Founder Series: Aragon in 5 Minutes – Luis Cuende of Aragon (ANT)

Aragon allows for the formation of all types of organizations. Borderless, transparent, and decentralized, it has enormous potential.

Key takeaways from the episode with Luis Cuende of Aragon

Luis Cuende, co-founder, comes on to break down Aragon and explain what, why, and how.

What is Aragon?

Aragon is a project that aims to streamline the creation of decentralized organizations. Aragon uses Ethereum and smart contracts in order to decentralize the creation of any organization or structure.

What problem is Aragon solving?

The problem is that the borders – governments, banks, and intermediation for organizations, they don’t make sense anymore. We are making it easy to create organizations with two clicks.

How does Aragon plan to get user adoption?

Starting with blockchain startups, then open source projects, and then non-profits and main adoption.

What stage is Aragon in right now?

Aragon is still in testing mode. Aragon is going to be public and live in December (2017) or January of next year.

How Aragon network works:

Related episode: What is District0x and How it Works, with P.J. Leimgruber the head Head of Marketing @ District0x.

What is Aragon and How it Works, in 5 minutes – Episode Transcription

Intro: This is 5 Minute Crypto, token summary edition, a five-minute explanation of a blockchain startup from the founder himself.

M4tt:  Ok, today we have Luis Cuende from Aragon. Luis, how’s it going?

Luis: Great, thanks for having me.

M: Yeah, really excited, this is our first five minute summary of a new crypto technology, and so first of tell listeners what is Aragon!

L: Aragon is a project that aims to streamline the creation of decentralized organizations, so right now when you organize with others when you create companies or non-profits or whatever organization or form you wanna take, you usually create those using governments or using banks or any combination of those.

And so what we want to do is we want to use the Blockchain, we are using Ethereum to basically use smart contracts in order to desynchrony the creation of any organization or structure so we’ll be able to organize freely without any kind of intermediary.

M: Ok, so let me clarify something here. So yeah, in the United States you mentioned using governments, meaning you have to form an entity, like an LLC or a C-Corp, and then you have to get a bank account associated with that. So with Aragon, you can do all of that in one with people from multiple countries, we’ll say borderless, and you will be able to bypass all of that, correct?

L: Yeah exactly, basically is global from day one, as the internet is so big.

M: Got you! And so, compared to the existing setup right now using the government and banks, what problem are you trying to solve?

L: We are trying to solve the problem that, you know basically borders and governments  that we have right are part of a system that was made for a time that it made sense,  but it doesn’t make any sense anymore. Because of the internet and because how we can organize in a simpler way than having these governments and certain corrupt entities out there.

So the problem we are solving is we are solving the problem of intermediation that doesn’t make sense anymore.

M: Got you, and so I think with the blockchain, that’s, whether is international trade, sending payments, so basically getting rid of intermediaries that make things that are time consuming and make the entity slower and also have an additional cost.

L: Yeah exactly, also it is kind of a factor of user experience too, like usually when you’re creating this kind of new disintermediating technologies, you don’t have everything in one single box that users can easily use.

What we are trying to do, is we are trying to make the user create value a organize in a way that is much easier than how they can do it today with governments, so they can create an organization in two clicks. Instead of going through the legal-normal way, that would take months.

M: Sure yeah, and especially if you wanna have people from different countries to have ownership, imagine Spain, Colombia, United States, you can all sync over Aragon and ignore all these intermediaries.

One other thing, again remember, some people listening don’t have a technical background there are people that are gonna develop on top of Aragon, like District0x. Can you explain exactly why there is a startup developing using Aragon’s technology for, you know like District0x, I’m sure there is another oner’s on the way.

L: Sure, basically if you look at what we are building a is a very common building block and so in the case of District0X, what they’re building is a way to create marketplaces that are very easy to deploy. So for example, every American, for example, knows about Craigslist and how broken it is.

With District0x we’ll be able to create new listing markets that are much more efficient, and they use the underline technology on their laying entities for each one of this markets that are going decentralized because that’s the only when they’ll become basically organize even hundreds of people that they even don’t know each other. And you know, we are trying to make it so easy to install new apps into Aragon like you install apps on your iPhone.

M: Got you, I think Craigslist is a great example because Airbnb was just like a better section of the temporary rentals on Craigslist. So, Aragon, you’re keeping it very, I wanna say big but very open so there’s a special type of exchange organization people use Aragon to develop on top of that.

Luis what about user adoption, how does Aragon plan to get user adoption?

L: Our plan towards user adoption is, first of all, starting with blockchain projects and you know there are a lot of token holders right now, that have bought into this token sales and they don’t even know what’s happening with their capital with the money that they put in. So, what we are first doing is retargeting this projects that made provide transferences to their users, endorsement holders.

So next to that, I personally wanna focus on open source projects, there are a lot of organizations out there that they kind of use like fundraise because open source doesn’t have a native sustainability business model. So I want to fix that as well and after that, we want to go after the kind of mainstream audience that kind of easily organize to they because of whatever reason maybe because of a corrupt government, maybe incompetent banks, maybe people just wanna be anonymous on the internet.

M: So, starting blockchain startups then open source projects and then non-profits and the main adoption. So with Aragon, you have a, using smart-contracts where the percentage ownership by loss everything is taking care of within the system.

Right now, what stage are you in with Aragon and when is the full launch?

L: Aragon is still in a test net stage, so we are basically trying out the technology, and we are actually doing a huge refactor, so I’d say we are still at least 4 months away from having the main release. So I think we are going to be live in December (2017) or January next year into the main net. I really want this project to be slow and very audited and taking care of security. We don’t want a hack to happen.

M: Oh right, Luis thank you so much really informative and can’t wait to see the release at the end of the year or January.

L: Cool, thanks a lot M4tt!