The latest attempt to support Julian Assange’s fight for freedom raised 12,569 Ether (ETH) or around $38.8 million in the form of decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
Assange, who is fighting for his freedom, is currently locked up in a London prison where he has been since 2019. The United States overruled a British court ruling barring extradition in December 2021, which puts the founder of WikiLeaks in a very unwelcomed scenario.
“AssangeDAO is a collective of cypherpunks fighting for the liberation of Julian Assange. The DAO aims to raise ETH in return for the $JUSTICE governance token to bid on a 1/1 NFT produced by digital artist Pak in collaboration with Julian Assange,” the DAO host, JuiceBox noted, emphasizing that all of the NFT sales would go into Assange's defense fund for legal fees and campaigning to raise awareness about Julian's extradition case.
“The Assange family have worked closely with the DAO and endorses its efforts to unite cypherpunks all over the world.” JuiceBox added.
Donations started rolling in on Friday, February 4, with funding accelerated over the weekend, doubling over the past 24 hours to the current level.
Furthermore, AssangeDAO is now the largest JuiceBox Ether raise in history, exceeding ConstitutionDAO’s, which raised funds in November to purchase an original copy of the United States Constitution.
It is worth noting that the comparison between AssangeDAO and ConstitutionDAO is based on ETH, which was much higher when denoted in U.S. dollars back in November. Taking into consideration the price per ETH in November, the dollar value raised by ConstitutionDAO was around $49 million.
The DAO is the final phase of an effort, which began in a Telegram group in mid-December on the day that the U.S. government won its appeal of a United Kingdom court ruling that barred Assange’s extradition.
The official WikiLeaks Twitter profile echoed the announcement, with Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton joining the fight
Meanwhile, if Assange gets extradited to the United States, the WikiLeaks founder will face 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information. Currently, Assange is held in the Belmarsh prison in London, after spending seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, protected by asylum status.
AssangeDAO was created after the concept behind FreeRossDAO, which raised $12 million to free Ross Ulbricht, founder of the dark web marketplace Silk Road.