Silke Noa, a member of AssangeDAO, is demanding a detailed breakdown of the $37 million spent by the Wau Holland Foundation on Julian Assange’s legal defense. Noa posted on X (formerly Twitter) that out of 16,593 Ether (ETH), about 11,000 ETH, worth $37 million, has been used for legal defense and campaigns by AssangeDAO’s initiative, The Clock. This Ether was managed by the Wau Holland Foundation using their Safe.global multisig wallet.
The value of AssangeDAO’s token (ticker: JUSTICE) has shot up by over 80% since Julian Assange was released from the UK’s Belmarsh prison on Monday, where he had been held for 1,901 days.
AssangeDAO was created in February this year to raise funds to support WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s freedom. On Tuesday, a member of AssangeDAO posted on X that over 11,000 ETH (around $37 million) has been set aside for legal defense and advocacy. This is part of the 16,593 ETH the DAO has raised since it started.
The token’s price jumped after Julian Assange flew to Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI), on Monday. Saipan is a remote Pacific island that’s part of a U.S. commonwealth.
Assange is headed to a courtroom there, where he’s expected to plead guilty to a single criminal charge on Wednesday as part of a plea deal. This deal might let him walk free and go back to Australia, possibly ending his five-year legal battle.
Assange is charged with violating the U.S. Espionage Act
Assange’s case involves accusations of spying on the U.S. government after he published a huge batch of documents on WikiLeaks, revealing alleged war crimes by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These documents were provided by Chelsea Manning, a whistleblower who was a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq at the time.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Assange with multiple offenses under the U.S. Espionage Act. If found guilty of all charges, he could face over 170 years in prison.
However, according to WikiLeaks, Assange has made a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, admitting to just one of the 18 charges. If sentenced for this single charge on Wednesday, he could get a 62-month jail term, but it will be considered served due to the time he has already spent in a UK prison waiting for these charges.
What AssangeDAO’s Effort Through the Years?
Joshua Bate as the core team member of AssangeDAO has been said to Cointelegraph:
“The DAO was formed by Assange’s friends and family, alongside other participants recruited from the Web3 space, to raise money for Julian’s defence using novel fundraising mechanisms that were popular at the time.”
Bate said the money was raised through crowdsourcing from “onchain and cypherpunk communities.” He explained that this helped raise awareness about the situation and inspired action from the decentralized community.
The Pak NFT
Bate told Cointelegraph that the onchain funds were used to buy a one-of-a-kind NFT, which was created in collaboration with Assange himself.
“All proceeds from the sale of that NFT were then sent to Wau Holland Foundation’s onchain address and periodically off-ramped to pay for legal fees. The foundation’s innovative spirit allowed this type of onchain activism to have an impact in the real world.”
Another core member of AssangeDAO, who helped design its governance structure and work, talked to Cointelegraph about the Pak NFT.
“In some sense, perhaps this event will reunite the community again. Pak’s NFT is going to go to “0” when Assange becomes free, I believe. This DAO owns that NFT.”
Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and activist, founded WikiLeaks, a platform for publishing classified and sensitive documents. He has been in prison since April 2019.
Noa mentioned that this might be the first time an NFT community has worked to free someone from prison. However, they added that there can’t be any celebrations until everything is fully resolved.
Editor: Lydicius
