Hey guys :) I’m back with yet another comprehensive list of questions and detailed answers to help you understand the complicated world of cryptocurrencies. This time I wrote about one of my favorite up and coming crypto’s, Aragon (ANT).

But first, if you haven’t already seen my latest articles on Loopring, Enjin Coin, and Lisk, be sure to check those out as well.

Hope you enjoy!

The list of Q&A is pretty long so first comes the list of questions that I have prepared the answers to:

What is Aragon? Who and When created Aragon? What are Aragon’s ANT token use cases? What is ANJ token? What is AragonOS? What is Aragon Court? What Decentralized Organizations Are Powered By Aragon? Did Aragon have an ICO? Does Aragon have its own Chain? Can You Stake Aragon’s ANT? What is the Best Wallet for Aragon token ANT? Where to buy Aragon?

1. What is Aragon?

Aragon website homepage

Aragon is a decentralized application (dapp) on the Ethereum blockchain that empowers anyone and everyone to create and manage Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs).

The DAOs created on Aragon empower freedom by creating tools for decentralized organizations to thrive and it does this by encompassing the most important aspects of decentralized blockchain technology.

Aragon Organizations Features

Digital

Aragon organizations are 21st-century organizations in that they are digital natives. They live on and are secured by, the decentralized Ethereum blockchain with transparent and immutable transactions.

Smart

Aragon leverages smart contracts that are written in computer code and enforced by the Ethereum blockchain. Smart contracts give Aragon organizations an unparalleled level of efficiency and automation.

Unstoppable

Aragon enables people to create unstoppable organizations that enable people to freely organize and collaborate without borders or intermediaries. Aragon’s organizations are difficult to shut down and circumvent the boundaries of censorship and oppression.

Global and Bureaucracy-Free

Aragon organizations are global and decentralized by default, enabling people across countries and even continents to collaborate without experiencing cumbersome bureaucracy.

Fast and Easy

Aragon organizations can be created in under 5 minutes. There is no paperwork involved, everything is digital and can be created with the click of a button.

Fully Customizable

With Aragon, its organizational structures are customizable, you don’t need to pick a one-size-fits-all solution. The platform enables users to experiment with new kinds of human collaboration with just a few clicks.

Built-in Transparency

Aragon runs atop of the transparent Ethereum blockchain so that people apart of an organization can easily view transactions, finances, and other important information.

Democratic

Aragon organizations can be created with unique governance models with secure and tamper-proof voting. This feature empowers entire communities and its implementation is as easy as selecting the Membership template.

A Universe of Dapps

Aragon organizations are fully modular, meaning you can install different dapps to enhance your organization in different ways, such as a different voting process or a better way to manage funds.

2. Who and When created Aragon?

Jorge Izuirdo and Luis Cuende - Aragon’s Founders

The Aragon project was founded by Luis Cuende and Jorge Izquierdo in November 2016.

Aragon is now governed by the community and is committed to decentralizing control. However, in the project’s early days it was primarily led by Luis Cuende.

Prior to creating and leading Aragon, Luis made a name for himself in the technological sphere. In 2011, he received a “Best Underage European Programmer” award, he’s received an MIT Innovators Under 35 award, and was also a recipient of Forbes’ 30 under 30 recognition.

Prior to these accomplishments, Luis was named as the best programmer of Europe under 18 by HackFwd and he even published his first book at age 18.

Apart from these awards and accomplishments, Luis has founded several startups, created the first Linux distribution with face login, and worked as an adviser to the Vice president of the European Commission.

Now, moving back to the Aragon project:

The idea for Aragon was born in November 2016 and the project didn’t launch until February 2017 with the release of Aragon 0.1. Then, some months later, Aragon launched its Aragon Network Token (ANT) sale via an initial coin offering (ICO) in May 2017.

Following the ANT ICO and nearly 1 year later, the Aragon project released Aragon 0.5 “The Architect” in March 2018, which was a sort of testnet for Aragon’s mainnet. Then, in October 2018, Aragon 0.6 was released and its mainnet went live for the first time.

Since Aragon launched its mainnet, the project has continuously been developing and building towards its vision of creating the world’s first digital jurisdiction with globally Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs).

3. What are Aragon’s ANT token use cases?

The Aragon Network Token (ANT) is the native cryptocurrency of the Aragon Network. ANT is primarily used for the governance of the Aragon Network, with additional use cases for accessing various Aragon Network services.

