Personal closure for Aragon

A few words on my personal farewell to Aragon.

Cofounding Aragon, and taking it from zero to popularizing a new class of organizational structures (DAOs), has been an incredible journey. We took something deemed impossible, and we transformed it into software helping govern >$16bn in protocols core to Ethereum, like Lido or Curve. We also contributed back to Ethereum, seeding projects like DAppNode or Frame, which I use daily. I’m thankful to everyone who made this happen, and especially to my former cofounder, Jorge.

However, like almost every high-growth journey, it has left its scars.

It’s been a few years that I haven’t been involved in Aragon’s day to day. Despite that, I continued being involved in some of Aragon’s governance.

Aragon Association announced that most of the treasury has been deployed towards allowing token holders to redeem ANT for ETH. Aragon raised $25m, but through our savvy treasury management and responsible spending, we multiplied that amount. Unfortunately, more is not always better. Such treasury distracted everyone from making a product, created endless bureaucracy and attracting opportunists to the project.

Now that most of the treasury has been deployed towards allowing token holders to redeem, my tenure at Aragon is fully done. Something so simple as letting go of excess funds has been such a complex and lengthy endeavor internally. I am exhausted.

Aragon has given me my best professional achievements and my worst nightmares. It’s taken a toll on me like nothing else in my life did.

I still have dear friends working at Aragon, and I hope the best for Aragon, the DAO space, and the fight for freedom. I hope taking the best of Aragon, but with a clean slate, renewed focus and way fewer funds, will help them take DAOs to their next stage.

It still is as noble of a mission as it was when we founded Aragon. And I gave it all I could.