Decentralized governance project Aragon banished at least half a dozen community members from its town square this week as a discussion of the project’s finances turned sour and tipped into conspiracy.

“Coordinated” actors flooded Aragon’s Discord server with “probing questions” and “inappropriate language” on Tuesday, Aragon’s Head of Communications Jessica Smith told CoinDesk in an email. The influx of chatter and new members came during a pivotal but long-delayed effort to move Aragon’s sizable treasury under community control.

Aragon’s response was to exile a raft of community members that had questioned its leadership, processes and status as a bona fide decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). CoinDesk spoke to seven community members wrapped up in the ban, most of whom said they were investors in ANT (and therefore DAO members), months-long members of the Discord, or both.

By smashing the banhammer button on its own voters, Aragon highlighted the uneasy tension between the “power to the people” illusion of a DAO and the reality that a few stakeholders often wield outsize influence. Aragon’s Discord moderators have the power to set (or rejigger) the conversation by banning dissenters and deleting their opinions, actions anathema to the idea of “censorship resistant” cryptocurrency.

(by Nick Baker)