Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Gabriel Shipton & Stellar Magnet: AssangeDAO – The NFT Funding the Julian Assange Case

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

It's been just short of 2 years since we had Julian Assange's father John, and Harry Halpin, on the show to chat about his imprisonment and the impact it could have on the crypto community. At that time it was unknown if/when Julian would be extradited to the US to face trial. On December 10 2021, the US government won its appeal of a British court ruling that barred Assange’s extradition to the US. On the very same day the AssangeDAO was born and now has a thriving community of 10k people behind it.The DAO raised over $50 million and the funds were used to bid on an NFT, Clock, which is part of a collection between Assange and digital artist Pak. The bid was successful and proceeds from the sale of the Clock NFT will go to support Assange’s legal defence fund and awareness campaign about the free speech implications of his case.We were joined by Julian's brother Gabriel, and Stellar Magnet, core contributors of the AssangeDAO. We spoke about Julian's case as it currently stands, how the DAO was born and why they chose to purchase the NFT, and the road ahead.Topics covered in this episode:Julian Assange and his imprisonment from his involvement with WikileaksThe Assange DAO and why an NFT was purchased with the funds raisedWhat are the next step options that the DAO is considering?Where to learn more about the Assange DAOHow to contributeEpisode links: Episode 339 - What Julian Assange Represents to the Crypto MovementAssangeDAO siteUS based siteUK based siteAssangeDAO on TwitterGabriel on TwitterStellar on TwitterSponsors: Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusoneParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenterThis episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/432

Welcome to Applesenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization in the blockchain revolution. I'm Friedricha Ernst. Today we're speaking with Gabriel Chibdin and Stella Magnet, who are involved in the Assange Dow. And before we talk with them, let me talk about our sponsors today. Are your crypto assets sitting idle in your wallet, start earning rewards and contribute to network security by staking with Chorus 1 is staking providers securing $5 billion in assets on over 25 decentralized networks, including Solana, Cosmos and Ethereum. Corse 1 recently airdropped over 3,600 exclusive NFTs

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Our other sponsors Paraswap, and Paraswap is a Dex aggregator on Ethereum. You can get the best market price as they have the fastest and cheapest liquidity. They just launched their version 5, which has a new contract and new APIs, and is pretty gas-friendly. And they recently added support for Avalanche, Polygon and BSC as well as Phantom. You can use Paraswop directly from your ledger and ledger live. In addition to that,

they are also becoming a DAO. So if you have the PSP tokens, that's something you can participate in. Go check it out at pariswop.io. Cabria and Seller, thank you so much for coming on. We're here to talk about

the Assange Coulcase and the WikiLeaks backstory Dori and the Assange Dow today. But briefly, could you two introduce yourselves? Let's see. I have been in the Dow ecosystem since about 2017 contributed to projects like Mollick Dow, Giveth, Bright ID, and Aragon.

And I've also been a product manager and U.S. designer since about 2008. That's like a brief introduction. One of my main projects right now is called Black Sky Network. And I don't really need to talk about that that much right now because that's not the focus of this podcast. And I'm Gabriel Shipton. I'm a film producer and Julian Assange's brother. I've been advocating for Julian publicly for about three years now, you know, across the world in the US and Europe as well as Australia.

Cool. Thank you guys for coming on. So let's talk about the backstory to the Assange trial and the entire Dow coming into existence first. So Julian founded Wikidiques, a platform where whistleblowers could anonymously drop information. What was the service that Wikileaks provided? Because in principle, I mean, did they fact check, did they publicize, or how did they serve the whistleblowers? You know, WikiLeaks, so they used, I guess, cryptography and Tor to combine those together to make the anonymous Dropbox so that these mass leaks could be, you know, submitted anonymously. Then they would, you know, use their network to check the, you know, check to verify the leaks and then they would publish them.

They started in 2006 and, you know, they've got a perfect record. so they became a magnet for leakers. Basically because it's very difficult to actually stay anonymous, right? So basically when you intend to publicize large amounts of data, staying anonymous is a major concern. So basically they kind of inserted themselves as a buffer. Yes, and there was censorship, you know, they were totally censorship resistant as well.

