Aragon (project)

Aragon is an open-source software project that allows for the creation and management of decentralized organizations.

Aragon

Aragon Project logo
Original author(s)	Luis Cuende, Jorge Izquierdo
Initial release	10 February 2017
Repository	https://github.com/aragon
Written in	Solidity, JavaScript, React
Operating system	Available as a Web app
Platform	Ethereum
Type	Open-source software, Free software, Decentralized autonomous organization, Decentralized decision-making, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency
License	Affero General Public Licensev3, CC0.[1]
Website	https://aragon.org

The blockchain-native organizations created on Aragon utilize Ethereum smart contracts and IPFS for a decentralized, peer-to-peer operating system. Aragon is also capable of creating other non-decentralized digital organizations as well.

The project was originally started in November 2016 by founders Luis Cuende[2] and Jorge Izquierdo. It was officially announced to the public on February 10th 2017 in a blog post.[3]

Luis Cuende who had been coder and an entrepreneur since a young age was initially named as Project Lead for Aragon. His most notable work before Aragon include Asturix and Stampery and was an Advisor to the VP of the European Commission.[4] For Asturix he won the Hack Now contest (in the under-18 category), an award for the best app or "hack" sponsored by HackFwd in Spain.[5] He has also received recognition as Forbes 30 Under 30[6] and MIT Technology Review, Spanish Edition's Innovators Under 35[7]

Jorge Izquierdo was named as Tech Lead for the project. His previous work included successful iOS apps and he had mostly worked as an iOS Developer. In 2017 he was named as a Thiel Fellow[8] for his work on Aragon.

The development of Aragon was funded in a crowdfunding campaign that took place May 17th 2017. The Aragon Network Token (ANT) sale gathered $25,000,000 in under 15 minutes[9] and was the fourth largest crowdfunding campaign, and second largest in the blockchain space, at the time.