Governance proposal: Merge ANJ into ANT

Aragon -
Update:Aragon Forum

ANJ was launched in February 2020 as the work token for Aragon Court jurors. Since then, over 250 jurors have activated their ANJ to adjudicate disputes in Aragon Court.

Even with that success, community members and other participants have raised questions about ANJ, starting with why a separate token is really needed.

The main reason to have multiple tokens was to isolate the cryptoeconomic incentives — so that jurors have a set of incentives different to those of ANT holders.

While that makes sense in theory, the drawbacks outnumber that single benefit.

Let’s take ANJ’s network valuation. Aragon Court’s security is a function of its network valuation — currently at around $6m. In contrast, ANT’s network valuation is well over $125m — roughly 20x. A 20x increment in security would result in more trust in the Aragon Court protocol, growing adoption.

Source: Delphi Digital’s take on why ANJ market cap is hindering Aragon Court’s adoption. Read more.

Also, most people don’t understand bonding curves or what a work token is. This has caused a lot of confusion around ANJ and Aragon Court.

With all of that, Aragon One, core developers, have submitted a proposal to merge ANJ back into ANT.

The proposal consists of locking ANJ’s price at today’s rate (0.015 ANT for 1 ANJ) and minting 549,862 ANT (1.37% inflation) to redeem all ANJ in circulation at that rate.

After this change, Aragon Court would need to be re-deployed using ANT as its native token. If this proposal is enacted, we can anticipate Aragon Court having increased security, which might contribute to its adoption.

A vote on the proposal is now open on Snapshot’s ANT space.

  • Start: October 5, 2020 at 5:30pm UTC
  • End: October 9, 2020 at 5:30pm UTC (with snapshot taken on block 11022330)
  • Vote duration: ~4 days

ANT holders can start voting now, but keep in mind ANT balances on October 9, 2020 at ~4pm UTC (block number 11022330) will be used to tally the final result. If you transfer your tokens after you vote and before the ending block number your vote will not be counted. ANT held in contracts will not be able to vote, except for liquidity providers on Balancer.

If the vote passes, the redemption contract will be deployed and ANJ holders will be able to exchange their tokens for ANT. Please note that, while the total supply of ANT would increase by 1,760,530 ANT, the ANT locked in the Aragon Network Council DAO and bonding curve would be locked and taken out of circulation. With that, the new total supply of ANT would be 40,159,386 ANT.

In the meantime, the Aragon Network Council has decided to pause conversion of ANJ:ANT on the bonding curve to avoid speculative risk until the proposal has passed. If it does not pass, they will unpause conversion on the bonding curve.

Make sure to read the full proposal on Snapshot.