So, you know, their legal setup allowed them to, carry on, you know, keep their servers up and carry on publishing under any circumstance, basically. Did they also fact check or did they self-censor some of the information that was transmitted to them? I don't think so, no, and they did fact-check, yeah. So, like I said, they've got this perfect, they've got this perfect record where nothing has been proved to be fake or any of the documents have found to be fake. So, yeah, they were fact-checking and making sure that everything was, everything that they published on the WikiLeaks website was true to that source and, yeah, it was the original source documents that were published. Okay. And so Julian started this undertaking.

Obviously, there were lots of other people involved. Can you briefly talk about the sort of leaks that brought Julian into the course? cross-hairs of law enforcement? Yeah, well, I guess I can talk about it, and maybe from my personal's perspective. So when, you know, WikiLeaks started, you know, we sort of, I looked, watched it grow curiously, you know, they had things about the Church of Scientology, different sort of leaks like that originally. And so, you know, it was interesting and, you know, watching it form.

but the first time that I became, you know, really saw the power of WikiLeaks was when Julian published some documents from Kenya, a report in Kenya that led to a change of government. And that was the first time when, you know, when I started hearing that, you know, some people who Julian had worked with, you know, were turned up. dead and things like that. So that was the first time that really, you know, this is something that is confronting power, is making power, the power structure is afraid, so afraid that they will, you know, act out and do something. So that that is the first time, you know, around that time when WikiLeaks sort of, you know, confronted that sort of resistance, I think. So, I mean, there's different sorts of resistance, right? So basically there's resistance from what we would see as illegitimate actors, and then there's resistance from

legitimate actors or people we think ought to be legitimate actors, so basically Western democratic governments. I mean, if you're in the crosshairs for something where the democratic record is less than stellar, that's maybe not completely surprising. But Julian actually also made it into the crosshairs of the American administration through the leak from

Chelsea Manning, right? That's right. So the Afghan war diaries, the Iraq war logs, the cable set of diplomatic cables and also the Guantanamo Bay detainee file. So since it was basically, after that was

published, you know, Months later, that's when all these attacks started on Julian, you know, the allegations in Sweden, and he was trapped in the UK. So shortly after that, publishing those leaks is when, you know, these larger forces or, you know, what we could, you know, I guess I don't really consider them to be, you know, law-abiding governments, but most people do. That's when they started really ramping up their attacks on Julian. and limiting his freedom.

So he was invited to the UK by the Guardian, and he's been trapped there ever since. So he left Sweden, and he was invited to the UK, and that's when an Interpol Red Notice was issued, and he was arrested. And yeah, he's been stuck in England ever since. Now he's in prison just outside of London. Why do you think it was only Julian?

Because, I mean, basically there's a number of people and involved with Wikidiques, right? Yes, that's right. I think, you know, in the beginning, Julian, you know, he was, he, he became the lightning rod for to sort of protect the other people. So, you know, in the beginning it was a bit of that. But then, you know, as his profile grew and grew, then, you know, he was, he became the lightning rod.

I mean, you know, it's for these sort of regulatory attacks that have been coming at him for the past 11 years. But there are the other people in WikiLeaks. The other WikiLeaks people have been investigated, spied on by the CIA. You know, Andy Muller McGahn, that was confirmed that he was spied on by the CIA that was confirmed by 30 sources

from within the CIA last September in a Yahoo news investigation. So it's not just Julian, but he is the most prominent one that is, you know, suffering at the moment. So what are the charges that are being levied against him? Well, he's charged under the, I mean, basically he's charged for publishing

these Chelsea Manning leaks. That's what he's been charged with. It's this, he's charged under the Espionage Act. But if you, if you look at the, if you look at the indictment, it's it just sort of outlines, well, you know, he received these leaks and he published them and therefore that's illegal. So he's charged 17 counts of the espionage acts which carry 170 years in prison and one charge under a computer intrusion which carries five years. So a total of 175 years maximum sentence. It was brought under the Trump administration. So this indictment was Obama. The Obama administration looked into the intercharging Julian and they found that they could not charge Julian without charging the New York

