Launching Aragon Court and ANJ

The Aragon Network DAO has just deployed the Aragon Network Juror (ANJ) pre-activation smart contract. This pre-activation contract has received controller power over ANJ, allowing it to mint tokens according to the rules of the contract.

Aragon Court is the first Aragon Network service protocol, and ANJ is its native token, which jurors need to stake and activate in the Court to be selected to work and earn dispute fees.

For all ANT holders to have an equal chance of becoming jurors at the same rate, the Aragon Network DAO has decided for a long pre-activation period beginning January 7th, 2020, and lasting over a month.

Getting ANJ

Get ANJ at anj.aragon.org

The 34 day Aragon Court pre-activation period is scheduled to start January 7th, 2020 16:00 UTC and end February 10th, 2020 00:00 UTC. During this period, the Aragon Network Juror (ANJ) tokens will become available for the first time. Anyone with ANT will be able stake their ANT in the ANJ pre-activation smart contract to receive ANJ.

The pre-activation period (Phase 1) precedes the launch of Aragon Court (Phase 2) on February 10th. It allows prospective jurors to convert ANT to ANJ at a limited-time-only fixed rate of 1 ANT per 100 ANJ before Phase 2 begins.

During Phase 1, your ANJ will activate automatically upon conversion, making you an active Aragon Court juror when the Court starts on February 10th. Only ANT holders interested in participating as jurors in Aragon Court should convert ANT into ANJ. When Phase 2 begins, only users with a minimum of 10,000 activated ANJ will be eligible to adjudicate disputes and earn rewards as jurors. The converter module requires a minimum input of 100 ANT for conversion to ANJ, so everyone who converts will be eligible as a juror.

When Phase 2 begins, the fixed conversion rate of 1 ANT per 100 ANJ will end, and ANJ will only be available at a rate set by a bonding curve. The ANT to ANJ rate will be dictated as a function of ANJ’s token supply, and as ANT holders stake and mint more ANJ into circulation, the ANT rate per ANJ will increase. On the other hand, if jurors deactivate ANJ and unstake their ANT, the ANT rate per ANJ will decrease.

During the pre-activation, you will be unable to convert your ANJ back to ANT until the bonding curve launches on February 10th, and ANJ deactivation is enabled.

All ANT staked during pre-activation or on the bonding curve will stay locked in a smart contract that does not allow withdrawals except for ANJ to ANT conversions. Locked ANT cannot be used for any other purpose. Therefore, if you want to continue using ANT for Aragon Network governance, make sure that you keep some ANT in reserve rather than locking all of your ANT in the pre-activation or bonding curve contracts.

After the pre-activation period ends, the Aragon Network DAO can mint up to a 10% of the initial supply of ANJ and transfer it to the DAO. The Aragon Network DAO would then allocate those tokens to incentivize usage or onboarding jurors. Neither the Aragon Association nor Aragon One will benefit directly from these minted tokens.

Staying up to date

When you convert your ANT to ANJ on anj.aragon.org, you will be required to provide an email address so that you can receive notifications about important Aragon Court announcements, your assigned cases, and pending juror obligations. We strongly recommend that you monitor these notifications since there are financial penalties for not fulfilling your juror obligations on time. We will only use your email address for these Court-related notifications, unless you have signed up for other Aragon newsletters with the same address.

Aragon Court governance

Per the approval of AGP-126, the official deployments of Aragon Court and ANJ are officially governed by the Aragon Network DAO.

An initial council manages the Aragon Network DAO during Phases 1 and 2 of the launch process. The council will later be dissolved and transfer full control of the Aragon Network DAO (Phase 3) to ANT holders, as described in the launch process outlined in AGP-126.

The following members govern the Aragon Network DAO:

Aaron Foster (Aragon community): Early supporter and exceptionally active community member

Facundo Spagnuolo (Aragon One): Aragon Network team lead at Aragon One

Griff Green (Commons Stack): Giveth founder and member of the Whitehat Group

Jesse Pollak (Coinbase): Engineering leader for Coinbase's consumer organization

Joel Monegro (Placeholder): Partner at Placeholder

The council has committed to executing the following responsibilities:

Starting the Aragon Court pre-activation period by transferring control over ANJ to the appropriate smart contract. The AN DAO already executed this on December 17th.

Transition Aragon Network DAO's governance to ANT holders when Phase 3 can be safely executed.

Govern Aragon Court, re-parametrizing it if needed, and act in case of an emergency to protect users, ANJ holders, and ANT holders.

A note on date estimations

Even though the team feels very comfortable about the dates outlined in this blog post, there is a chance that unforeseen events may lead to delays. Start dates can be postponed at the discretion of the Aragon Network DAO. All smart contracts are already live and will activate on the following dates: