This research article is presented by ThePASS team, and special thanks to the proofreading by Aragon Growth Guild. The PASS is a pioneering DAO aggregator and search engine, currently the largest source of DAO data, playing a crucial role in providing insights and analysis for DAOs.

Introduction

The birth of DAO originated from a simple idea: that technology should be used as a tool for liberation, unleashing all human goodwill and creativity, rather than as a tool for enslavement and exploitation. Although DAOs are still in the experimental stage and have not yet established best practices beyond web3, there are still many unexplored areas in this ocean of DAOs, making 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 foundational infrastructure for complete DAO implementation.

Overview of Aragon

The failure of The DAO in 2016 dealt a significant blow to the DAO space and the entire history of cryptocurrencies, slowing down the development of the DAO industry. For quite some time, the DAO landscape remained dormant until the arrival of DeFi Summer.

Aragon is one of the earliest DAO projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, successfully conducting an ICO in May 2017, raising 275,000 ETH (equivalent to approximately $250 million at the time of fundraising, and around $4.5 billion at the time of writing). This was the fourth largest crowdfunding sale in history at that time. Aragon provides templates for successfully launching DAOs in minutes and further customization using modular applications.

Until 2020, there was a surge of DAO experiments during the bull market, with the influx of DeFi users. This included ambitious social-type DAOs (with thousands of global members) and NFT-centric DAOs that facilitate small-scale investments and collections. Over time, many DAOs gradually disappeared, but those that persevered have become shining stars in the blockchain space. The momentum of DAOs continues to steadily rise.

For DAOs, Aragon is one of the pioneers in DAO development. The open-source code on the Aragon network and a series 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 other well-known projects use Aragon to launch and expand their projects.

With over six years of experience in DAO framework development, coupled with a keen understanding of the industry's demand for higher modularity and adaptability, Aragon stands at the forefront of exploring the DAO product roadmap.

As a result, Aragon no longer provides pre-set on-chain templates for organizations, but has established a novel, modular, user-friendly DAO framework that allows each organization to customize according to its unique needs. In March 2023, Aragon introduced a new modular technology stack:

• Aragon App: A non-coding platform for creating and managing DAOs. This application provides a simple, user-friendly on-chain base for communities to create proposals, vote, and add new members.

• Aragon OSx: A modular DAO framework with security and flexibility at its core. Aragon OSx is the foundational governance layer, allowing organizations to adapt by installing and uninstalling plugins to change the organization's logic.

Aragon Application

Compared to governance platforms like Snapshot or lifecycle-specific multi-signature wallets like Safe, Aragon aims to provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution for building DAOs from inception to maturity. Every proposal, vote, and action takes place on the blockchain, rather than relying on off-chain snapshots or the security of trusted signatory groups.

Until recently, the most active DAOs were either DeFi protocols or web3 infrastructure existing on general platforms. In contrast, the current DAO wave is a treasure trove of goals and ideas with diverse needs. As DAOs become more prevalent, Aragon's strength lies in its ability to provide a streamlined and comprehensive set of tools for creating and managing DAOs, covering the entire range from 0 to 1 to 100.

Aragon Stack

Aragon Data Analysis

Overview

In the nearly six years since its inception, over 7,000 DAOs have been established using Aragon. These DAOs collectively manage assets worth approximately $12 billion (including stETH), have proposed around 23,000 proposals, and received over 45,000 votes from more than 6,000 voters, averaging about 7 votes per person.

While the original data may not immediately convey the impact, in the following sections, we will delve into each specific subcategory, uncovering the development trajectory of Aragon and providing insights into its future prospects.

Aragon Data Overview

DAOs

Looking at the specific number of DAOs on different blockchains from a different perspective, it is clear that as an early established project, Aragon was the preferred framework for establishing DAOs on Ethereum before 2020. However, starting from June 2020, the gas fees on Ethereum forced many DAOs to migrate to alternative blockchains or adopt off-chain governance solutions such as Snapshot.

Monthly creation of Aragon DAOs on Ethereum (by version)

In September 2021, Aragon expanded to Polygon, and the number of deployed DAOs quickly surpassed those on Ethereum. This can be seen as an indicator of builders adopting Layer 2 solutions within their communities. The new Aragon technology stack App and OSx were launched on Polygon at the end of March 2023. This significantly increased the accessibility of DAOs for developers worldwide. It is worth noting that when deployed on Polygon, the cost of creating proposals is as low as 5 cents or even less. Aragon has been actively expanding its influence to other Layer 2 ecosystems, including deployment on Base in August 2023.