Times as well. They called that the New York Times problem so they put the indictment aside. And then when Trump came in in 2017 and it was just after Julian leaked the Volt 7 or published the Volt 7 leaks which were the CIA hacking tools. And that's when Mike Pompeo made the speech. and he called WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service. So what everyone sort of scratched their heads at the time, and it was his first speech as the CIA director. So it was he focused on WikiLeaks, and that's a really big thing. And everyone scratched their head at the time saying, like,

what does this mean? What does a non-state hostile intelligence service? So that's a new word. and what it actually meant is that the CIA could use the same techniques and tools that they use against, say, you know, Iranian Secret Service or Russian FSB or something like that, they could then use those on WikiLeaks without getting congressional approval, without taking it to those sort of checks and balances level. So it was from that moment onwards that things really, that, you know, Julian's persecution really ramped up. There was a time inside the Ecuadorian embassy where the Ecuadorian government changed and a security company that was hired to protect Julian became a CIA asset. And they started ramping up surveillance inside the embassy. They installed cameras that had listening devices.

on them. They would start taking, I remember I went there, they take your passport, they take your phone, they open your phone, they take pictures of your IMA and everything like that, they take pictures of your passport, and then when you leave, they give it back to you. And at that time, Julian had a jammer, so we'd go in and he would put on like a, you know, a static jammer when we, when we spoke, because he knew there were microphones there recording because of this hostile environment. They, we, then later on, there was some, this was all sort of exposed in a Spanish court case because some people from the security company leaked out that these things were going on

and that the plans were actually worse. They were agents who were stealing Julian's children's nappies to find their DNA, just to sort of prove that he was the father. They found out that there were plots to poison Julian. and that there were plots to kidnap Julian from the embassy. And so then last September there was this investigation by Yahoo News, by these three reporters. And all these claims were confirmed by these 30 sources from inside the intelligence community. They were confirmed that there were plots within the CIA to murder Julian, plots to kidnap him.

And in fact, the plots to kidnap him became before the indictment. So the CIA went to the White House. house with this plot to kidnap Julian. And the DOJ said, well, what are you going to do with him? Like, you're going to kidnap him. We can't put him in Guantanamo. Like, what are you going to do when you're going to do with him when you get here? Let us do the indictment first. And then we can get him out. And so that's what kicked off this current indictment. And that was back in 2017. And, you know, that's when we saw things ramp up in the embassy and the plan to get Julian out of the embassy really ramped up. And there was this, it's a, it's actually a, it's called, what's a code name?

It's like a pelican, I think something pelican. It was actually a code named operation by the British, British intelligence to get Julian out of the embassy and along with the Ecuadorian. So the British government conspired with the Ecuadorian government to eject Julian out of of the Ecuadorian embassy. So it's almost like a, you know, they came up with this plot to kidnap him, but they turned it into a judicial kidnapping. And that's what we're seeing now.

Julian's still, you know, being held hostage, basically, in Belmarsh prison. And, yeah, that's the sort of story of how he's gotten there at the moment. why are the things that he did not covered by the First Amendment rights? I mean, so basically free speech and freedom of the press is something that the US have historically held up really high. Yeah, that's true. And I think, you know, I think there's a lot of, you know, resistance to the case actually going to the US

because it would really test this out and it would be very publicly unpopular to have this, you know, the prosecution of a publisher in a court in the US. So what's happening at the moment, it's like this continuation of this judicial kidnapping, is that there is a very, very weak extradition agreement that was put in place in the UK after 9-11 so that the idea being, you know, we can come in and just grab whoever we want

and take terrorists and try them in the US. So that weak extradition agreement has been exploited by the DOJ, in order to keep Julian in prison in the UK. And one thing about the UK, it's journalism laws aren't as strong as the US. And I think, you know, after, you know, we've seen, you know, after the Snowden leaks, you know, MI6 agents going into the Guardian and smashing up computers.

They have the D-Notus board where that is basically the intelligence community He sits down with all the editors of the newspapers and says, you know, they work out what to publish. So the UK press is, the press rights are non-existent, basically. So that's why he's sort of being kept there through these extradition laws and just sort of letting it run on. Because every, you know, the idea is to keep him in prison, to show everybody that if you publish this information, this is what's going to have. happen to you. We'll move you from place to place and we'll exploit these laws and we'll exploit the court systems to keep you in prison, to keep you locked up until you either die, you know, until you die, except that's it.

