February 2024 Recap
Whole lotta love for LexDAO
The new year is well under way and I am sure most of you are still sticking to your new year’s resolutions. Of course, we won’t judge if that isn’t the case either. But we at LexDAO are definitely keeping up with ours! Follow us after the jump to see what we’ve been working on and what exciting events are coming up.
Attention lawyers: we'll pay you 75 USDC for a 30-minute meeting to tell you more about MIDAO! Book your meeting here today! - the MIDAO team
What’s New at LexDAO
The little legal engineering gnomes at LexDAO have been hard at work building up the DAO and preparing to attend ETH Denver. Between optimizations and improvements to our website, our renewed Study Group sessions, a lot has happened this month towards our continued mission to bring the best web3 education and resources to you. Keep reading to learn more!
Budget and Target Discussions for 2024
Many of you may have heard that the Grants Committee was able to secure a sizable sum of funds from the most recent Optimism RetroPGF Round. While the team continues working on getting these funds transferred, the Operating Committee, in partnership with Grants, has begun scaffolding a budget for this funding that continues to promote Law as a Public Good, invests in projects that bring value to our members, and finding new ways to attract and retain talent in the guild. We have been discussing the allocations actively over the last two weeks and will be finalizing a proposal to the DAO likely the week of March 4th once the hype from ETH Denver is behind us. Have ideas for new projects? Want to see improvements in critical areas for the DAO? We want to hear from you! Join us on Discord and tag @ops or @grants to take part in the conversations and make sure your voice is heard and join our weekly governance and grants meetings.
Get Educated with LexDAO’s Study Group
LexDAO’s Study Group has recently restarted hosted under the leadership of Paolo Mario Gangi (@PaoloMGangi), an experienced lawyer in Italy and long time LexDAO member. In Episode 1 we had a panel of 3 crypto legal experts discussing DAO Tax Implications. The panelists include Magnus Jones (SA Ang Norway, Anish Kamboj (Millard Thompson LLP, Canada), Jason Schwartz (Fried Frank).
The conversation starts with a discussion on the implications of taxable events in different international centers. Conceptually, much of the considerations require assessment of the characteristics of the tokens as either governance or financial instruments. The discussion also talks a bit around the implications of being connected to the DAO as a leader and how tax authorities might view your involvement. All of this is bringing attention to the tentative risk and liabilities surrounding the management of the organization.
If you are looking to start a DAO style organization, this is a great thought starter for how to consider planning around tax structures in how to manage your liability. Feel free to listen and please join us at our next session in a few weeks.
LexDAO at Vitalia.city
LexDAO is attending the two-month long popup city, #Vitalia (located in the special jurisdiction Prospera), an event at the forefront of technology and policy. In Vitalia, over 200 attendees with diverse backgrounds across biotech, crypto, AI, and charter cities collaborate and live together to advance technology in new ways. For anyone that isn’t familiar with Prospera, it is a special economic zone that was established in Roatan, Honduras inspired by the success of similar initiatives in Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other jurisdictions that benefitted from business-friendly regulation.
Because of the success of the Vitalia event, it was extended to April 1. Petar Čekerevac has a fantastic thread about Vitalia and Prospera on X, and the Vitalia website has lots of information for anyone who may be interested, so be sure to check those out!
Upcoming Events
With ETH Denver upon us, we have several exciting events in store for attendees and information about LexDAO’s presence at the event.
Law at the Limits at ETH Denver 2024
LexDAO, MetaCartel, brownrudnick, Unlock, and Gitcoin are teaming up to host the Law at the Limits event at ETH Denver. This event will take place on Friday, March 1 from 1:00PM to 7:00PM MST at 1725 E 30th Ave. in Denver and will feature a day of legal panels, discussions, and attendee driven workshops. Discussions will take place between 1:00PM and 5:00PM on key topics, such as the future of DAO governance, DAOs as human/AI coordination (and BORGs), Infosec and exploit law, network states vs nation states, and more. We’ll have speakers from Delphi Digital, Campbell Teague, Launch Legal, brownrudnick, LexDAO and many more. Following these conversations, there will be a casual happy hour with snacks and drinks from 5:00PM to 7:00PM at the Gitcoin House. Approval is required to attend, and attendance is limited to 70 people, so make sure to RSVP on the event website now to save your spot and get your ticket with more details!
LexDAO’s Membership Drive is Under Way
LexDAO is funded by members like you and LexDAO’s membership drive is live (ok, this isn’t an upcoming event, but it’s definitely worth mentioning for those that may have missed it) with more announcements coming soon! Get your membership now to receive a listing in our premium membership directory. We are working on additional benefits and hope to unveil those to our members very soon. Please note that prior membership tokens will be sunset at a date to be determined at a later time and inactive members will lose access to members-only sections of our Discord and voting rights. We will make sure to give more details once a sunset date has officially been chosen, but we wanted to give everyone enough time to renew their membership ahead of that date. Visit our website to join or renew your membership and contact us on Discord if you have any questions.
LexDAO Team and Member Meet-Up
LexDAO has a house near the main ETH Denver event from Wednesday through Sunday. Given that many LexDAO members will be attending from all over the world, the Membership Pod has created a Google sheet to help everyone get connected, link up, and meet in person. If you will be attending and would like to be involved with other members in-person, please put your contact details in the sheet here and we will all plan to stay in touch.
We encourage any LexDAO members and ETH Denver attendees to contact @Ops on our Discord to get more details about where the house is and who will be there. Make sure to reach out so you can stop by and say hi!
Decentralized Dialogues with DAOBase
DAOBase is organizing a DAO event at ETH Denver titled “Decentralized Dialogues” on March 1 from 6:00PM to 10:00PM MST at 1755 West 48th Ave. in Denver. The event will feature a DAO Workshop, a mixer, and an after-party. Attendance at the event is free for anyone who is interested with beverages to be served. The event’s agenda can be found here with more information about the event and anyone interested can sign up here or here.
DAOBase is a DAO aggregator with over 100,000 DAOs, 6 million voters, and 25 governance frameworks.
Like what you see?
LexDAO relies on donations from the community to maintain our operations and continue delivering content and resources to the web3 community. If you enjoy our work, please consider donating! Visit https://lexdaogrant.us to see how you can contribute. We thank you for your continued support!
Get Involved!
LexDAO is always looking for new members! If you are interested in the work we are doing:
Check out our Discord and ask some questions (feel free to DM our Assistant Operator Cimply (Cimply#3820) with any onboarding questions).
Join our bi-monthly governance calls on Wednesdays at 12pm EST in Discord!
When you are ready, check out the LexDAO website for more information on how you can become a part of our growing community of builders, thinkers, and legal explorers!
