Aragon OSx is a DAO framework whose core is a permission manager: the organisation's treasury and powers sit in one contract, and its governance is installed as plugins such as token voting, multisig or optimistic approval, which the DAO can later swap (Aragon docs). Aragon has maintained OSx as a product team since the Aragon Association announced its dissolution in November 2023 (Aragon). This page compares the other frameworks a team can deploy instead, by what each puts at the centre of the organisation, and lists the earlier alternatives that are no longer maintained.
What can I use instead of Aragon to run a DAO?
On EVM chains the two common alternatives are OpenZeppelin Governor, for token voting whose result executes on-chain, and a Safe multisig extended with Zodiac modules, for a treasury held by signers that a vote can be wired to. DAOhaus, Nouns Builder, Gardens and Colony each build an organisation around one different mechanism, and on Solana most DAOs run on SPL Governance through the Realms app.
| Framework | Built around | Chains | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenZeppelin Governor | Token voting with delegation; a passed proposal executes the calls it carries, optionally after a timelock (docs) | Any EVM chain | MIT library, v5.7.0 released 29 July 2026 |
| Safe + Zodiac | An m-of-n multisig treasury (Safe docs); Zodiac modules let the Safe execute a vote's result (Zodiac) | 30+ EVM networks | Zodiac Roles and Delay patched 19 June 2026 after an exploit on 1 June (post-mortem) |
| DAOhaus (Moloch v3) | Shares and loot; ragequit lets a member leave with a proportional slice of the treasury (Moloch) | Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, Gnosis Chain, Polygon, Base (networks) | App still summoning DAOs; the Baal contracts last changed 11 June 2024 |
| Nouns Builder | An NFT voting token sold one at a time by recurring auction into a timelocked treasury (README) | Ethereum, Base, Optimism | Maintained by Builder DAO; V3 contracts in opt-in rollout |
| Gardens | Conviction voting: support for a funding request grows the longer it is staked (docs) | Seven EVM networks (repository) | Active; proposals on three networks in September 2026 |
| Colony | Reputation earned by paid work, which decays, and lazy consensus: a vote happens only when someone objects (docs) | Arbitrum One | Early access closed (colony.io); no network event since 13 May 2026 |
| SPL Governance & Realms | A realm with a community token and an optional council token, each a voting population (README) | Solana | Maintained in the Mythic Project fork; last upgraded by its own governance on 8 July 2026 |
How the alternatives differ from Aragon
Aragon makes permissions the core and treats the voting rule as a replaceable plugin. OpenZeppelin Governor compiles the rule into the contract: a team picks extensions for vote counting, quorum and timelock when it deploys, rather than installing them as plugins afterwards. A Safe starts from custody instead. Its signers move money by themselves, and only the Zodiac modules a DAO enables bind them to a vote, so the same treasury can run on signer discretion one year and on enforced votes the next.
The frameworks also differ on whether a member can leave with part of the treasury. Moloch, the contract under DAOhaus, builds ragequit into its core: a member burns shares or loot and withdraws a proportional share of every asset, before a proposal they oppose executes. Zodiac offers an Exit module for a Safe, which its current documentation no longer covers. The standard plugins of Aragon OSx and the Governor contracts include no such exit; how DAOs have handled exit is set out in Rage-quit and exit rights.
Who votes differs as well. Governor, Aragon's token-voting plugin and SPL Governance weight a vote by tokens held or delegated. Nouns Builder issues one voting token per auction, so voting power arrives at the pace of the auctions. Colony weights members by reputation earned for work in a team, and Gardens by how long their support has been staked behind a proposal; Conviction Voting explains the second.
Which Aragon alternatives are no longer maintained?
Three frameworks that were once named as alternatives no longer take changes. Tribute, the modular framework generalised out of The LAO, had its contract repository archived read-only on 10 July 2026, and its last release was v2.10.0 in October 2024 (openlawteam/tribute-contracts). DAOstack, whose Genesis Protocol used a staked prediction market to decide which proposals reached a vote, opened its last proposal in January 2024 and last changed its contracts in January 2023 (daostack/arc). Llama, a governance and access-control framework, was acquired by River Protocol in November 2024 (River), and every one of its public repositories is archived. Contracts already deployed from all three keep running; nobody fixes them.
How Caper approaches this
Caper is a DAO framework on Radix, running on Stokenet, Radix's test network, for now (Getting started). One transaction launches a caper with its own token, treasury and market, and its proposals execute on-chain once a vote passes and the market does not veto it. Like Moloch, it gives members a way out: a holder who has voted can leave at any time with a share of the treasury, with no proposal and no waiting period. What is a caper describes the design.