Decentralized Governance and the Fight for Freedom
Aragon Project is trying to tackle one of the most challenging areas in the blockchain space by building tools for decentralized governance. Aragon founder Luis Cuende joined us on Epicenter to discuss they way they envision those tools and explain why they play a crucial role in the fight for freedom.
Luis Cuende has been spending a lot of time thinking about problems with governance and the inefficiencies in the political processes — and how to solve them. Already as a 16 year old he advised the European Commission on technology policy, which led him to realize how big of an issue are the knowledge gaps facing policymakers trying to keep up with various technological advancements. Another inspiration for the Aragon project were the rural revolutionary anarchist collectives, such as the Aragon area in Spain, which launched remarkable widespread egalitarian and communitarian efforts while self-governing. Luis believes that these communities were characterized by high levels of empathy and effective communication, and wants to embed these values in his work. Finally, his drive to build tools increasing freedom is influeced by his personal background — Luis was born in Venezuela and understands well the challenges faced by citizens of countries governed by corrupt governments.
Given Luis’ background, it’s not surprising that Aragon is a value-driven project with freedom and self-sovereignty at its core, and a strong focus on privacy. The idea is that you can always make a choice to participate in the system or to exit — fork it. We should build systems that are opt in and the user is fully in control, explains Luis. The main components of Aragon include smart contract system AragonOS, which provides upgradability and governance mechanism by default. The Aragon network will also have a digital jurisdiction mechanism, designed specifically to meet the needs of blockchain-native entities that don’t exist in any one place or represent any specific traditional legal entity. Aragon team envisions a network of various Aragon organizations who create agreements via smart contracts and use the Aragon Network Token as a collateral to back these agreements between parties. Before that vision is realized in practice, the Aragon Foundation is working towards getting DAOs recognized as legal entities in various countries, e.g. by providing grants programs for legal research.
The recently launched developer portal hack.aragon.org contains all the information required to start developing apps on top of Aragon, for example by using the governance app framework for smart contracts. The early version of the Aragon network will be launched this year and a revised whitepaper will be released soon. If you want to get involed in the Aragon project, chat with the team on aragon.chat or head to hack.aragon.org and start hacking.
Watch the full episode on Epicenter, and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, YouTube & SoundCloud. Drop by our Gitter community channel to discuss the show and leave some feedback.