Monthly creation of Aragon DAOs by chain

Considering Aragon's product iterations, since the release of the new technology stack in March 2023, Aragon App has quickly surpassed the old technology stack, becoming the preferred platform for creating new DAOs. It is worth noting that even in a market downturn, the number of DAO creations has increased against the trend.

Monthly creation of Aragon DAOs (by version)

DAOs that propose at least one proposal per month are defined as active DAOs. It is evident that the number of active DAOs on Ethereum has not experienced a significant decline after June 2020, unlike the significant decline in newly established DAOs. Additionally, the number of active DAOs on Polygon is at a similar level to Ethereum, indicating that the future activity of newly created DAOs on Polygon may be limited.

Monthly active Aragon DAOs (by chain)

Proposals

The number of proposals and active DAOs on different chains shows similar patterns of change. On Ethereum, the monthly number of proposals has steadily increased since the inception of Aragon, reaching a peak of around 800 in June 2020, followed by a decline.

Subsequently, in September 2021, Polygon took the lead, maintaining around 500 proposals per month throughout 2022, but showing a declining trend since 2023.

Monthly proposal by chain

Since the launch of the new technology stack in March 2023, the proposal activity of the previous version of the Aragon client has gradually transitioned to Aragon App, currently maintaining approximately 200 proposals per month.

Monthly proposals listed by version

When grouping DAOs based on the number of proposals, it is noteworthy that two-thirds of DAOs have never initiated a proposal. Among the proposed DAOs, the majority have created fewer than four proposals. This may be due to many DAOs experimenting with Aragon's new technology stack in the current market downturn; however, the actual demand for decision-making may not be as widespread.

DAO distribution of Aragon proposals

Number of Votes

The number of votes and voters can reflect the level of governance activity within DAOs. These two indicators show similar trends in terms of the number of proposals. On Ethereum, the number of votes and voters experienced continuous growth, followed by a gradual decrease, eventually stabilizing at a consistent level.

Currently, the monthly number of votes and voters on Aragon is approximately 500 and 200, respectively. Compared to other governance tools like Snapshot or Tally, there is still a gap in the number of users and activity on Aragon.

Monthly on-chain votes on Aragon

Monthly on-chain voters on Aragon

Fortunately, Aragon has chosen to move away from a simple proposal voting framework and adopt a more innovative approach. Governance within DAOs is a complex framework that requires a more complex and modular structure. Some DAOs need to track reputation and participation, while others require robust incentive structures, and others need powerful debate and resolution tools.

The diversity of DAOs has driven the need for more modular DAO architectures and interoperability with the best DAO tool solutions, allowing DAOs to choose according to their needs. Therefore, Aragon has developed a new technology stack to address these needs and challenges. In Aragon OSx, DAOs can flexibly utilize plugins to add or remove any custom functionality, including governance, asset management, membership handling, and more.

Treasury

As expected, the majority of DAO treasuries on Aragon are concentrated on Ethereum. The treasury size has steadily accumulated since 2018, surged during the DeFi summer of 2020, and peaked in November 2021, exceeding $1.7 billion. After the bear market, the treasury size gradually decreased, stabilizing at around $500 million.

Aragon Treasury by Chain

Among DAOs created using the Aragon client on Ethereum, Lido and Aragon itself have the largest treasuries, collectively accounting for over 80% of the total treasury. They are followed by API3, Altered State Machine, and Decentraland, representing projects in the infrastructure, NFT, and GameFi domains, 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 Aragon Association and Eagle Ops, both sub-DAOs established by Aragon to support protocol development.

Distribution of Aragon client and app treasuries

Conclusion

Aragon is an ambitious crypto project. As an ancient framework established early in the DAO space, Aragon has witnessed explosive growth in the DAO field and faces challenges in competing with other more convenient and simple tools. Nevertheless, Aragon remains steadfast in breaking the boundaries of DAO exploration.

Cryptocurrency analysts often view Aragon as an experiment in public management and governance, which may eventually form an almost perfect governance system. One day, it may become the appropriate foundation for a new public order for future generations.

References

https://dune.com/thepass/aragon-overview

https://aragon.org/manifesto

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