That's pretty dire. So why do you think the Trump administration at the time kind of, why do you think they made this distinction between bringing charges against Julian and Wikim? Leaks and the New York Times. Is it because bringing charges against the New York Times would not carry popular support? And basically they can paint Julian and Wikileaks as this broke organization? Yes. So there's a, you know, a 10-year-long propaganda campaign to sort of destroy Julian and WikiLeaks's reputation. And so what that created was a political situation in the U.S. where it was, you know, it was okay. People thought, oh, this person is, you know, this person, say,

one of the ones that's most worrying at the moment and stops a lot of people from supporting Julian is that they think he got Trump elected. So this narrative is pushed into the Democratic Party and into the Democratic voters that Julian got Trump elected, Julian got Trump elected. And so they believe, you know, well, he's our police. opponent, so we don't actually mind if he's been, you know, if his rights are abused,

you know, it's convenient to us, it's convenient to our political situation. So I think that's, that's this sort of, you know, these narratives that are created in order for this to happen. And so Julian's political, Julian's constituency has been taken away from him by all these media, this propaganda campaign over the years. and whereas the New York Times, they are, you know, aligned with the Democratic Party. So they have the protection of the Democratic Party, you know, when it comes to that, those sort of stuff. So you see things like, you know, requests for access to reporters emails that came under the Trump DOJ. You see when it changed to the Biden DOJ, Merrick Garland, the current DOJ goes in and says,

oh, we're not going to do that anymore, you know, because we're the Democrats now, we're going to go after project. Veritas, which is a right-wing newspaper. So it's, you know, as long as you've got one side, you're okay. But if you're actually, you know, if you want to communicate the truth to everybody without a political allegiance, then you're in a very difficult position because when they come after you, you know, you're vulnerable to attack from each side. I mean, it's also the core of civil liberties that everyone has allowed them, right? So basically you can't just go after the people who say things that you don't agree with. Let's talk about the administration change.

So, I mean, obviously, the charges were first brought by the Trump administration, and now it's the Biden administration. So does this change things? Because as you said earlier, the Obama administration had decided that the charges were too weak to bring. So shouldn't that kind of inform what's happening now? Yeah, I mean, that's what you would expect. you know, we went to the US last January to try and lobby the incoming administration because we sort of, yeah, we, you know, had some hope that, you know, when they came in, that they would wind this back.

But there was some promising signs, like I said, like they withdrew those subpoenas for the New York Times journalists' emails and things like that. They even amended the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as well so that, you know, what they had charged with, what they had charged Aaron Schwartz with was potentially now not possible. So there were some promising signs from the administration, but not on Julian's case. So they sort of have doubled down on it now and then they're pushing it. They're pushing it forward. You know, they're appealing to the highest level. You know, they appeal to the High Court where they won

and the extradition was ordered. And now Julian's just submitted his application to appeal to the Supreme Court. He submitted that on the seventh, which is when the NFT auction was launched. So that is the sort of next step in the Supreme Court. But I don't, you know, there are some, you know, the Biden administration, I don't really think that they're going to do anything without any sort of major political costs, you know,

there has to be some political pressure on them for them to drop this case. So basically looking at last year, I mean, there were extradition proceedings in the UK. And then basically in January, the judge ruled that Assange could not be extradited to the United States because of concerns about mental health and risk of suicide in the US prison. And then basically the US appeared. I mean, that's a very active act, right? So basically this is something that where basically if you're handed a court case and you don't really agree with it in the first place. And then you lose.

Then basically deciding to appear, this is very active. I mean, they could have decided to not appear this. I mean, it would have been an easy way out, right? So basically, if you don't really agree with the case. Yeah, I think, you know, they're scared of Julian. They're afraid of, you know, have been exposed. You know, Julian invented, or, you know, Julian and WikiLeaks invented this system that was a magnet for leakers, you know, these huge data sets. And what we see now is, you know, these sort of these things that have been created by a cypherpunk have been co-opted by the institutions that,

Julian, you know, was fighting against. So, you know, you have the New York Times has an anonymous drop box. You have, like, Washington Post has an anonymous drop box. But, like, you can submit anonymously, but then it just goes into the same filter. Like, you know, and it's, it's, you know, it's really, they've sort of co-opted, co-opted the WikiLeaks model and turned it into their sort of part of their institutional power system that they've been running for years and years. So, yeah.