Aragon’s ANT token use cases:

Governance

Aragon Court

Aragon Chain

Future proposed uses

Trading

Governance

The first and most important use case for Aragon’s ANT token is its use as a Sybil-resistant mechanism for governance. 1 ANT token represents 1 vote in the Aragon Governance Proposal (AGP) process, which was implemented on November 17, 2018. With Aragon’s AGP process, anyone can get involved in the Aragon Network if they choose.

Aragon Court

A proposed use case for ANT is for ANT tokens to be deposited in a bonding curve to mint Aragon Network Juror (ANJ) tokens, which are used in Aragon Court – the world’s first digital jurisdiction with human jurors (more on this later).

Aragon Chain

Similar to ANT’s use case in Aragon Court, ANT tokens can be deposited in a bonding curve to mint Aragon Chain (ARA) tokens, which are then used in Aragon Chain (more on this later).

Future Proposed Uses

As the Aragon Network releases new services, there will be more proposals as to how ANT tokens will be utilized. Thus far, ANT tokens have been used for the purpose of minting new tokens utilized in Aragon Network services including Aragon Court and Aragon Chain.

Trading

Aragon’s ANT token is an ERC-20 token built atop the Ethereum blockchain. As an ERC-20 token, ANT is traded on a wide variety of cryptocurrency exchanges where traders can speculate on its value.

4. What is ANJ token?

Aragon’s ANJ token logo

The Aragon Network Juror (ANJ) token is the native token of the Aragon Court service. These tokens are required if you want to become a Juror in the Aragon Court. To acquire these tokens, Aragon Network Token (ANT) holders must deposit ANT into a bonding curve to mint ANJ tokens.

Alternatively, users can convert ANT, DAI, ETH, or USDC to ANJ using the module at anj.aragon.org or by clicking “Buy ANJ” on the website.

A minimum of 10,000 ANJ tokens are required to become a Juror and as of March 2020, the conversion for ANT to ANJ is on a 1:100 basis (1 ANT = 100 ANJ). The ANJ token ensures that jurors are properly aligned and maintain a well functioning Court.

Additionally, ANJ tokens are rewarded to Jurors in the form of dispute fees for successfully adjudicating disputes. Also, ANJ tokens are rewarded to Jurors in the form of monthly subscription fees for simply being an active Juror, whether you are drafted to a case or not.

5. What is AragonOS?

AragonOS (Aragon’s Operating System) is a smart contract framework for building decentralized organizations, dapps, and protocols. AragonOS has a strong focus on governance and upgradeability so that Aragon’s decentralized organizations or protocols are fully modular.

AragonOS Provides the following functionality:

Upgradability

Permission Control

Forwarders

Upgradability

Smart contracts can be upgraded to newer versions to fix unexpected bugs or add in new features.

Permission Control

AragonOS protects the functionality of organizations, dapps, or protocols by implementing modifiers that make certain features or aspects accessible only by other apps or entities if given permission.

Forwarders

AragonOS apps can communicate with one another by forwarding their intent to perform an action to other apps.

All of the above-mentioned features make it simple for AragonOS apps to incorporate various governance mechanisms.

6. What is Aragon Court?

Aragon Court

Aragon Court is a digital court (an online dispute resolution service) that handles subjective disputes that require the judgment of human jurors. Jurors solve real problems for real people and can manage disputes between people and organizations from all around the world.

Anyone can become a juror once they acquire a minimum of 10,000 ANJ tokens in which they stake when handling disputes to ensure that jurors maintain a well functioning court. If a juror fails to properly adjudicate a dispute, they may be penalized and lose a portion of their staked ANJ tokens.

Aragon Court jurors have access to a sophisticated dashboard where they can explore disputes and manage them efficiently. The dashboard makes it easy for Jurors by showcasing what they need to do, what the priorities are, and when they need to vote.

Jurors earn rewards for successfully adjudicating disputes and for simply being an active juror, whether you are called upon or not.

Aragon Court Benefits

Earn Income Online

Aragon Court is a great way to earn an income online by simply being an active juror and successfully adjudicating disputes.

Flexible Scheduling

Juror’s set their own hours. You decide when to make yourself available to rule on court cases or when you are unavailable and offline.

Meaningful Work

Aragon Court helps people from around the world access justice more conveniently and without the hefty costs of traditional courts.

7. What Decentralized Organizations Are Powered By Aragon?

Aragon went live on the Ethereum mainnet on October 30, 2018, and has since had more than 1000 decentralized organizations created on its platform. See below, a list of interesting projects that have publicly announced that they are or plan to become "Powered by Aragon".

