implement DAO.
Aragon Overview
The failure of The DAO in 2016 dealt a major blow to the DAO space and the entire history of cryptocurrency, slowing down the development of the DAO industry. For quite some time, the DAO landscape has been dormant until the arrival of DeFi Summer.
Aragon, one of the earliest DAO projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, held a successful ICO in May 2017, raising 275,000 ETH ($25 million at the time of raising), equivalent to approximately $450 million at the time of writing. It was the fourth largest crowdfunding sale in history at the time. Aragon provides templates to successfully launch a DAO in minutes, with modular applications for further customization.
Until 2020, with the influx of DeFi users, a large number of DAO experiments appeared during the bull market. These include ambitious social DAOs with thousands of members worldwide, as well as NFT-centric DAOs that promote small-scale investments and collections. Over time, many DAOs have gradually disappeared, but those that have persisted have become shining stars in the blockchain field. The DAO continues to gain momentum steadily.
For DAO, Aragon is one of the pioneers in the development of DAO. The open source code and a series of ecosystem developments on the Aragon Network provide ready-to-use tools for subsequent individuals to create and manage new forms of DAOs. Lido, Decentraland, API3, NFTX and several other well-known projects use Aragon to launch and scale their projects.
With more than six years of experience in DAO framework development, coupled with a keen understanding of the industry's need for greater modularity and greater adaptability, Aragon is at the forefront of exploring DAO product roadmaps.
Therefore, Aragon no longer provides organizations with pre-set on-chain running templates, but has established a novel, modular, user-friendly DAO framework that allows each organization to customize it according to its unique needs. In March 2023, Aragon launched a new modular technology stack:
● Aragon App: A DAO creation and management platform that requires no coding. The application provides the community with a simple, easy-to-use on-chain base for creating proposals, voting, and onboarding new members.
● Aragon OSx: a modular DAO framework with security and flexibility at its core. Aragon OSx is the base governance layer that enables organizations to adapt through the use of plug-ins, which can be installed and uninstalled to change the organization's logic.
Aragon App
Compared to governance platforms like Snapshot or multi-signature wallets like Safe that focus on specific aspects of the DAO lifecycle, Aragon aims to provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution for the entire process of building a DAO from inception to maturity. Every proposal, vote, and action is on the blockchain, rather than off-chain snapshots or relying on the security of a trusted community of singers.
Until recently, the most active DAOs were either DeFi protocols or web3 infrastructure existing on general purpose platforms. In contrast, the current wave of DAOs is a cornucopia of goals and ideas, with diverse needs. As DAOs gain popularity, Aragon's strength lies in its ability to provide a streamlined and all-encompassing set of tools for DAO creation and management, covering the entire spectrum from 0 to 1 all the way to 100.
Aragon stack
AragonData Analysis
Overview
In the nearly six years since its inception, more than 7,000 DAOs have been built using Aragon. Together, these DAOs manage a staggering approximately $12 billion worth of assets (including stETH), made approximately 23,000 proposals, and received over 45,000 votes from over 6,000 voters, an average of approximately 7 votes per person.
While the raw numbers may not immediately convey the impact, in the following sections we'll delve deeper into each specific subcategory, uncovering Aragon's evolution and providing insights into its future prospects.
Aragon data overview
DAO
Looking at the specific number of DAOs on different blockchains from another perspective, it is obvious that as an early-established project, Aragon is the preferred framework for building DAOs on Ethereum before 2020. However, starting in June 2020, gas fees on Ethereum forced many DAOs to migrate to alternative blockchains or adopt off-chain governance solutions such as Snapshot.
Aragon DAOs created on Ethereum monthly (by version)
In September 2021, Aragon expanded to Polygon, and the number of deployed DAOs quickly exceeded Ethereum. This can serve as an indicator that builders are adopting Layer 2 solutions within their communities. The new Aragon technology stack App and OSx will be launched on Polygon at the end of March 2023. This significantly increases the accessibility of DAO to developers around the world. Notably, when deployed on Polygon, the cost to create a proposal is as low as 5 cents or less. Aragon has been actively expanding its reach into other Layer 2 ecosystems, including a deployment on Base in August 2023.