But, yeah, and I think there's, they're just very scared of it. And, you know, they want him dead, basically. You know, that's the crusker. They want him dead. So in this appear on December 10th, the judge actually sided with the US. And this was, and basically said that Julian could be extradited. This is now being basically there's an appeal hearing at the Supreme. Court in the UK Supreme Court.

So what's the course of action now in terms of legal recourse? Yeah, so the Supreme Court appeal will come up. So Julian's applied to the Supreme Court for permission to appeal. He'll probably, we'll probably find that out, I guess, and the appeal might be heard before the summer. And if that appeals rejected, then, you know, he could potentially be extradited. He could appeal to the European Court human rights but the UK is sort of you know trying to pull back from from from from

from that and then there's potential for a cross appeal to the lower to to cross appeal to the lower courts rulings on all the substantive press freedom grounds so that so there's potential for that court for those proceedings to happen but I you know in my opinion I think a sort of extradition is is like very likely highly likely that he'll be extradited sooner than, sooner than we think. But the decision on 10th of December really kicked off when the extradition was ordered, there was this like global outrage around the world that that was, you know, started that, you know, we saw so much sort of people became really angry and and there was some, a few, then we saw like Ross Dow had just, just come about and it was and everyone

saw how successful that was and they, you know, bought the Ross's first S-NFT collection. And it was this sort of global outrage that kicked off some calls. So people on Twitter were calling, oh, what about a free Assange Dow? Or what about a Sanjdow? And, you know, one of our multi-signers McKenna posted a tweet. And then Harry Halpin, who's CEO of NIM, he, you know, reposted a tweet saying, this is a great idea. And I'd been talking to Stella about Dow's, you know, a couple of months. before and it all just started to move so quickly after that.

Everyone sort of came together into a telegram group and yeah, that was in December 10. And now we have, you know, now there's a thriving community of 10,000 people who are in Free Assange Tao. Cool. Yeah. Let's talk about the Assange Tao. So there was people who could contribute to the Assange Tao, right? and the Dow collected, I believe, 16,500,

eth, so that's $50 million. And then that was spent on an NFT by PAC with the understanding that the money would go to a foundation, the Wow Holland Foundation. Can you tell us about the entire, what happened and why did it happen? Whenever the DAO was starting to form on December 10th of last year, many people were joining the Telegram group and mentioning NFTs as a way for the Assange Dow to form.

And this was because December 10th was actually shortly after the success of the Free Ross Dow. So we wanted to emulate that successful use case as much as possible. So Gabriel had also joined the telegram group around that time, and he mentioned that there was indeed an NFT in the works from the Julian Assange side, but the details weren't fully revealed yet as far as when that would be launched or what that would look like. Okay, so can you describe the NFT that was actually bought? So the NFT is a collaboration between Assange and Pak called Clock, and it displays in words the number of days that Assange has been in Belmarsh Prison. So basically every day the clock updates counting up the number of days. And whenever he gets released, the clock will go to zero. This mechanism is also tied to an open edition of Vanguard NFTs that Pak allowed people

to mint for free when the auction was underway, where people can type in a message and it looks censored on the NFT. Like there's a line going across it, going across the message. But also, all of these NFTs that people are minted, they're locked in their wallets. And as soon as Julian Assange becomes free, they'll unlock and they'll become uncensored. And by Becomes Free, you mean leaves Belmarsh? Because those are not the same thing, right? You know, it's dynamic, but in multiple ways. So, yeah, as Julian's situation changes, I believe that the clock will change.

But if Julian work, I think one of those ones that we know about is that if Julian walks free, you know, is released and is free, actually free, that the clock will burned to zero. So I guess it's a, you know, I think, you know, what's interesting about it is you've got, I think, 29, I think there was almost 30,000 people who minted one of the open edition. So they've all linked, all these open editions that people have, they're all stuck in their wallets, they're all sort of been censored, they're all not free, right? So this concept that, you know, all these people have this Julian puck NFT, but they, are they linked to Julian's freedom. So it's this interesting sort of interplay, I guess, with people.

And I guess one of the ideas would be that it motivates them to, you know, advocate for Julian's freedom or do something for Julian's freedom because, you know, their NFT is tied to that if they want to trade it, I guess. So the entire sum that the Dow raised 16 and a half thousand Eath was built. on this NFT, right? So basically the second higher spitter was Jesse Powell from Krakken. He did it

with his ether dress, so basically it was very obvious. Why did the Dow decide, or why do you think the Dow decided to outbid him by like 11,000 eth? Because I mean, in principle, the Dow could have also just kept those eth to have at their disposal, right?