1Hive (Source)

Althea (Source)

Auctus (Source)

Because of the Internet DAO (Source)

BlankDAO (Source)

Centrifuge (Source)

Cyber (Source)

Decentraland (Source)

District0x (Source)

lexDAO (Source)

Melon Protocol (Source)

MyBit (Source)

Ocean Protocol (Source)

Pool Together (Source)

Reddit (r/ethtrader) (Source)

Request Network (Source)

Spice VC (Source)

The DAO (Source)

UniDAO (Source)

Video DAC (Source)

1Hive

In 2019, 1Hive began experimenting by using an Aragon organization on Rinkeby to coordinate around a community currency called Honey. 1Hive is a group of like-minded entrepreneurs exploring novel ways to create, organize, and grow communities.

Althea

Althea is a system that lets routers pay each other for bandwidth, which allows people to set up decentralized ISPs in their communities. This decentralized organization’s subnet DAO dapp is powered by Aragon.

Auctus

Auctus Trading, a powerful crypto portfolio trading tool intends to use Aragon’s platform for its governance aspect. Auctus wants to use Aragon to organize its operations in a transparent and decentralized way.

Because of The Internet DAO

Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, released a script to accompany his 2013 album. This script is now part of a DAO controlled by the governance system of Aragon. The DAO enables the script to become a living piece of art that can be remade over and over again.

BlankDAO

BlankDAO chose Aragon to build its dapp because it provides the most reliable infrastructure for decentralized governance.

Centrifuge

Centrifuge is using Aragon to decentralize its efforts over time. Aragon will help Centrifuge’s organizational, financial, and funding layers of the systems they are building.

Cyber

The Cyber Congress, which developed the Cyber protocol lives in Ethereum as an Aragon DAO.

Decentraland

The Decentraland DAO on Aragon owns the most important smart contracts that makeup Decentraland, including the LAND Contract, the Estates Contract, Wearables, and the Marketplace.

District0x

Aragon serves as an essential governance layer for the district0x network. Whenever a new district is admitted to the district0x network, a corresponding Aragon organization is automatically created for that district.

Melon Protocol

The Melon Protocol chose Aragon to keep its decision-making system secure and transparent.

MyBit

The MyBit DAO built on Aragon decentralizes the decision-making process around actions taken within the MyBit ecosystem.

OceanProtocol

To carefully manage how new conditions emerge into the OceanProtocol ecosystem, an Aragon DAO is used to govern decision making.

PoolTogether

PoolTogether is using an Aragon DAO to run the financials for the project in a transparent way.

Reddit (r/ethtrader)

The r/ethtrader community is governed by an Aragon DAO which ensures decision making and transactions using the community’s “donut” token are transparent and auditable.

Request Network

Request believes it would be a strong asset for Aragon companies/organizations in that it can provide automated accounting and auditability for them.

Spice VC

Spice VC has partnered with the Aragon platform to bring governance to the world of security tokens.

The DAO

The DAO is a decentralized software stack based on the Aragon framework that allows capital to be securely pooled and strategically deployed to fund crypto-networks, dapp projects, companies, and trading opportunities.

UniDAO (DAO Universe)

The DAO Universe is community-driven DAO Funds built on ​Aragon​ and aimed to grow assets in management, value creation, and increase social influence.

Video DAC

This project will allow a node to be controlled using an Aragon DAO, to govern sustainable funding for the creation of video-enabled applications using Livepeer.

8. Did Aragon have an ICO?

Yes, Aragon held an initial coin offering (ICO) for its Aragon Network Token on May 17, 2017.

When the sale ended, it became known as the 4th largest crowdfunding event in history, and the 2nd largest in the blockchain space (after The DAO).

The ANT token sale was scheduled to run for 4 weeks (28 days), or until it reached the hidden hard cap. When the sale launched, within 26 minutes the token sale reached its hard cap raising 275,000 ETH ( roughly $25 million).

If it weren’t for the hard cap, the sale would have been much larger because, within the 26-minute cut-off period, 79,983 ETH (roughly $8 million) did not go through before the sale ended.

Participants in the sale received 100 ANT per 1 ETH.

