(2021-08-18) The Optimistic DAO: Aragon Govern, Aragon Voice, Aragon Court

The Optimistic DAO: Aragon Govern + Aragon Voice + Aragon Court. Over the last few months, we have been working hard to rationalize Aragon into a complete open-stack solution that takes advantage of the low fees and frictionless DAO management offered by Optimistic Governance.

On Aragon Govern, anyone can establish an Optimistic DAO with a subjective Agreement that is automatically within the jurisdiction of Aragon Court. To get started, mint or import your governance tokens into Aragon Govern, then invite token holders to freely create off-chain signaling proposals on Aragon Voice or collateralize actual on-chain transactions with a scheduled delay (to allow for any potential challenges)

In the taxonomy of governance, Aragon Govern acts as a DAO's executive branch, responsible for enacting the will of the community as expressed by the legislature. In the Aragon OpenStack, the legislative role is performed by Aragon Voice, where token holders may make proposals and vote on them for free. The actions of Aragon Govern are justified by Aragon Voice, but if there is a disagreement between the two, this can be held to account by the third, judicial branch, Aragon Court.

What is Optimistic Governance?

Frictionless

Sometimes called 'lazy' consensus, Optimistic Governance assumes that all actions are legitimate unless proven otherwise. In practice, this means that governance becomes a perpetual-motion machine of proposals that are scheduled as on-chain transactions to execute by default, unless they are specifically challenged in Aragon Court during a Dispute Time Delay set by the DAO.

Safe

Aragon Govern protects DAOs in four main ways:

Second, for more community control, Aragon Govern DAOs may restrict executive power to a whitelist of selected addresses so only they may schedule the transfer of funds.

First, every DAO must have a DAO Agreement that defines the purpose and parameters of the community.

Third, as mentioned, DAO transactions cannot be executed immediately. Instead, they are delayed by a period of time set by the DAO called the Dispute Time Delay

Fourth, a collateral deposit set by the DAO is required to schedule a transfer of DAO funds.