For years, the main focus of the Aragon ecosystem has been building tools for DAOs to thrive. As of today, Aragon DAOs have more than $350M in assets under management and help govern an economy worth billions of dollars. Aragon is the leading DAO platform.

We always believed that DAO tooling should be a public good, available to everyone for free, without any token. For the Aragon Network, the path to sustainability is in creating decentralized protocols that provide services to those DAOs. The first service protocols of the Aragon Network are Aragon Agreements and Aragon Chain.

The Aragon Network DAO

Protocols need to evolve to adapt to changing market conditions. Traditionally, startups apply a top-down approach to achieve product-market fit. But a different approach might be better suited to enable permissionless innovation. This new approach relies heavily on providing the community with agency over the protocol.

And that's where the Aragon Network DAO kicks in. It allows ANT holders to collectively regulate a protocol’s relationship with its market.

Big picture, the Aragon Network DAO is the keystone for bootstrapping a decentralized jurisdiction — a DAO, a human protocol, that empowers the whole Aragon community to rally around a common mission and set of shared values.

To that end, the Aragon Network DAO’s executive powers must:

• Allow ANT holders to enact and amend the Aragon Network Agreement
• Allow ANT holders to amend the DAO and its parameters
• Enable ANT holders to govern key Aragon Court parameters
• Enable ANT holders to govern a common funding pool, if the DAO has funds
  

As the leading DAO platform, we must make sure the Aragon Network DAO is a leading exemplar. By helping countless projects launch their DAOs, we have learned the pitfalls and researched groundbreaking governance models to address them.

Next steps for the Aragon Network

The launch of the Aragon Network was announced last November with a three-phase roadmap. 

With Phase 2 completed with the launch of Aragon Court, Phase 3 is now underway.

To ensure a safe and sound deployment, Phase 3 will be divided in two sub-phases: Phoenix and Firebird.

Phoenix, rising up

In Phoenix, the interim Governor Council will pass the executive powers over Aragon Court to ANT holders.

When Phoenix is complete, the Aragon Network DAO will be governed under a combination of objective and subjective rules:

• Objective rules encoded in and enforced by immutable smart contracts. Those ensure that some values are always upheld, even against a greedy or malicious majority.
• Subjective rules encoded in the human-readable Aragon Network Agreement. Those are interpreted and enforced by Aragon Court jurors.
  

It has been almost four years of hard work to get here. Today, we couldn’t be more excited to announce the estimate for completing the Aragon Network's transition into Phoenix is less than eight weeks away. The DAO’s code is now frozen and undergoing audits.

How ANT holders can participate in Phoenix

• Review and provide feedback on the Aragon Network Agreement. Read on for details.
• Adjudicate upcoming precedence campaign disputes as a juror. If you wish to participate but don't hold ANJ, you can always convert ANT to ANJ. Then you can activate it to become an Aragon Court juror. Jurors can then participate in the upcoming Aragon Network Agreement-related precedence campaign. More details will be announced after the Aragon Network Agreement community review is complete.
• Vote on the final version of the Aragon Network Agreement. The exact date of the vote and details about how to participate will be announced in the coming weeks.

Firebird and beyond

Although the original roadmap outlined in the Aragon Network whitepaper ends on Phoenix, the journey doesn’t end there.

In the Firebird phase, the Aragon Network will become unstoppable and financially sustainable. Firebird is the result of deep research into the areas of sufficient decentralization, community currencies, and fund allocation. 

Before Firebird, the Aragon community will be conducting many fund allocation experiments. Those will help us all in determining Firebird’s implementation.

With independence comes responsibility, and ANT holders will be navigating through uncharted territory.

Spread the word

ANT holders need to be ready for this landmark occasion. 

Please spread the word so that all ANT holders are aware of what’s coming and how to participate. Stay tuned for more opportunities for ANT holder participation in the coming weeks.

You can help by providing feedback on the Aragon Network Agreement, which will be open for community review until August 28, 2020.

Be sure to stay tuned via Twitter and Discord!

We are beyond excited for these next few weeks!