I wanted to take a bit more space to respond to Jake’s concerns - which are several.

For incredibly low risk, Aragon gets a few things:

Access to the Edgeware network, which is a WASM-runtime smart contract platform intended to be the first on the Polkadot Network, which will enable scalability and interoperability as it grows.

A governance-rights-conferring token proportional to their commitment.

The ability to use that token to alter the protocol’s development going forward.

A relationship with an organization that shares both value (dgov) and technological alignment. (Substrate!)

Depending on your valuation model of governance-rights conferring tokens, I would argue that increasing the power that Aragon has over multiple platforms that it might deploy to, increases the value of ANT.

My next thought on this concern is that this framing seems fairly zero-sum game, and I believe that the lockdrop participation is rather a mutualist action. Both can increase in value, so I hope that the coincidence of EDG tokens increasing in value wouldn’t prevent Aragon from participating if it would benefit. That said, it isn’t clear that Aragon being allocated EDG in our lockdrop process improves EDG’s value, in this sense, I feel that most of the benefits of participating flow to Aragon.

Lastly, lockdrop participation can involve signaling, where EDG tokens are allocated without ‘locking,’ and the language of our proposal reflects the ability for the Aragon Association to explore a mix of locking (Up to 40k ETH) and signaling - with practically zero-cost for the latter behavior to Aragon. I would encourage a Yes vote on AGP-35 because it enables that zero-cost, zero-lock participation, but also locking should the Association determine to do so. Most importantly, AGP-35 allows the Association to continue to research and discuss the action further.

I don’t fully follow this point - it seems to offer a false dichotomy between “Must support all or none,” and I imagine that should other projects write proposals for Aragon involvement, they will have different merits and for instance, token distribution processes, that will warrant case-by-case discrimination.

We are asking to be judged on the merits we offer - which include Substrate development efforts and modules (which Aragon is already aligned to,) and a cheaper, faster, (and through Polkadot,) interoperable and scalable smart contract platform that Aragon could theoretically deploy to one day. Also, the WASM runtime is great - devs can write in any language that compiles. That inclusivity of platform is a big win in our eyes.

Overall, we feel that: access to a soon-to-launch smart contract platform with these immense benefits, governance rights over that network, and preexisting technological and value alignments are well-worth continuing the conversation since the cost of participation is arguably lower than any other proposal extant on the AGP Finance track.