The 8 pillars of any organization

A walk-through of Aragon and the why behind each feature

When we set out to create Aragon, we researched what were the core features that an organization needs.

Last year, the 11th of November, we came up with the first version of the product full spec. Most of the features that you see today in Aragon, as well as how they are structured, were laid out that month.

Since we have been asked a few times which was our thought process to came up with that features, I'll go through it.

Let's talk about the things that an organization needs, in dependency order.

Identity

We obviously need to establish each entity's identity before operating with them.

Ethereum already has this built-in, since each account is sovereign. Yet we wanted to make it easier and more user-friendly. So we looked at some alternatives like Keybase, Blockstack or uPort. We integrated Keybase, however we look forward to integrating a fully decentralized solution.

Ownership

Traditionally we would talk about shares, but here we talk about tokens. Tokens can provide a much deeper functionality set.

Even so, the core idea stays. Which is to incentivize early participants to make the organization a success.

Founders, investors, advisors, partners, employees... they should not only be rewarded for the risk taken, but should also be able to determine the direction of the organization.

Which brings us to the next component.

Voting

This is where governance happens. Where decisions are taken.

It is fundamentally linked to ownership, in the sense that tokens are the currency for voting.

Of course, multiple stock classes can exist with different voting powers.

Capital

Once we have the foundations necessary to take decisions — ownership and voting — we can start taking actions.

One of the first actions is to onboard capital so the organization can scale.

This is extremely easy with the new models that tokens bring to the table.

Instead of taking several months to fund your organization, it will literally take a minute to set up your token sale.

Plus, due to the nature of token sale, anyone in the world can get funded — not only privileged entrepreneurs.

People

Once the founders are on the same page, can vote on the critical decisions, and have capital onboard, the organization can start expanding.

Token models are blurring the line between employees and contractors — and we know that — so we built the minimum functionality to reward people or other organizations.

Roles

Once you have people onboard, you may want to assign them different permissions over the organization.

Which brings us to bylaws.

Bylaws

Bylaws are the rules of how the organization can be changed and governed.

From issuing stock, to starting a token sale, to changing how bylaws can be changed (so meta) is covered by them.

Aragon organizations are fully customizable, so you can make them work the way you want.

Accounting

The blockchain brings a whole new level of transparency.

All the previous components will eventually generate monetary transactions. Those transactions will be recorded forever, together with the entity that authorized them.

Aragon has many other features, that's only a basic subset of them. However, we believe them to satisfy the pillars of an organization.

I also hope this served as an intro to the platform and its functionality.

Now you should go try it out, or download the desktop client!