Yes, yeah. So this is, there was a very, there was a lot of debate within the DAO, within the sort of core group about this, this, you know, this strategy that we used. And there was, so yeah, it was a hotly debated strategy. But, you know, this is the sort of the path that was chosen in the end. You know, we had some in the group who supported, some who didn't.

And this is the sort of way we went. Within the Dow structure, there is a, you know, some representatives from, yeah, some representatives from Julian's family. And we sort of, we were the sort of, you know, deciding vote, basically, between the, between the two groups in the core who were going either way. And so we went with the Trident Tested Wellholland Foundation who, you know, have been supporting Julian and his legal fees for, for a long time who have, you know, been resisted, you know, resisted, you know, these regulatory attacks before. So, so it was a pathway that was, you know, a tested pathway to get this money

to where it needs to be as soon as possible. So what were the arguments against that course of action? Well, I think, so the arguments against were, you know, that the Dow could use this treasury and potentially, you know, put it through its governance structure and create a sort of a Dow model that would have been, you know, more sustainable. The Dow still has some treasury. There will be, I think, 5% left in the Dow for Dow operations. That would be the JBX.

Yeah, yeah, there will be like the JVX tokens that we, we're going to, the Dow will apply to get back. But yeah, I think that that was, you know, the arguments were against, well, we could, we have this Dow structure here, you know, let's use it and, you know, use the Treasury and put it through the Dow structure. So that was the arguments for. Maybe let's go to the future of the Dow in a second, but basically just to kind of close this line of, uh, in question.

So basically the 50 million, they kind of went to puck with the understanding that they would, they would give them to the Wow Holland Foundation? Yes, yeah, yeah. So that's the pathway there. And it's also a Julian collaborator. So it's a collaboration. So it's a Julian's first NFT as well. So, you know, that's a good thing to spend the money on this, you know, if. Julian feels like he's going to do other NFTs as well.

Okay. And I mean the Wow Holland Foundation, this is a German foundation, right? So in principle, you can actually give to the Wow Holland Foundation and everything that you give is tax deductible. Where are there thoughts of just having a public call to ask people to give to the Wow Holland Foundation on Julian's behalf? Because obviously doing things tax-free is always. an additional intentive, right?

Yeah, I mean, I've been sort of trying, you know, I've been advocating, you know, in the crypto community for, you know, almost, you know, almost two years now. And it's, you know, people that this, it's very hard to get people to part with their, their crypto if you're just asking for a donation, you know, you have to offer, if they all want some value. So you can offer them, you know, an NFTA. or something like that.

So I think that was the catalyst and the sort of pathway, like following on from Ross Dow and seeing how successful they were, that we coincide the Dow launch with the NFT sale, and it really just, you know, blows things up. You know, like it just makes everything bigger. And I think, you know, we've seen there's been worldwide news now, like, you know, on the NFT sale all around the world. world, which I don't think would have happened otherwise. You know, it's been reported all over the

world. Royder's put out a report and it's just picked up and it's been taking, you know, it's in Mexico, in the US, all over the place. People reporting on a positive story about Julian with a different narrative, you know, about how many people are supporting him, how much money he's able to raise. So getting that positive message, you know, about Julian's cause and the people who are supporting him is, you know, it's in like every single, most publications around the world is you can't really buy that. You know, you can't buy that. So that's one of the great things about the, you know, the NFT purchase and the DAO's raise.

So what's going to happen with the NFT now that it belongs to the DAO? The DAO has to decide what happens with it, essentially. I understand there's no set course of action. But what are the options that the Dow is considering? Well, I believe that the main option the community is talking about is a potential fractionalization of the NFT. But for that to happen, there would have to be a proposal put through and approved by the justice token holders. And justice is the token of the Assange Tao. I understand that basically for every ETH contributed, you got a million justice tokens, right?

and in principle they're tradable on the open market so you can actually trade them on uniswap or wherever you want what are the plans for the holders of the justice token so basically what are the plans for the Dow and principle what do you think is in its future do you think it's like it's a one-time thing which is basically it's kind of a go-fund me crossed with an NFTs so as to get media attention

or do you think the Assange Tao is going to make it into the future and kind of find and find a mission with their justice tokens kind of like, I'm sure you guys are familiar with Constitution Dow, right? I don't think the Dow has necessarily ended right now, but let me just explain a bit what Gabriel was mentioning before as far as these JBX tokens. So Assange Dow used Juicebox as a platform to raise its fund. but JuiceBox took 5% of all the Ethereum raised, which is about 2.5 million USD worth. But what they did was give the Dow their Juice Box, aka JBX tokens, in exchange for taking this ETH.

