I appreciate all the efforts that you are putting into these conversations. I have been following these for some time now, and today I felt like giving my 2¢ too, as I have the feeling (maybe wrongly) that we enter a loop over and over again.
First, I would like to ask: what Freedom means?
Even if the motto “Fight for Freedom” (and “Freedom for People”) was a good start I think it could be the moment to change it (as many other brands did in the past). Because, in my opinion doesn’t fit to describe what Aragon actually. Think for a moment, this motto can be easily embraced by many actors without any problem, including the Workers Party of DPRK, an anarchosyndicalist group, an ancap libertarian, or Donald Trump.
Why? Because it’s blurry, pretentious and starts from a naive analysis of reality (as if freedom is something mathematical).
On top of this, we should add some contextual facts, like the fact that, as of today, Aragon always worked within the framework and on the side of the Nation-state and its legislation, something that makes all these pompous motto even more meaningless. I think that some structural parts of the current problems arise from this situation. We don’t know where Aragon has to be positioned.
So instead of putting efforts on debates that always end up in circles, I think we should start to debate about the roots of the situation:
-
Aragon is ready to become a protocol DAO?
-
Is it realistic to build a community (currently we don’t have a strong community) before having a flagship product (like Aragon Zaragoza) or even a protocol? If yes, is this the path we want to follow?
-
Are there people within the Aragon Community who want to create a DAO that is impervious to the traditional social systems (like nation-states) and that has a roadmap that truly aligns with the manifesto and all what it implies?
-
In that case, who is willing to lead and make a proposal similar to that for the ANT holders to approve?
-
If not, maybe it is time to stop for a moment and rethink the motto and the manifesto.
-
Also, is there a proposal to make Aragon more anti-fragile with respect to potential attacks from the traditional system? (Like the ones suffered by the users and the project of Tornado Cash)
These are really important questions to answer, but one important problem in Aragon is that we always tend to postpone our problems to the future, and once the future comes, we become immobile, going over the same thing over and over again. Rather than dealing with reality and how to change it, we ignore it.
For me, contributions such as those of @eaglelex are very relevant. I might agree with these ideas or not, but I think they’re some of the most lucid on Aragon nowadays. It’s important to pay attention to them.
Update:
Furthermore, talking about the context of the Aragon project current situation, we also have to be aware that the TOP15 ANT token holders (with voting power) hold more than 80% of the tokens. Among them are Aragon Association accounts, CEX, Guilds’ multisigs, VCs wallets, other investors and founders.
This also means that even with delegation (to aggregate the voting sense of small holders) and other mechanisms like quadratic voting, the vote distribution is quite centralized. And this is a big risk.
I think this is something that has to be addressed, with a specific plan. Because this is also a weakness that comes from a root problem. One that we have to be aware of and know how to address before we continue making more blind steps. Because the bigger and more complex we make the project without taking this into account, the more difficult it will be to manage it and get all parties aligned.