DAO Role Model Aragon, on DAO Governance Models

As Gocheto dives deeper into the world of DAO governance models, we wanted to learn from the best in the space. That’s why we reached out to Evan Aronson, Head of Product at Aragon, a pioneer in modular DAO tools trusted by major projects like Lido, Curve, and Decentraland.

Aragon has long been at the forefront of DAO infrastructure, helping organizations govern billions in onchain assets. In this interview, we discuss what makes a DAO successful, how governance is evolving beyond simple token voting, and the tools Aragon is building to empower non-technical users. 

These topics directly impact our contributions to newly launched whisky investment community Angelshare DAO and beyond. From treasury management to multichain expansion, to belief in a guiding principle that “governance is needed only when there’s something worth governing,” Evan shares insights that every DAO builder should hear.

Execution Follows Vision: DAO Tools to Power Your Purpose

What’s your north star metric for a ‘successful’ DAO launch?

Evan Aronson: Our north-star metric is what we call ‘total value governed’ (TVG): the value of onchain assets directly or indirectly secured by Aragon smart contracts. It’s effectively the sum of our clients’ TVL. 

Securing real assets onchain is a meaningful signal of trust for us. It reflects adoption of our contracts, but, more importantly, that our users are doing things that the market is valuing. Aragon contracts are currently securing $20B+ in assets.

A more nuanced reason we focus on a downstream lagging indicator like TVG is that we believe that onchain governance isn’t an end in itself, but rather that it’s a means to make effective decisions that ultimately should result in a desired change in blockchain state. That is, governance affects everyone interacting with the blockchain in some way - investors, end users of our client protocols, and in turn the entire industry. 

But governance for governance’s sake can become an organizational sink if deliberate efforts aren’t made. For this reason, we don’t view participation metrics like proposal count, proportion of voting supply, etc. as indicative of effective decision making.

How do you stay ahead of governance trends when the space evolves weekly? We know that Aragon has been a leader in DAO governance tooling for a while now with well known projects such as Lido, Curve, and Decentraland adopting Aragon early on, but how do you know what to prioritize in terms of pushing the product forward?

Evan: It’s absolutely true that DAO tooling can quickly become obsolete, especially when built around hyped governance models and fads. This has especially been the case in recent years, with lots of tooling providers shutting their doors without PMF. Aragon has also had its fair share of products that have been sunset since launch. Even the currently leading model of delegate token voting model is entering into the crosshairs and is increasingly acknowledged to be inadequate.

We’ve gotten ahead of this though by designing for change itself and taking a more long-term view. Modularity is one of our core design principles and lets us support a wide range of governance structures without rebuilding new systems from scratch each time, which is often the case for other tooling providers. We published an article about exactly this in late 2024 entitled “The Future of Governance is Modular”. 

Taking this even further, we’ve put together a dedicated Solutions team that works side-by-side leading projects to build the more bespoke and especially unique governance systems and capital allocation mechanisms. These learnings can then be generalized into modular primitives into the Aragon platform.

May’s “Product Digest 001” focused on several Aragon updates that allow users to achieve impressive feats “without writing a single line of code.” Can you share more about why multichain expansion is important, and particularly why you decided to make Optimism available across the entire stack?

Evan: The Ethereum ecosystem is not just about the L1. Even in light of the recent pivots to move focus back on the L1, the truth is that it’s already become a network of chains, each with their own liquidity, developers, and subculture. 

Aragon’s approach differs from other governance tooling providers in that we rely heavily on smart contract factories, which are essentially the audited “blueprints” that deploy our contracts. Instead of having to deploy customized contracts for each project, Aragon DAOs are composed of existing contracts. This approach ensures that, as long as our framework is deployed on a chain, the core contracts for any DAO will always be the same across all EVM-compatible chains and available to all of its users.

Co-launching this Aragon deployment with Optimism was a no-brainer for us. It’s one of the most well-supported chains from a tooling and infra perspective, which makes deployment and maintenance a lot easier than on some of the newer and more obscure chains. The fact that it’s one of the top chains in terms of TVL also reinforces our view that governance is needed only when there’s something worth governing.

We’ve heard that some DAOs experience issues related to getting enough members to participate in proposal voting. Are there any features or plugins that Aragon employs to help combat these issues?

Evan: That’s right - participation is a common challenge. But, we don’t see this as the root problem. It’s that DAOs grant critical permissions, like treasury control or protocol upgrades, to governance tokens held by speculators who don’t have the time, incentives, or context to stay informed and vote consistently. 

