narodnik February 10, 2022, 7:36am #124

Just noting that McKenna, Silke, Fisk, lunar_mining and me are the 5 members of the multisig.

This situation was ethically complex. Everybody had the interests of Assange in all their conduct. Discussions were carried out in a mutually respectful and empathetic way.

The pressure on the multisigner team to maxbid was intense. Faced with this, the team demanded we adhere to the formal process established on the website. We also worked to move the discussion to a transparent forum, but given the sensitivity of Assange’s case, it was not always possible.

2 members of the team were in favour of maxbid, 2 members were against, and the last person was neutral but wanted the family veto documented in order to ascertain the process was followed.
Pro-Maxbid

The pro-maxbid argument was that we now possess funds earmarked for Assange’s defence, and a small window of opportunity to move them into a secure well-established legal structure in Germany before becoming compromised by operatives and state-level actors.

Assange faces imminent extradition to the US on charges of espionage and a possible death sentence. He’s held in the UK equivalent of Guantanamo Bay where they keep hardcore jihadi and nazi scumbags. While in prison, he’s suffered immense stress and recently had a stroke. His case is enormously complex and international with huge mounting legal costs where even $50m might not be enough.

The Wau Holland foundation is a well established legal entity in Germany with the full capacity to adequately ensure the best legal representation for Assange in his international fight against injustice. DAOs are relatively new and despite having huge promise that has all drawn us here, the research and knowledge on their governance is still nascent.
Pro-Vote

The other argument for not defunding the treasury down to 0%, was that there is a community of smart, young, ideological people committed to the Assange cause who are into technology and cryptocurrency and have access to resources. That network of people by itself is valuable for the Assange cause.

However by defunding the treasury, we send the argument that we do not believe in the DAO at all.

People have countered that the DAO is not an investment vehicle to make money. Yes, there are people who invested to make money from the next hype cycle meme stock and exit. There are others who also made a donation.

But what set the DAO apart from other donation schemes was that this was not structured as a donation. The concept inspired by FreeRossDAO was to bid on Assange NFTs in an organic market and build a treasury of liquid NFTs. However, as everyone knows, the PAK auction failed to get any market activity which is why maxbid was triggered.

By defunding the DAO to 0%, the signal is sent to the community of supporters that they were never meant to be involved in the grand mission of freeing Assange from jail or participating in his cause. Instead they were a means to raise capital for the Wau Holland foundation.
Conclusion

This argument that invoking their veto right would be a mistake for the Assange cause was carefully considered by the Assange campaign team. They understood the full implication of taking this action, and it wasn’t easy for them.

Complicating this were various statements made on social media that were not approved by the team. Only the website, AIPs on GitHub and formal statements here are taken as representative of AssangeDAO.

The Assange legal campaign team are regularly dealing with state-level agents, and saw a simple pathway to do the maximum good for Assange with a well established entity that has a successful track-record of defending Assange and other people. DAOs are unproven to the vast majority of the world, despite the promise of them that has brought everyone here to participate (including myself).

Faced with this and all other options, the close confidants of Assange who are involved on a daily basis with the intricate complexities of his case that cannot be published transparently chose to invoke their veto right to stop the governance process and force the DAO to relinquish all funds to the German entity. This was in the design of the governance process from day 1 and published on the website.

The main goal of the core team now is to establish a clear, transparent and fair governance process to involve the wider enthusiastic community which still holds great value for the Assange cause.