Aragon DAO is created monthly on a chain basis
Considering Aragon's product iteration, since the release of the new technology stack in March 2023, Aragon App has quickly surpassed the old technology stack and become the preferred platform for creating new DAOs. It is worth noting that even in a market downturn, the number of DAO creations has bucked the trend and increased.
Aragon DAOs created monthly (by version)
Defining DAOs that make at least one proposal per month as active DAOs, it is clear that the number of active DAOs on Ethereum did not experience a significant decline after June 2020, unlike the significant decline of newly established DAOs. In addition, the number of active DAOs on Polygon is in the same order of magnitude as Ethereum. This may mean that the future activities of a considerable number of newly created DAOs on Polygon may be restricted.
Monthly active Aragon DAO (by chain)
suggestion
The number of proposals and active DAOs on different chains shows similar change patterns. On Ethereum, the number of monthly proposals has grown steadily since the birth of Aragon until peaking at around 800 in June 2020, and then began to decline.
Since then, Polygon has taken the lead in September 2021, with monthly proposals remaining at around 500 throughout 2022, but has shown a downward trend since 2023.
Monthly proposal chain
Since the launch of the new technology stack in March 2023, proposal activity from the previous version of the Aragon client has gradually transitioned to the Aragon App and currently maintains approximately 200 proposals per month.
Monthly proposals by version
When DAOs are grouped according to the number of proposals, it is worth noting that two-thirds of DAOs have never initiated a proposal. Of the DAOs that have been proposed, most have fewer than four DAOs created. This may be due to the current downturn in the market environment, where many DAOs are experimenting with Aragon's new technology stack; however, the actual decision-making needs may not be that widespread.
DAO allocates Aragon proposal
Number of votes
The number of votes and voters can reflect the level of governance activity within the DAO. Both metrics show similar trends in the number of proposals. On Ethereum, the number of votes and the number of voters experienced continuous growth, then gradually decreased, and finally stabilized at a stable level.
Currently, Aragon's monthly vote count and voter base are around 500 and 200 respectively. Compared with other governance tools such as Snapshot or Tally, Aragon still has a certain gap in the number of users and activities.
Aragon monthly on-chain voting
Aragon monthly on-chain voters
Fortunately, Aragon has chosen to move away from a simple proposal voting framework and take a more innovative approach. Governance within a DAO is a complex framework that requires a more complex and modular structure. Some DAOs must track reputation and engagement, others require strong incentive structures, and still others require powerful debate and resolution tools.
The diversity of DAOs drives the need for DAO architectures to be more modular and interoperable with the best DAO tooling solutions so that DAOs can choose according to their needs. Therefore, Aragon developed a new technology stack to address these needs and challenges. In Aragon OSx, DAOs have the flexibility to leverage plug-ins to add or remove any custom functionality, including governance, asset management, membership processing, and more.
Ministry of Finance
As expected, most of the DAO vaults on Aragon are focused on Ethereum. Starting in 2018, the vault size steadily accumulated, surging during the DeFi summer of 2020 and peaking in November 2021 at over $1.7 billion. After the subsequent bear market, the size of the treasury gradually declined and stabilized at around $500 million.
Aragon Treasury by 链
Among the DAOs created using the Aragon client on Ethereum, Lido and Aragon themselves have the largest treasury, accounting for more than 80% of the total treasury. Followed closely by API3, Altered State Machine and Decentraland, representing projects in the fields of infrastructure, NFT and GameFi respectively. This highlights the diversity of projects using Aragon.
Aragon Client Vault on Ethereum
The newly launched Aragon App is still in its early stages, with limited mainstream protocol deployment or migration. The leading ones are Aragon Association and Eagle Ops, both of which are sub-DAOs established by Aragon itself to support protocol development.
Aragon client and application library distribution
Summarize
Aragon is an ambitious crypto project. As an ancient framework built in the early days of DAO, Aragon has witnessed the explosive growth of the DAO field and faced challenges in competing with other more convenient and simple tools. Nonetheless, Aragon remains steadfast in its commitment to pushing the boundaries of DAO exploration.
Cryptocurrency analysts often view Aragon as an experiment in public administration and governance that will eventually lead to a near-perfect governance system. One day it may become an appropriate basis for a new public order for future generations.
reference
https://dune.com/thepass/aragon-overview
https://aragon.org/manifesto