[...2018]

Luis

As time goes on, this gut feeling we first had in late 2016 has been materializing more and more to eventually become a reality.

We have done so much during 2017 that I wanted to highlight some achievements:

We launched a product to create DAOs on the testnet with >10k DAOs deployed.
We worked on making Aragon a brand people love with passion.
We planned and executed one of the fairest and quickest token sales ever.
We set the standards for community transparency and participation.
We did some very important research on what today is aragonOS, the best smart contract framework for protocols and dapps.
And, finally, we assembled a dream team that we can call our arafamily.

Now it is time to look past these very busy months and plan ahead.

These are some highlights of what we will bring to 2018:

Decentralizing development

Foundation/company split: We will start the process of removing power from the Foundation, which will ease the transition of governance and assets to the Aragon Network when the time comes, and make it easier to fund alternative teams.
Nest: We opened applications less than a month ago, yet it has attracted huge interest. We need to give out grants and make sure grantees deliver. Nest could be a great way to fund alternative teams that will work on the Aragon platform.
Dev docs: We need to onboard community devs to enhance what we have built.

Decentralizing governance

Labs: We need to prove, at least for one use case, that decentralized governance is more efficient than not having governance at all. That requires performing real experiments with skin in the game. We also need to make the program self-sustainable, making sure that new Labs members contribute their development resources in exchange for taking part.
Voting: Our first bottleneck will be our on-chain voting implementation. We need other teams working on scalable off-chain voting, as well as private voting too.
Community awareness: Our community members should be ready, when the time comes, to govern the Aragon Network. We should help them getting ready.
Aragon Network: This is our holy grial. We will create the first truly digital jurisdiction in humankind's history. And we will start giving it power over the project, which will guarantee Aragon's existence in the long run.

Decentralizing organizations

aragon-ui: We will continue work on our own UI toolkit, and likely shape it more to serve our needs, which are very different from those the web 2.0 had. We will make it easy for any third party developer to use it.
aragon-core: We need to keep improving its UX and performance, and ship an App Manager so people can plug into the Aragon ecosystem.
radspec: Making Ethereum transactions human readable. It could be an industry standard, and there's already strong interest.
Proxy: Some DAOs will still need to interact with the traditional world. We will help bootstraping a vibrant marketplace of proxies that can extend a DAO's capabilities by enabling fiat interaction, real state ownership, etc.

Creating the best tools for devs to build

aragonOS: We have not only created the best framework to create DAOs, but also any sort of decentralized protocol or app. We will make sure it's robust, flexible and secure, as it will probably handle billions of dollars in assets during 2018.
aragon-dev-cli + aragon.js: Making it easy for anyone to bootstrap and develop over Aragon. Key for developer adoption.
APM: We created an amazing versioning system and generic package manager for both smart contracts and arbitrary data, such as web applications. It lets us securely update the Aragon platform and apps. It could enable the creation of a TCR for apps inside the Aragon Network. Could become an industry standard too.
Hackathons: We need to excite hackers and students, and in general engage with the younger generations, who have been born with the Internet and understand this new paradigm better.
Documentation: We have built quite complex systems, so they need very good documentation.

Keeping it all together

Brand: People love Aragon. Our values, our team, our vision, our visuals, our eagle... It is important that it only continues growing in mindshare.
Communications: People love how we communicate. Work not properly communicated doesn't exist. We need to update the community on every step we advance, but also inspire them along the way.
Ops: This has really enhanced during the past couple of months. We need to make sure we are able to work without much bureaucracy or friction, and slowly transition our internal processes to use Aragon, starting with payroll (dogfooding!).
Hiring: In 2017 we expanded from 2 to 10. This year, we need to hire a Developer Relations and more frontend and EVM engineers. But we will keep the team small. Our approach is not the Industrial one, where production capacity increases as we hire more people. Our approach is based on leverage. The production capacity of the network increases as we help it grow, but we don't necessarily need to grow it ourselves. We just need to articulate our vision, correctly align incentives, build the right tools, and make the right decisions.

Of course this isn't all set in stone, but I think it is a reliable overview of what this year expects from us. I couldn't be happier to be working with my arafam on this, and again want to thank everyone for your unparalleled devotion to our still small revolution.