On November 2nd, the Swiss non-profit Aragon Association announced its dissolution and the distribution of a significant portion of its assets to ANT token holders.
Specifically, the Aragon Association will allocate 86,343 ETH (approximately $155 million USD) through a smart contract on the Ethereum network. Each ANT token holder will receive 0.0025376 ETH per token (approximately $4.57 USD at the current price). After all conversions are completed, the project will initiate a burn mechanism and burn all remaining ANT tokens. ANT will no longer serve any utility after this point.
Additionally, Aragon announced the transfer of $11 million USD from its treasury to the Aragon Shield Fund to “cover outstanding obligations and minimize regulatory uncertainty.”
Despite the dissolution announcement, the development team emphasized that they would reorganize into a new company and continue to develop Aragon products.
Regarding the reasons behind the decision to dissolve, Aragon cited “internal complexity, diverging stakeholders, and ongoing struggles to modify governance.” Previously, Aragon had attempted to salvage the situation by transferring control of the treasury to ANT token holders. However, they found that there was an “unstable disconnect […] between the treasury value and the token market capitalization.”
In May, a group called the “Risk Free Value (RFV) Raiders” had attempted to gain control of Aragon’s treasury by purchasing ANT tokens and ousting the association. The association referred to this as a “51% attack.”
As a result, they decided to refund investors and dissolve the association.
Aragon is a platform that allows users or projects to easily create and manage their own DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) using pre-programmed tools. The DAOs created on Aragon have high scalability and customization capabilities. There are currently over 5,000 DAOs built on Aragon, and their services are used by prominent names in the crypto market such as Aave, Lido, Decentraland, and more.
The Aragon Association was responsible for the legal oversight of the Aragon project.