This is a predictable outcome and what political scientists call the paradox of voting: the rational choice is to not vote when your chance of single handedly changing the outcome is small. It doesn’t make sense for every decision to be what is essentially a DAO-wide referendum.

At Aragon, we don’t optimize for more voting. We optimize for better decision making. That starts with access control, ensuring the right people are involved in the right decisions, and is the foundational layer underpinning governance itself. Projects using Aragon can compose distinct decision-making flows with explicit separation of powers. For example, a smaller council can be given a narrowly scoped authority to execute onchain actions that are appropriate within their specialized domain. 

Another feature that we specialize in is optimistic governance, where proposals pass “optimistically” unless vetoed. Imagine an investment DAO where a smaller group of capital allocators can initiate a proposal. Liquidity providers don’t need to vote on every decision, but can veto the proposal if it’s harmful to them and their assets.

Gocheto is very interested in investment DAOs, where members pool funds to buy assets and fund projects that will bring strong returns back into the treasury, and ultimately to the DAO’s members. What are some of the best setups you’ve seen in practice of DAOs using Aragon to comprehensively manage treasury risk and properly allocate funds?

Evan: The most effective investment DAOs separate capital allocation from token holders, as they often lack the time, context, or technical expertise to make fast, informed decisions, especially when interacting directly with complex DeFi protocols. Being a good voter means reviewing all of the proposed calldata!

One of our favorite setups is the Aragon Guardian DAO model used for Morpho vaults. In this setup, professional curator teams optimistically propose asset changes and parameter changes. Liquidity providers retain ultimate control through their tokenized shares. If a curator misbehaves, the LP goes to Aragon’s UI and can veto their proposed changes. With Morpho’s rapid growth, these Aragon DAOs are now governing over $500 million in assets.

Continuing on the topic of treasuries, Aragon has published the statement: “The biggest mistake that DAOs make is to have most of their treasury in their own token.” How does Aragon’s platform help DAO treasuries add and manage L1 assets?

Evan: When a DAO holds a majority of its own treasury in its own token, those holdings are often excluded from the circulating token supply but still counted in the nominal treasury value. This creates an illusion of value, as the tokens cannot actually be liquidated at scale without triggering a supply shock. If there’s a price drop, selling would accelerate the decline, and not selling would force the DAO to absorb the loss. 

As a tooling provider, one of Aragon’s goals is to help DAOs avoid this kind of structural fragility by making it simple to interact with other smart contracts. Treasury allocation decisions, such as deploying capital into DeFi protocols like Uniswap, Morpho, etc., should be constrained by financial considerations, not constrained simply by tooling limitations or technical know-how.

Our best feature for this is our WalletConnect integration, which allows DAOs to interact with any dApp as if the DAO itself were a single wallet. Authorized members can initiate token swaps, deposits, or strategy changes directly from the interface of the dApp of their choice. These transactions are automatically composed into proposals, which can then be reviewed and approved via the DAO’s existing governance process.

What is the feature you’re most proud of initiating or deploying that makes Aragon’s public interface easy and transparent for non-technical users?

Evan: My personal favorite is for sure Aragon’s new Governance Designer, which is powered by an Aragon plugin behind the scenes called the StagedProposalProcessor. This was our most ambitious attempt at making modular governance accessible to everyone, not just developers, and one that kept me up many nights while building it.

One of the biggest challenges for DAOs has always been customization: either write and deploy custom smart contracts (and pay for expensive audits), or settle for a one-size-fits-all template.

The Governance Designer is meant to address this by making it possible for anyone, regardless of technical skill, to visually compose modular governance structures uniquely tailored to their organization. These structures can include any number of governing bodies, any number of decision-making processes, and happen over time across any number of stages. For instance, consider that you are designing the optimistic governance models I’ve described earlier, where a proposal is proposed by a council, then reviewed in a veto-only stage, and, perhaps, finally executable after a timelock. This or any variation of it can be achieved with no new code.

The feature is just a few months old and I’m excited to see it get used for some of the top projects launching this year on Aragon.

Choose the Right Dao Governance Models and Tools for the Right DAO

Evan’s insights reveal that effective DAOs require more than just governance tools, they demand thoughtful design aligned with real-world objectives. But beyond structure and mechanics, what truly sustains a DAO is something harder to quantify: the shared belief that the work matters. 

People commit time, funds, and energy to projects that resonate, whether through tangible value, collective purpose, or the simple conviction that the outcome couldn’t exist any other way. The best DAOs give people a reason to show up. For those exploring what’s possible, these ideas are already in action, see how leading DAO examples are putting them into practice.