A decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), Assange DAO has been formed to raise funds to free the founder of the popular whistleblower platform, WikiLeaks, from the Belmarsh prison in London.
A DAO is an organization that exists solely on the internet and is collectively owned and operated by its members.
Basically, it is a social club that is created using blockchain technology, exists only on the internet and was created to fulfil a specific purpose.
WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources.
It was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange. According to the website in 2015, it leaked 10 million important documents in its first 10 years.
The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) set up to support Julian Assange’s freedom from prison has raised 12,569 ETH, about $38.8 million as of the time of this publication.
Assange who has been locked up in the UK prison since 2019 is currently fighting possible extradition to America after a court ruling in December 2021 that overruled a British court ruling preventing his extradition.
Donations for Assange started rolling in on Friday, February 4, 2022, and multiplied over the weekend to get to its current amount.
The donations are being made through a blockchain community funding platform, JuiceBox. JuiceBox was also used to raise funds for ConstitutionDAO, the DAO that was formed to purchase an original copy of the United States Constitution.
According to AssangeDAO on Twitter, it has now become the largest JuiceBox raise in history, surpassing that of Constitution DAO which was only able to raise 11,613 ETH before its mission to buy the constitution failed.
AssangeDAO began in a Telegram group in December 2021, around when the U.S. government won its appeal of a U.K. court ruling that barred Assange’s extradition.
The official website states that “If extradited to the United States, Assange faces 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information.”
The DAO concept was inspired by the FreeROSSDAO which raised $12 million to free Ross Ulbricht, founder of the dark web marketplace, Silk Road.
AssangeDAO describes itself as a “collective of cypherpunks” aiming to raise ETH in return for JUSTICE governance tokens.
Though first established in 2016, DAOs have been rising in popularity since 2021. ConstitutionDAO and MakerDAO are one of the most popular.
They make a case for the disruption of the hierarchical systems of traditional companies, they are community-first projects that are led and operated by members of the community. DAOs do not need managers and CEOs, every member is a CEO and an Intern at the same time.
