The Aragon Association (AA) deploys most of the treasury to allow all token holders to redeem ANT for ETH, dissolves the AA, and passes the torch to continue the mission.

Aragon was founded in 2016 with the mission to create better organizations that are onchain, borderless, and transparent. Since then, Aragon popularized DAOs, taking them to their first $1bn in AUM across thousands of deployments.

We succeeded at many things, and failed at others.

The AA was created to oversee the project’s treasury, assets, and multiple teams. We attempted to balance these obligations by giving ANT holders and the community more control over the project. The AA’s purpose was always to sustainably support the Aragon mission.

Over the course of several years the AA experimented with different governance initiatives, such as decentralizing the project with multiple teams, implementing an Aragon Governance Proposal process, and creating a parallel optimistic governance DAO for the community. While the treasury grew significantly after several bull markets, bureaucratic complexity, misaligned stakeholders, and failed attempts at modifying the governance increased tensions within the project.

This led the AA to a rushed attempt to vest control of the treasury directly in the hands of ANT holders. However, too few ANT was in the hands of users, partners, and builders after years of product pivots, and a volatile gap existed between the value of the treasury and the token market cap. This put Aragon's mission in jeopardy.

Rather than continuing down the current path, after several months of deep introspection we have concluded that the shaky foundations underlying the current structure cannot be fixed and have been holding back the project for too long. Neither the AA nor ANT are currently suited to govern the project. A fresh start is needed and nothing short of a total reset will do.

It’s time for a new chapter that will not only safeguard, but advance the project’s mission, under new leadership and a leaner product-focused structure.

The Aragon Association has passed the following resolution:

• Deploy most of the treasury to allow all token holders to redeem their ANT for ETH – sending 86,343 ETH to a redemption contract (≈ 87% of treasury held in non-native assets);
• Dissolve the AA – committing $11m USD to cover outstanding obligations and mitigate against regulatory uncertainty;
• Continue the mission in a product-focused structure – committing remaining funds to product development.

Official announcement from the project team: https://blog.aragon.org/a-new-chapter-for-the-aragon-project