A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) has raised 12,568 ETH – about $38.8 million for Julian Assange’s freedom. The Wikileaks founder is fighting an extradition case to the United States. Assange is currently locked up in a London jail. AssangeDAO is using JuiceBox and has been inspired by FreeRossDAO, a group that is calling for the liberation of the creator of Silk Road – Ross Ulbricht. FreeRossDAO is known to have raised about $12 million.
According to JuiceBox, donations for AssangeDAO began to come in on February 4 and funding peaked up over the weekend. It has doubled over the past 24-hours. Moreover, it has evolved into the largest JuiceBox Ethereum raise in history, as per AssangeDAO Twitterfeed. It has exceeded the ConstitutionDAO, which collected funds in November 2021 to purchase the original copy of the US constitution.
Analysts have described AssangeDAO as a “collective of cypherpunks”. It’s working towards raising ETH in return for JUSTICE governance tokens. These tokens will be utilized to bid on the NFT collection Censored by Pak – a digital artist. The organizers will use the proceeds towards Assange’s defense fund for legal fees and raising awareness about the whistleblower’s extradition case.
AssangeDAO, as per a tweet by Wikileaks handle, has broken USD 30 million barriers in less than three days for its fundraising. It said the proceeds will go towards defending Julian Assange, who is facing a 175-year sentence for revealing war crimes.
The beginning of AssangeDAO took flight in a Telegram group in mid-December of 2021. This was the day that the US government won its case in the British court ruling that barred Assange’s extradition. If the Wikileaks founder is extradited to the US, he faces a 175-year prison sentence for publishing “truthful information”.