So right now, there's a proposal under review in the Juice Box Dow to upgrade their JBX-Eath bonding curve from 70% to 9%. to 95% meaning that if this proposal is approved, Assange Dow will be able to exchange the JBIX tokens into JuiceBox's bonding curve and get back 95%

of this 5% E-fee that Juice Box took, which is still close to 2.5 million. So then this will give Assange Dow a bit of a treasury to work with beyond just the JVX token

which do not have that much liquidity. So that's one of the steps that needs to be taken. And then the other major step, though, is really formalizing the governance processes and governance model of the Dow. So the justice holders need to vote in and approve the Dow's governance model and also formulate potential governance models. So that has not happened yet. Assange Dow is going to open up a snapshot space and start to enable justice governance, though.

So those are the next steps, basically solidifying the governance model, but at the same time in the Dow's mission, there are very clear constraints on the website as far as what Assange Dow's primary focus should be, essentially freeing and liberating Assange. But right now there are many people joining me. the community and sometimes they, you know, bring up software ideas or becoming a more generic Dow for justice. But it is called Assange Dow. So I believe that it's important, you know, I believe it's personally important for the mission to be highly specific to Julian Assange, you know, in my opinion. But essentially, justice holders need to vote in and approve on,

like, make sure that everyone is. is aligned with a common mission. Are there considerations of kind of becoming a decentralized freedom of the press foundation or decentralized Wikidik's? So there are definitely many people in the community that have brought up that idea or want that to be a focus of Assange Tao. I personally don't think it makes sense as far as that being a project that Assange Tao incubates. But I do believe in general that it is a worthy idea to find.

fund, but it's better off being funded by creating a more focused free software DAO. But, you know, that's my opinion. Other than kind of fund Julian Assange's legal costs, which is, which I understand, should be more or less taken care of with the money that's, that's going to Valholland. So, I mean, I, uh, fortunately, I've never had to face trial anywhere in particular, in particular, particularly in the US, but I mean, I can't imagine that, I mean, even that, I mean, the legal proceedings are going to be more than like 15 or 20 million, right? I mean, that should be ample money for the defense, right?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess if you look at like some of the Strat four, some of the Stratfor emails and it says, you know, move him from place to place and have him involved in endless, you know, legal cases for the next 30 years. So if you divide that amount by 30 years of legal, it's, you know, it doesn't really, at the end of that, it's not, you're not left with that much. You know, if you're talking about, you know, going to the Supreme Court in the US or or other places like that, it's very, very costly. And in the US as well, you'll have to run a, we'll have to run a dual campaign like lobbying and all that sort of stuff, because this is a political

case, right? It's not, the courts provide this veil of legality for people so that, so that, so that allows a whole section of society to switch off and say, oh, well, the court's doing their job, you know, he'll be, he'll get the benefit of justice, his rights are okay, but really it's just another arm of the state. So it's really a political case. It has to be one politically as well, but you still need the best lawyers, because if they make a mistake, then, you know, you can't really wind it back. So, you know, in terms of, is it enough funds, I think, you know, we could easily spend more than that on a case like this. This is very much a political case, right? So basically, winning it in the arena of public relations

is probably the way to go. I would assume. As someone who wants to be reelected, you make sure a widely unpopular case is dropped against if it's seen like a big injustice. So basically, what are the plans for Assange Tao from the people within the Tao who wanted to stay centered on Assange as a person? Well, the Tao is still in a nascent phase. So there is not necessarily any clear or strategic plans. that have been fully formulated yet.

