AssangeDAO: Relying on speculators to rescue Assange?

Rescuing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the controversial figure wanted for leaking US government scandals and jailed in London after nearly seven years under the protection of the Ecuadorian government, was a big enough target a prison. The U.S. government has been trying to extradite him back to the country. Finally, on December 10 last year, the British High Court made a judgment allowing the extradition, which made Assange possible to be imprisoned in the United States for up to 175 years.

On the day the judgment came to fruition, AssangeDAO, named after Assange, was established. On February 4 this year, following the example of the previous ConstitutionDAO and FreeRossDAO, the organization launched a fundraiser in the token issuance tool JuiceBox, hoping to raise funds to bid for the NFT jointly issued by Assange and artist Pak, and use the proceeds from the sale of NFT to provide Assange Activities such as legal defense and publicity for protests.

As of February 7, AssangeDAO has raised 12,660 ETH, surpassing the 11,613 ETH raised by ConstitutionDAO (People), which is about $38.8 million. As the People’s governance token has risen dozens of times before, donors have benefited a lot, so this massive fundraising has attracted a large number of speculators, and the popularity of AssangeDAO has remained high in recent days.

However, at this time, AssangeDAO fell into community civil turmoil because it had not yet released JUSTICE. Previously, the initiator of the organization had promised in the community that there would be only one round of fundraising, but now it has started a second round of fundraising, which has resulted in donors not being able to receive JUSTICE, and suspicions about "whether the initiator will run away" The noise is loud.

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AssangeDAO raised more funds than "People"

AssangeDAO has once again set off a wave of fundraising in recent days. This decentralized autonomous organization named after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Julian Assange) is a cypherpunk group fighting for the liberation of Assange. ETH to buy a 1/1 dynamic NFT made by digital artist Pak in collaboration with Assange.

According to the AssangeDAO official website, the dynamic NFT is minted using the manifest.xyz smart contract and will be auctioned by Pak on a dedicated website. Proceeds raised from the NFT sale will benefit Assange’s legal defense fund and advocacy campaigns to raise awareness of the free speech implications of his case.

The reason why AssangeDAO has received widespread attention is inseparable from the personal background and controversy of Julian Assange.

Assange was an Australian journalist who founded the WikiLeaks website in 2006. In 2010, this website began to expose a large number of secret documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the murder video attached to the air strikes by the US troops in Baghdad, and the documents on the dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire. dispute.

The U.S. government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks following a series of leaks. On November 30, 2010, at the request of the International Public Prosecutor's Office in Sweden, Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Assange on suspicion of sexual crimes. On December 7, Assange surrendered to the Metropolitan Police, but he denied the charges. Assange was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government in 2012 and spent seven years in the embassy.

But in 2019, the Ecuadorian government ousted Assange, citing the scandal as an excuse, and struck a deal with Britain to arrest him. Since then, Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison, a maximum security prison in London. During this period, the U.S. government has been hoping to have Assange extradited to the United States.

In January 2021, the British District Court rejected the US extradition request on the grounds that Assange had a higher risk of suicide after extradition. However, on December 10, the British High Court overturned the previous ruling after the United States made another extradition request and allowed the United States to extradite. Once extradited to the United States, Assange may face up to 175 years in prison.

On December 10th, AssangeDAO was fermented and formed in a Telegram group. Soon after the establishment of this telegram group, Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton also joined it, and continued to carry out protests and lobbying for Assange's release.

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AssangeDAO raised 12660 ETH

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AssangeDAO did not issue tokens, causing controversy

According to the funding route plan released by AssangeDAO, AssangeDAO will use the proceeds from NFT sales to help Assange fight extradition to the United States after bidding for relevant NFTs. If the DAO does not win the auction, all funds will be returned to the user via JuiceBox minus the gas fee.

This step of fundraising and refund has already been staged after ConstitutionDAO failed to bid for a copy of the US Constitution. In terms of issuing JUSTICE tokens, the initiator of AssangeDAO failed to fulfill its promise, and its reneging behavior caused a lot of controversy.

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AssangeDAO started the second round of fundraising, dissatisfied with the community

The KOL "Jenni Jun" in the encryption community insinuated AssangeDAO as "Schrödinger's DAO" to describe the unstable state of the organization. Since the organization has raised a large amount of ETH, but has not issued a pass, many donors are worried. Jun Jeni questioned, "To run or not to run, that is the question."

Another analyst in the industry believes that even if AssangeDAO has raised a large amount of funds, liberating Assange is still a seemingly impossible task. "In the past ten years, the United States has never given up sanctions against Assange. With determination, it is unrealistic to rely solely on funds to rescue Assange."

In fact, among the users who participated in this fundraising, some of them don’t know who Assange is at all, and they have no interest in liberating Assange at all, and speculating to make money is the first goal.

In discussions on AssangeDAO-related Twitter topics, many users expressed concerns about not being able to obtain benefits, and some even wanted to form a rights protection group to recover the invested funds.

Users’ concerns are not unreasonable. FreeRossDAO, which aimed to release Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the darknet market “Silk Road”, attracted attention in a short period of time, but the governance token FREE fell all the way soon after. The stock price has fallen 64%, and the goal of releasing Ross Ulbricht seems to be forgotten.

In the AssangeDAO fundraising event, on the one hand, it is very difficult to liberate Assange, and on the other hand, it is not easy to profit from it due to the gathering of speculators.

The KOL "dahuzi.eth" of the encryption community believes that People's previous success in terms of income returns cannot be simply replicated, because People initially gathered a group of people who really donated and recognized the US Constitution, and there were not many speculators. And AssangeDAO’s donors are more for the purpose of making money, “Then the question is, a bunch of people have all entered at one price, where is the demand? Who will pull the market? In the end, it will become a game of who runs first.”

In addition, the KOL said that the difference between AssangeDAO and People is that the cycle for auctioning a copy of the U.S. Constitution is very short, and if it is unsuccessful, you can get a refund with guaranteed capital, while the time cycle for rescuing Assange may be very long. As time goes by, users There may also be variables if you want to save your capital and exit.

Although the amount of ETH raised by AssangeDAO has surpassed that of "People", regardless of the difficulty of the target cause and the behavioral logic of the donors, the prospect of this DAO is ambiguous. At the moment, AssangeDAO has ruined its reputation, and the panic and dissatisfaction among donors is gradually accumulating. Once JUSTICE is released, the sell-off will be inevitable, and donors will enter the "running fast" game.