devcon 5 / blockchain and the law interfacing the rule of law and the rule of code
Duration: 01:23:45
Speaker: Carla Reyes, Constance Choi, Fennie Wang, Kei Kreutler, Maria Gomez, Rick Dudley, Silke Noa Elrifai
Type: Panel
Expertise: Beginner
Event: Devcon
Date: Invalid Date
Categories
Taxonomy of DAOs
The term DAO appears here to stay. From its first use, the phrase Decentralization Autonomous Organization conjured an array of potentialities, including legal representation and management for natural systems to imaginaries of independent Skynet-like entities. However, despite the resurgence of DAO projects in 2019, we still lack a common vocabulary for different types of DAOs. From “human-work DAOs” to “superscalable” organizations, this breakout session aims to develop a working taxonomy of DAO projects with differing structures and objectives. We will provide a worksheet for participants to evaluate a specific DAO project instance, based on its decision-making processes, ease of entrance and exit, and broader governance mechanisms, with helpers from each project on hand to provide insight. We will also provide basis for existing organizational forms, such as co-operatives and mutual organizations, that DAOs both mimic and exceed. This breakout session seeks to establish a working group on DAO taxonomy, and chart both existing categories as well as the as yet unknown feats of DAOs.
COALA Workshop: Model Law for DAOs
The number of DAOs is growing, and yet most of these DAOs still cannot interact with legal entities, because they do not have legal personality or legal capacity. This workshop is aimed at drafting model legislation for governments to recognize DAOs as legal persons, provided that they possess specific characteristics that facilitate interaction with third parties, and that they provide minimum guarantees of soundness, oversight and accountability. The goal is not to create new types of corporate entities that could accommodate a DAO (c.f. the approach taken by Vermont and Malta), but rather to carve out some kind of legal recognition to DAOs that subsists in an “alegal” state (a.k.a in the blockchain world) and not in a particular geographic jurisdiction in which they would otherwise need to be incorporated. To the extent that blockchain technology has newly endowed DAOs with both technical and economic agency (c.f. their ability to own crypto-assets and to enter into smart contract relationships), it has become crucial for national jurisdictions to recognize these new technical opportunities, and grant DAOs with some kind of legal personality and legal capacity in order to enable these technical affordances and match them with newfound legal affordances. This work requires building a definition of who are the DAOs that should be recognized as legal persons, and what are the legal or technical requirements they should comply with to avail themselves of legal personality and legal capacity. Once this preliminary work has been done, we will work on drafting a model law for DAOs that could be adopted by a variety of national jurisdictions.
The Shape of Protocols to Come
Ethereum defies easy categorization—it blends aspects of money, nations, and more, yet doesn't fit neatly into any single category. To build better mental models for understanding Ethereum, we've spent the past two years stepping back and exploring the broader class it belongs to: Protocols. This talk explores the fundamental properties of protocols, strategies for navigating them, and how Ethereum can uniquely contribute to this emerging research field.
Cultivating the Understory : Building Resilient DAOs
Let's explore the overlooked "understory" of DAOs and teams: the human layer that forms the foundation of successful decentralized governance. While much attention is given to the technical and structural aspects of DAOs (the "overstory"), we'll dive into the cultural, social, and distributed leadership elements that are crucial for the longevity and effectiveness of anything we build. Themes: DAO Ecology, Decentralized leadership, Coding culture DNA, Biomimicry for Governance
Onchain Capital Allocation: From current mechanisms to future possbilities
Capital allocation, from paying bills to complex organizational funding, often suffers from inefficiencies and lack of transparency. Web3 has the potential to revolutionize this by enabling more efficient, effective, and transparent capital distribution. By addressing coordination failures and introducing new onchain strategies, crypto could transform how society allocates resources. Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki will articulate this design space in this 20 minute talk.
Common Knowledge Machines
Common knowledge is a precondition for collective action. Yet, increasing polarization in information ecosystems risks undermining common knowledge formation. This talk introduces Community Posts, a mechanism that leverages diversification and zero-knowledge proofs to help people identify divides, bridge them and find common ground, fostering greater common knowledge in social networks.
Agreement Making in Solidity: A Legal Perspective
Bill Marino of Cornell Tech presents on Agreement Making in Solidity: A Legal Perspective.
Backfeed
Matan Field presents on Backfeed (http://backfeed.cc), which develops resilient technology and new economic models to support free, large-scale, systematic collaboration.
devp2p
Ethereum's Alex Leverington presents on "devp2p", Ethereum's networking protocol.
The paradox of centralized tools doing accounting for decentralized finance
This talk is going to be about a paradox that has been prevalent since the early days of Cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies were made to empower the individual, to be their own bank and to enable financial freedom without having to rely on centralized institutions. The paradox lies in the contradiction that when people want to do accounting or analytics for this new financial system they happily turn to centralized tools. This act enforces the status quo of finance being managed by centralized platforms and goes against the spirit of decentralization, undermining everything we are building. The talk will present multiple examples of this paradox in the world around us, from the way people do analytics (Blockfolio e.t.c.), to the way they do tax accounting (Bitcoin Tax e.t.c.). There will be some theorizing on why this is the case and underline why this is bad for the ecosystem and exceptionally dangerous for the people who utilize such services. Finally potential solutions to this problem will be presented, showing how a tool that performs decentralized financial analytics, accounting and tax reporting should look like in order to respect user's privacy and fit in this new era of decentralized finance we are now entering.