The current phase is really about seeing what emerges from the community. And then the DAO can start acting on ideas after it has a treasury of ETH that it will get back from JuiceBox. What we achieve so far, what the Dow has achieved so far has been, you know, absolutely. Like, it's history, you know, like, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Elder. I mean, Stella, we started forming it like two, three weeks ago. right like like literally it we were sort of in a holding pattern the group the Dow group was in a holding pattern and then you know we had the NFT auction date and then we everyone just like dropped everything and literally I think most of us haven't slept for three weeks and and this is

the sort of where we're all still sort of coming down now I don't know I think I've aged like two years or something three weeks yeah basically as soon as as the date of the pack and Assange NFT auction was announced. There was not that much time and there's so much to do and it was so very, very intense for sure. Yeah, I can imagine that it must have been a mad scramble. So do I understand this correctly that,

Gabriel, you and the rest of the family kind of brought pack to the table? Yeah, Julian was thinking about an NFT after, you know, obviously Snowden had a wildly successful NFT all the proceeds of that went to the Freedom

of the Press Foundation which he's the chairman of and it was wildly successful and after that we started you know Julian started thinking about an NFT

you know who would be good to collaborate with and that's when we looked at a range of looked at a range of artists and yeah spoke to PAC and he was

or should they were, you know, they had some ideas and that, you know, it sort of just went from there. And that was, I think, that was back in May. So there was, there's been a lot of schedule wrangling. Like Julian is obviously going through court proceedings and Puck has a sort of schedule of releases. So we eventually settled on the 7th of February. Yeah, super interesting. So where can people come to kind of find out more about? Assange Dow and also probably shape the future of the organization, right?

So you can learn more by going to the Assange Dow website at asanjdao.org. The forum is the best place right now to participate in discussions, and that is at forum.esangdau.org. And that's basically where the future of the governance will be formed and where people can submit proposals for discussion. And you can also follow Assange Dow on Twitter, at Assange Dow. And, oh, yeah, on the website, there's also a link to the Substack blog as well. Cool. Gabriel, have you spoken to your brother since all of this has gone down?

I haven't spoken to him directly. I spoke to his fiancé Stella, and, yeah, he's very, very moved. You know, there's not much good news for Julian, you know, over these past years. So this sort of thing really makes a difference to his mood and lifts everyone around the world. It really lifts every single support network, whether they're street activists, whether they're, you know, podcasters who are on side, whether they're, you know, the 10,000 strong community that are in the Dow. like, you know, this has been a super successful initiative, you know, raised more than anyone else ever. And so I think everyone around the world, all the supporters, all the activists are sort of lifted by this. They can see, you know, the tide is changing.

And I think that's what we're feeling. And I think that's what Julian feels. If people want to get involved in a non-Dao way, what are the best ways to contribute? you know. There's, there's, depending where you are, there's a few different websites that don't extradite Assange is, is the big one in the UK. Asange defence.org is in the US. But yeah, you know, get on, there's like Facebook groups, Twitter, Twitter groups that are all the different activists around the world. There's like, there's so many activist groups that there literally is anywhere you go. There is an Assange support.

activist groups. So yeah, get involved with them. I think one of the main things is talking to your neighbors, talking to your friends about it, you know, if you're updating them and getting them to support the case and telling them the real story about what's going on and not what, it's not like what they read in the media or what they're exposed to, you know, on the television or whatever. Yeah, so give them the actual news. How much value is then reaching out to your political representatives? Because it is at its core a political case, right? Yeah.

Yes. So that works as well. That's very successful. If you, you know, like in my electorate at home, if I see the MP on the street, I go up to him and go, hey, what are you doing? You know, what are you doing about Assange? Like, you know, you've got to do something. I think that's, you know, if you're confronting them on the street, they can't. hide, they can't hide from you. So I think that's one really good way. Localised petitions are really

good. So if you're, you know, in your local area and you have a representative, get together people and do a localised petition, submit them to your representative. There are groups of parliamentarians in most likely France has a group of 49 parliamentarians who support Assange. Britain has 26. Australia has a group of 28. In Greece, there's a hundred, a third of the parliament is in Assange support group. So encouraging parliamentarians to join these groups is a very important part as well and something that every normal person can do because they need our votes. Cool.

Thank you both for coming on. This was super interesting. Thanks. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find and subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you have a Google Home or Alexa device, you can tell it to listen to the latest episode of the Epicenter podcast.

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