Aragon DAO—Ease of Use, Fees, Tokens, and More

Aragon is a unique Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) project with a mission of championing community governance models. The beauty of blockchain technology is that it facilitates the development of multi-layered worlds.

Though the name seems like a misspelling of Aragorn, the famous Lord of the Rings character, Aragon DAO draws its name from an autonomous district in Spain that once experienced a stateless form of governance for almost six years in the 1930s. The DAO aims to reintroduce this organized and functional community governance via blockchain.

Aragon considers itself the mother of all DAOs—like what Bitcoin is to cryptocurrency. Although it's a DAO, it provides comprehensive templates and support for entrepreneurs to create DAO projects. In this regard, Aave and Decentraland DAO are built on Aragon.

This review aims to address some of the commonly asked questions about Aragon, such as:

• What is Aragon?
• Is Aragon DAO free?
• How can you create your DAO with Aragon?
• How does Aragon make money?

Read on to learn more.



Aragon Fees and Pricing

The growth of DAO communities has overwhelmed Ethereum capacity, making DAO functioning and voting ridiculously costly. Aragon DAO is not a free DAO creation tool. It will cost you 0.2 ETH, approximately $360 at the current market prices, and an average transaction cost of 30gwei to create a DAO on Aragon through the Ethereum blockchain.

However, Aragon partnered with the Polygon network in 2021 to enable almost zero gas fees for DAO development, functioning, and voting on its protocol. Additionally, the partnership aims to provide faster transactions and a frictionless user experience.

Aragon developers will also enjoy the composability of Polygon's growing ecosystem, which consists of popular DeFi projects like Sushi and Slingshot.

Aragon's integration with Polygon offers almost a 5,000x discount on the cost of creating a DAO—from more than $500 on Ethereum to nearly $0.1 on Polygon. This is undeniably a game-changing partnership for DAO creators and users.

Polygon and Aragon share a mutual vision of a freely accessible, borderless, and decentralized world. The Polygon network is trusted by many blockchain projects and boasts a vast amount of traction, particularly in the DeFi landscape. For instance, Polygon has three times more SushiSwap users than Ethereum.

Create Your Own DAO With Aragon

Follow these simple steps to create a DAO with Aragon:

1. On the Aragon dApp, choose a QuickNode Rinkeby Node in your Web3 wallet, assuming you own at least 0.2 ETH in your wallet.
2. Press the "Connect Account" tab, select your preferred wallet, and confirm the connection request sent to your wallet.
3. Choose "Ethereum Testnet" Rinkeby.
4. Press the "Create Organization" button.
5. Choose a template for your entity, press the "Use this Template" tab, and insert your company name.
6. Set your preferred support percentage, minimum approval percentage, and vote duration.
7. Enter your token name and symbol.
8. Specify your token holders and issue them with tokens—ensure the information you have entered is correct before clicking the "Launch your Organization" button.
9. A window will show up on your Web3 wallet for transaction confirmation—approve the two transactions to create your DAO.
10. After confirming the transactions, press the "Get Started" tab to create your first proposal query and initiate the voting process.
11. Press "Voting" on the left side of the window, then "New Vote" to generate a new proposal query and open it for voting.

When the proposal is live, community members can agree or disagree with it during the period you set earlier. That's it!

ANT Tokens and How Aragon Works

Aragon works by combing multiple techniques and features to achieve its goals. Every DAO comes pre-loaded with the primary organization components. Developers can create business systems like finance, token sales, and voting mechanisms.

Aragon DAO has three tokens:

1. ANT
2. ANJ
3. ARA

ANT is an Ethereum-based currency that acts as the native currency of Aragon. Aragon users need it for governance voting.

ANT tokens entered the crypto market with a bang. Aragon DAO's Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fundraised $24 million within 15 minutes of launch. The ICO took place in May 2017, and the funds raised helped steer the company to stardom. You can buy ANT tokens on popular exchanges like Binance, KuCoin, WazirX, etc.

ANJ is also an Ethereum-based token used for rewarding juries of the Aragon Court. In addition, you can stake the ANJ tokens and generate yield in the Aragon protocol. DeFi staking protocols are becoming more and more popular as they offer steadier returns than crypto trading. These protocols also do not require users to surrender asset ownership.

The ARA token is used in the Aragon Chain, a side chain that acts as a foundation in the Aragon DAO. The prices of Aragon tokens are subject to regular changes caused by the volatility of the crypto market.

The market values of Aragon tokens are influenced by multiple elements such as the total supply, technical upgrades and updates (like the Aragon V2 launch in 2020), developments, integrations (like the Aragon-Polygon Integration of 2021), and network users. Aragon token prices are also influenced by the broader economy, collective trends, regulations, and Bitcoin's momentum.

ANT's intrinsic value is driven by its applications, technology, and technical capacity.

Is Aragon a Realistically Viable System for the Future?

Aragon DAO offers developers and entrepreneurs a frictionless and easy way to start DAOs. It works as a website creator by relying on pre-defined modules, which can be tailored to align with a business's specific needs. This way, Aragon offers valuable templates and dApps that allow users to exploit the power of blockchain without necessarily assembling an internal team.

As the native currency for Aragon DAO, ANT will continue to rise in value with Aragon's network development. So far, we can confidently say Aragon is a realistically viable project for the future since its approach to decentralized governance adoption continues to be highly effective.

Aragon strives to further integrate blockchain adoption through its modular tactic to standard business applications. Notably, the platform has experienced significant success since its inception. It has over $900 million in value held across 15,000 DAOs. The organization is wholly decentralized through a governance system, enabling community management of its core functions and code.