Getting ready for the Aragon Network: Adopting a new controller for ANT

Aragon -

ANT is an ERC20 token using the MiniMe standard. This token standard has very powerful features for on-chain voting and governance. MiniMe tokens have a controller, which is a smart contract that can perform certain privileged actions on the token.

The vision was always for the Aragon Network DAO to become that controller. But in the meantime, the Aragon Community Multisig acted as the interim controller.

Since we are now closer and closer to the Aragon Network DAO, the Aragon Community Multisig has migrated ANT's controller to a new smart contract. This new smart contract makes ANT safer by permanently removing the possibility for the controller to:

  • Forcibly burn ANT
  • Forcibly transfer ANT from other accounts
  • Pausing or halting transfers

Since the design space for the Aragon Network DAO was quite broad, not prematurely disabling those features made sense. That allowed the Aragon community to have a blank canvas to play with!

But now there’s a clear roadmap to the Aragon Network, from Phoenix to Firebird. The DAO outlined in those phases doesn’t need some of the privileged actions that the previous controller had. So revoking those powers, like forcing or pausing transfers, helps make ANT safer.

You can check out the smart contact and its code for the new risk-minimized controller here, and its audit here.

We are very excited about making ANT safer. But that’s not all. This is an exciting step towards transferring power over ANT to the Aragon Network DAO.

Giving up control is key for creating trust in decentralized systems. The next transaction that the Community Multisig will perform is transferring power over ANT from this risk-minimized controller to the Aragon Network DAO.

After that, the Phoenix phase will begin.