In addition to the ANT ICO, Aragon also held an ANT token pre-sale where presale buyers received a 20% discount over ICO investors. Aragon raised a total of 2,719 ETH during the presale from the following participants:

CoinFund

ICONOMI

ShapeShift

Joe Urgo – Ethlance & Sorcerers

Daniele Levi – Stampery

Anonymous Ethereum Founding Member

Aragon Network Token (ANT) Distribution

Aragon issued a total supply of 39,609,524 ANT tokens upon launch and out of this total supply, the distribution was as follows:

Public sale + Pre-sale: 27,726,666.7 ANT (70 percent)

27,726,666.7 ANT (70 percent) Aragon Foundation: 5,941,428.6 ANT (15 percent)

5,941,428.6 ANT (15 percent) Early contributors and founders: 5,941,428.6 ANT (15 percent)





9. Does Aragon have its own Chain?





Aragon launched on the Ethereum blockchain network when its mainnet went live on October 30, 2018, and as of currently (March 2020), Aragon still resides on the Ethereum blockchain.

However, Aragon has been actively researching and building out its own blockchain to reside on so that it can take full control of the Aragon platform from the bottom up. By having its own blockchain, the Aragon project will be able to capture value wherever it is accrued in its own blockchain stack.

Currently, with the Aragon platform built atop Ethereum, it is very expensive. Ethereum’s gas prices keep on going up and Aragon is unable to provide its customers with low and reliable price estimations.

While Aragon believes in and supports Ethereum, the project simply can’t wait for the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet to be released in 2021 or 2022. Also, relying solely on Ethereum poses a considerable platform risk that Aragon feels they should hedge against by having Aragon on multiple chains.

That being said, Aragon is not necessarily leaving Ethereum as it still has incredibly important projects like Aragon Court and others on Ethereum. Instead, Aragon will maintain its Ethereum implementation and carry on with Ethereum 2.0, but at the same time, it’s releasing its own blockchain to better serve the Aragon community and build a more profitable blockchain model.

10. Can You Stake Aragon’s ANT?

Yes, you can stake Aragon’s ANT token for two different purposes:

To mint Aragon Network Juror (ANJ) tokens

To mint Aragon Chain (ARA) tokens

ANT token holders can stake their ANT tokens in a bonding curve to mint Aragon Network Juror (ANJ) tokens, which enables you to become a juror in Aragon Court and earn rewards for successfully adjudicating disputes.

ANT token holders will also be able to stake their ANT tokens in a different bonding curve to mint Aragon Chain (ARA) tokens which will be used in the Aragon Chain ecosystem.

In both of the aforementioned cases, staked ANT tokens can be retrieved when you deposit the minted ANJ or ARA tokens into the bonded curve where the staked ANT tokens reside.

11. What is the Best Wallet for Aragon token ANT?

Aragon (ANT) is a cryptocurrency based on Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard. Therefore, you can store ANT on a large multitude of different cryptocurrency wallets because Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens are among the most popular types of crypto tokens.

Here are the 5 best Aragon Network Token (ANT) cryptocurrency wallets:

MyEtherWallet (MEW) (Web Wallet)

MyCrypto (Web Wallet)

Ledger Nano S (Hardware Wallet)

Trust Wallet (Mobile Wallet)

Atomic (Desktop Wallet)

Apart from the above-listed wallets, Aragon Network Token (ANT) holders have a wide variety of other reputable ERC-20 cryptocurrency wallets to choose from including:

MetaMask

Trezor

Keepkey

Coinomi

Lumi Wallet

Coinbase Wallet

Parity

Mist

Guarda Wallet

Eidoo

Enjin Wallet

imToken Wallet

Exodus

Jaxx

Bread Wallet

Things to keep in mind when choosing a wallet:

Compatibility - The wallet should be compatible with different operating systems.

The wallet should be compatible with different operating systems. Ease of use - Simple and easy-to-use interface.

Simple and easy-to-use interface. Developer community - Active development for maintenance, ideas, support, and help.

Active development for maintenance, ideas, support, and help. Backup and security features - Pin codes and seed phrase backup.

Pin codes and seed phrase backup. Control private keys - You should own and control your keys.

12. Where to buy Aragon?

Aragon’s ANT cryptocurrency can be bought and sold on a peer-to-peer (P2P) basis but the most popular way to buy, sell, or trade Aragon’s ANT token is through cryptocurrency exchanges, both centralized or decentralized.

You can buy ANT with cryptocurrency or fiat at the following top exchanges. In most cases, you will have to fund your account with fiat, buy Bitcoin or Ethereum, and then use BTC or ETH to buy Aragon Network Token (symbol ANT).

Bancor - BNT

Bitfinex -BTC, ETH, USD

Bittrex International - BTC, ETH

HitBTC - BTC

IDEX - ETH

KyberSwap - ETH

Livecoin - BTC

Hope you enjoyed that read :) Let me know if I have missed something in the comments.