A detailed look at JuiceBox's largest fundraising scale to date: AssangeDAO

Author: D-Tiger Research Institute

AssangeDao Incident Overview

Julian Assange is the well-known founder of WikiLeaks, wanted for leaking U.S. government scandals. He evaded capture for seven years under the protection of Ecuador, but was later detained in the UK. In December last year, the UK government finally decided to extradite Assange to the U.S., where he faces up to 174 years in prison.

• On February 3, 2022, digital artist Pak and the Assange family jointly established AssangeDao, which launched a fundraising campaign on the Juicebox platform to raise funds for Assange's legal defense through the auction of NFTs.

• On February 8, 2022, AssangeDao faced strong dissatisfaction from community members for not adhering to its previously announced fundraising plan.

• On February 9, 2022, after two rounds of fundraising, AssangeDao completed its fundraising with a total of 17,423 ETH, quickly surpassing ConstitutionDao to become the most popular and highest-funded project on the Juicebox platform.

• On February 9, 2022, around 7 PM, the official team announced the auction of Pak's NFT--- "Clock" for 16,593.05 ETH.

Currently, the funds from this auction have been transferred to the Wau Holland Foundation in Germany as legal defense fees for Assange. According to community members, the Wau Holland Foundation has been specifically funding WikiLeaks for some time.

After the auction, token claims have also been opened (see official announcement). The exchange rate is 1 ETH = 1,000,000 $JUSTICE, and the current number of addresses holding JUSTICE has reached around 9,700.

The team has not yet responded regarding the specific plans for the funds after the auction.

The Mystery of Assange's Identity

According to AssangeDao community members, Assange and Satoshi Nakamoto are both members of the cypherpunk organization. Besides Nakamoto and Assange, the elite in the cypherpunk group also includes Bram Cohen, the author of BitTorrent, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Nick Szabo, who proposed the concept of smart contracts, and Sean Parker, one of the founders of Facebook.

In fact, Satoshi Nakamoto is a cypherpunk organization, and Assange is one of its developers. Assange may be part of Nakamoto's organization (this information is hearsay and for reference and entertainment purposes only).

When Assange was arrested in 2019, most members of the Bitcoin community were willing to donate to support him. According to Cobra, the owner of Bitcoin.org, this might be a kind of "debt of gratitude"; because when Bitcoin was still relatively unknown, Assange had already expressed his support and used Bitcoin as a primary fundraising tool, to some extent, WikiLeaks was the first to bring Bitcoin into the public eye.

Core Team of AssangeDAO

Assange's lawyer: Jen Robinson

Assange's brother & fiancée: Gabriel Shipton & Stella Moris

Community host: Joshua

Partner: Pak

Pak is a renowned digital artist in the crypto space, known for the NFT "The Merge," which sold for over $90 million. Other works include Fomoverse, LostPoets, etc. Pak remains completely anonymous, and no one knows whether Pak is an individual or a team, making him akin to Satoshi Nakamoto in the NFT world. (Pak Twitter: @muratpak)

Governance of the DAO

The DAO has established an initial governance model. First, community members will share proposal drafts in the forum for community discussion. Then there will be a preliminary review (to decide whether to initiate a vote), with the review team consisting of: Jen Robinson (Julian Assange's lawyer), Gabriel Shipton (Julian Assange's brother), Stella Moris (Julian Assange's fiancée), and our community moderators.

Community NFT

AssangeDao has collaborated with Pak to launch the NFT work "Censored," which consists of two parts: the unique NFT "Clock" and an open NFT (X/X).

"Clock" is the piece purchased by the team for 16,593.05 ETH, and this NFT is a dynamic digital work that updates every 24 hours, representing the time Assange has been imprisoned.

The other part, the open NFT (X/X), is minted by community members for a limited time of 48 hours, with no quantity limit. After 48 hours, the minting channel will close. Each wallet address is limited to one NFT, and users need to spend 0.1 ETH to input letters or spaces to generate the NFT.

Each NFT generation will display an image of letters being crossed out, reflecting the theme of Pak's design for the NFT--- Censored. Currently, there are 29,752 pieces of "Censored" minted on Opensea; however, this NFT can only truly belong to users when Assange is released.

Why Wasn't the Fundraising Conducted According to the Plan?

The biggest controversies surrounding AssangeDao's initial fundraising are twofold: 1. Tokens were not immediately issued during the fundraising; 2. Fundraising was not conducted according to the plan. The disputes regarding these two actions still exist within the community. Many members have developed a significant distrust of the AssangeDao team, with some even considering it fraudulent behavior, while many others are unclear about the reasons behind it.

One of the official team members, McKenna, explained in the Discord group that due to a misunderstanding of the Juicebox contract rules, they believed the fundraising period could be extended. However, during the fundraising process, they discovered that this was not the case, and during the first round of fundraising, AssangeDao's popularity and the team's fundraising goals had not yet been met.

This led to the initiation of a second round of fundraising, and the team stated that there would be no third round; currently, AssangeDao's fundraising activities have concluded, raising a total of 17,423 ETH, quickly surpassing ConstitutionDAO, which was originally ranked first on the Juicebox platform.

Where Will the Funds from the Auction Go?

After the auction ended on the night of February 9, the Dao community began a new round of controversy: AssangeDao allocated 5% of the raised funds for JuiceBox platform fees, with the remaining 95% used entirely for the auction of the NFT, which sold for 16,593.05 ETH, breaking the record for the most expensive NFT ever sold. Rather than an auction, it could be considered a fixed price, which was likely intentional by the team.

Assange's brother even directly expressed a desire to maximize the funds from the NFT auction to cover Assange's legal defense costs. Why did the AssangeDao team go to such lengths to "rescue" Assange through the auction of NFTs?

AssangeDao's emergence is undoubtedly a familiar struggle between bearish sentiment and positive news.

A series of suspicious fundraising activities have undoubtedly caused panic and suspicion among some investors.

On the other hand, some insiders believe that the AssangeDao team would not use such a large amount solely for legal defense fees, as their partnered German foundation has deep ties with the Assange family.

There has been a history of funding WikiLeaks, and the funds raised by AssangeDao are likely to support not only legal defense fees but also promote WikiLeaks, re-establish its media organization, and enhance its communication efforts to leverage public opinion against the U.S. government. The potential contained within this is enormous and undoubtedly beneficial for the long-term development of AssangeDao.

Some also believe that a significant portion of this large sum is likely to flow to Pak, thereby continuing to empower AssangeDao.

Moreover, many firmly believe that having support from Vitalik Buterin is enough to attract people to AssangeDao.

What is the JUSTICE Token? What is Its Purpose?

$JUSTICE is the governance token of AssangeDAO, which will be used to decide how to handle NFTs and the future roadmap of the DAO. The tokens will be distributed within 48 hours after the DAO completes the auction.

On February 9, 2022, at 19:00 Beijing time, AssangeDAO completed the auction at a price of 16,593 ETH and opened the claim for JUSTICE tokens (see official announcement for claiming method).

JUSTICE contract address: 0x59d1e836F7b7210A978b25a855085cc46fd090B5. Please verify this contract address before trading on any secondary market.

What is the Relationship Between JuiceBox and AssangeDAO?

AssangeDAO conducts fundraising through the JuiceBox platform. The discount rate and retained tokens set by AssangeDAO are both 0%. Like ConstitutionDAO, AssangeDAO has not reserved tokens for team members. It is important to note that AssangeDAO has not set a fundraising target, and users cannot redeem excess ETH.

Juicebox charges a 5% fee on all projects fundraising on its platform and rewards with its token JBX, which is distributed after the project's fundraising ends. AssangeDAO paid Juicebox a fee of 830 ETH after the fundraising ended, and its current holdings of JBX rank fourth in the Juicebox token distribution, accounting for 3.4%.

Juicebox has provided a new solution for DAO treasury management, pre-committing the funds and purposes needed for the project, and then raising funds from the community. From the current operational situation, it has attracted hundreds of fundraising projects, including ConstitutionDAO and AssangeDAO, which have garnered attention from the entire crypto community. Juicebox's governance experiment is progressing rapidly and has already shown promise. However, a well-functioning DAO requires more than just Juicebox; there are many other issues to address.

Risk Warning

Although AssangeDAO's fundraising time on JuiceBox has ended, it is important to remind that donating to AssangeDAO is a donation and should not be viewed with an investment mindset.

Moreover, based on the background and performance of the project and the community atmosphere, the risks of participation are quite high:

• There are rumors that AssangeDAO's community founder JB87 is fluent in Chinese but has average English skills; furthermore, JB87 has not responded to community questions in the Discord channel since announcing the end of the NFT auction and the claim for JUSTICE tokens;
• There are rumors that partner Pak threatened AssangeDAO that if all funds were not used for the NFT auction as agreed, Pak would withdraw the NFT (possibly to drive traffic to Pak himself);
• In AssangeDAO's Discord channel, most people's concerns are whether the price of JUSTICE will drop, with very few caring about Assange, whom the organization aims to "rescue";
• Additionally, the administrators' management style regarding members' dissent is harsh, and many have been kicked out of the community for raising reasonable doubts that upset the administrators.
• Currently, community members are preparing to propose on the official forum to request a refund of the 5% fee charged by JuiceBox and demand that the project party relinquish contract permissions.

All these behaviors raise questions about the AssangeDAO project. Whether the AssangeDAO community can successfully build itself up to reach or even surpass the previous ConstitutionDAO will depend on the joint efforts of the project party and community members.

We hope that AssangeDAO can uphold the principles of openness, transparency, and democracy in its future governance, and we also hope that Mr. Assange can soon be free from his imprisonment.