Aragon as the WordPress of DAOs

Originally, the idea for the Aragon client was to become an interface for the creation and management of decentralized organizations.

However, that leaves a question open: how do users (and not admins) interact with Aragon?

As we have seen with the recent Aragon and Reddit integration, people may interact with Aragon just by clicking a button in Reddit. Or just by clicking a Vote button in a hosted webapp.

The same way that it wouldn’t make sense for a blog reader to use the WordPress admin, it may not make sense for a DAO user to directly interact with the Aragon client.

Some people think the client is the one and only way to interact with Aragon. They think that it may be too advanced for their use case or not customizable enough. Because of that, some stop thinking about Aragon right there and choose a way simpler alternative like Moloch, although it isn’t a DAO framework and it may not perfectly suit their governance needs.

To fix that, I think we should:

  • Consider re-branding the Aragon client to Aragon Panel, Aragon Dashboard, Aragon Admin… something that tells DAO creators that it is the pro management interface, but they can create their own as well
  • Experiment with libraries that make it easy to code simple web applications that interact with Aragon. Maybe connecting to a caching server that fetches the DAO’s state, or even making transaction pathing easier to use while implementing new frontends

I have heard this concerns here and there, but I’d like for people who have actually onboarded users to chime in and confirm/reject if this is an actual issue for Aragon’s adoption.

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Am glad that Aragon is considering this direction! As discussed in other threads, I think some documentation on how to integrate with Aragon outside of the client would be most valuable for developers to realize this possibility. For what it’s worth, I on boarded the Denver Cryptoparty to an Aragon DAO and we had a lot of fun using it for our simple purposes, so I’m not a total hater of the client, since I’m sure I’m coming off as such. It’s a beautiful dashboard and has come leaps and bounds since launch. Much props!

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It’s great to see this being explored!

Yes, I think for many, or for certain end-users the client itself may not be the ideal primary interface. And development for those experiences could probably be improved alongside the client. One feature in the client that has aided development for me is the backend script and state management, along with the examples/starter templates. As you say, there are likely small libaries and examples that could similarly aid development external to the client. And even if, for some apps, the client does not end up being the primary interface it is still super helpful for development as well as serving as an Admin, or Pro-user dashboard during production.

I’ll definitely follow along with this development.

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an aragon plug-in for Wordpress would be nice where I can implement specific Aragon apps via shortcode directly in my website. For example the crowdfunding app.

It would be nice if there would be an Aragon app which I can use to login into all sites which uses Aragon so I just connect the website with Aragon app to interact with the website and don’t have to register on the site. Like scatter

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Coming from an obsession with general UX, onboarding, and DAOs, this thinking is directly aligned with the way we envision adoption. I’m a fan of the opinion that the Aragon client may serve as an admin interface to adjust the apps/functions available for respective DAO communities. Seems liks a similar relationship between a GSuite Admin Console and gmail. I’ve also gotten feedback from folks in Aragon DAOs that once they onboard, they often do not go back (reinforcing evidence for the admin console).

For the question around users interactions with DAOs, we want to allow for this to occur on platforms people are already communicating. That is what the Aragon Chat (DAOOps) grant is circling around, a bot enabling DAO onboarding, voting, proposal making without moving from the app the community is synchronously communicating (typically, a chatroom). Eventually, this also means we can enable mobile notifications, and aggregate voting/instant interactions via L2.

Lots of exciting possibilities here… would love for the opportunity to help unlock more communities to utilize the framework you all have worked so hard to build (fingers crossed on the upcoming vote)!

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Thanks everyone for your replies! I think getting someone to work on better documentation and libraries to interact with Aragon from outside the client makes sense.

Also, excited about your proposal @OKDuncan! Seems interesting

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So, a bit meta, but even the Aragon community doesn’t really use Aragon DAOs that much. If we had these buttons we could use Rinkeby (or mainnet) DAOs in the forum to vote on things within forum threads or even to allocate rewards directly in nominations threads. Would be pretty neat. Much more engaging for new (and current) community members.

Also, the Omise Go community forum, at one time, allowed users to add Ethereum addresses right to their profiles. Would be cool to hack around on Discourse to figure out how we could do that too. Then, maybe someday, everyone who participates in the forum would be able to use a DAO to signal, vote, or receive rewards.

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The proposal we put up for nest may not have indicated, but the DAOOps project has continued to evolve some based on what we see as most useful. We will be able to provide a system for people to interact with DAOBots across multiple platforms (essentially compatible with any messenger / social app).

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Hey @jorge … great question! This is the same point I made way back.

Aragon needs to appeal to PEOPLE … not the very few Admins who are spinning up organizations. Aragon’s current dashboard works for small circle of users similar to the State of Delaware admins registering new LLCs and C-corps. (Sorry for the U.S. references…but standard here. ;-).

I advise that Aragon should … help people with their multitude of organizational relationships. Look at it from the point of view of an INDIVIDUAL…with MANY org relationships. It is simple a different vantage point.

People interact with the world in only one of three ways: 1) as themself, 2) anonymously, and 3) as part of an ORG. I see Aragon as the foundation of all of an individual’s ORG relationships. If you have a token … you are a member of the org. “US” org spun up by US Govt…given to every citizen; “CA” org spun up by State of CA and given to every resident; “work1” org representing my main work; “work2” org representing my moonlighting job; “marriage” org between my wife and I; “partnership1” org working with my brother; “partnership2” org working with my biking buddies; etc., etc. All DAOs.

Hope that helps!

Herb

When I come to Aragon … I should see an interface that represents all the various orgs I am a member/owner of …

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This is actually one of the goals of Apiary, to have a newsfeed style dashboard where you can see all the recent updates and activity in DAOs you participate in or follow. @lkngtn or @onbjerg could probably provide more details :slight_smile: