Founded in early February 2022, AssangeDAO has embarked on a mission to raise capital and pay for the legal fees related to the case of Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder spent several years on the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom, trying to escape the U.S. Government.
Authorities in the North American country accuse Assange of allegedly publishing sensitive information on military and diplomatic activities. Assange was given citizen status by the Latin American country, its previous president Rafael Correa supported the Australian editor and his cause, until 2019.
At that time, an Ecuadorian court determined that the process that ultimately granted Assange his citizenship was “irregular”. Later he was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy leading to a legal fight for his possible extradition to the United States.
AssangeDAO was created by a group of “cypherpunks” looking to aid the Australian editor and WikiLeaks founder on his legal crusade. Their objective was to raised funds and bid in an NFT auction
Back in 2006, Assange founded WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization dedicated to publishing documents related to global politics, military operations, corruption, human rights violations, and much more. The organization and its website are regarded as a beacon of freedom of speech and press.
The decentralized organization started planning its initiative to contribute to Assange’s liberation back in December 2021. At that time, the U.S. Government won an appeal from a British court that barred the editor extradition to the American country.
In that sense, Assange could face as much as a 175-year sentence. The AssangeDAO calls itself a “powerful coordination mechanism that cypherpunks can wield to free Assange”. The decentralized organization claims Assange was an early crypto developer and added:
The AssangeDAO represents a line in the sand where cypherpunks stand up for the original cypherpunk who helped make all this possible.
AssangeDAO Community Wins Auction, What’s Next
The DAO collected over $50 million in funds to participate in an NFT auction which will offer a digital asset created by Assange and digital artist Pak. The auction took place today with the AssangeDAO winning the bid that purchase the 1/1 dynamic NFT called Clock for 16,593 ETH.
As announced by WikiLeaks, all funds will go to the Wau Holland Foundation and will be used to support Assange’s legal defense and cover their costs. According to the co-founder of Manifold Richerd Chan, the DAO could have broken the record for the largest on-chain NFT sale up until this point.
BREAKING: Winning Bid in Julian Assange-PAK NFT auction of 16,593 ETH (US $52.85m) – all funds will go to aid the defense of the #WikiLeaks founder and publisher facing a 175 year sentence if extradited for revealing war crimes @muratpak@AssangeDAOpic.twitter.com/QHOTn4aTGc
The decentralized organization raised the funds by using a governance token called JUSTICE via JuiceBox, a platform that supports on-chain crowdfunding for DAOs. The NFT, per the organization, will be held in a multi-signature address.
The community will decide via governance what to do with the NFT and the future roadmap of the DAO (…). the DAOs governance mechanism will involve a Gnosis Safe multi-sig wallet with trusted individuals in the crypto space as signers. $JUSTICE holders will be able to vote on governance proposals via a snapshot governance page which will dictate the future direction of the DAO.
