May 2024 Recap
LexDAO Madness and May-hem
Your favorite legal engineers at LexDAO are back at it again with another edition of the LexNews+ Monthly Newsletter! Never content to rest on our laurels, this edition is packed with information and updates on what has been happening behind the scene.
What’s New at LexDAO
This month’s edition will provide some highlights of the latest developments in web3 this month and update you on the activities and operations within LexDAO. Keep reading below for more!
LexNews+ Weekly Highlights
written (somewhat) by Kyler (@kyler56)
May 2024 saw significant developments in crypto law and controversies involving high-profile celebrities. Here’s a rundown of the key events:
Legislative Developments:
SAB 121 Repeal: The U.S. Senate repealed the SEC’s Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121 (SAB 121) on May 16. This bulletin had mandated financial institutions to recognize crypto assets held for clients as liabilities, which critics argued stifled innovation. The repeal is seen as a move towards more balanced regulation, encouraging financial institutions to engage with crypto services without overly burdensome requirements (BeInCrypto) (CryptoSlate).
FIT21 Act: The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22 with bipartisan support (279-136). This bill aims to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets, clearly defining the roles of the SEC and the CFTC. The act intends to replace the current "regulation by enforcement" approach, fostering innovation while ensuring consumer protection. However, the bill's future in the Senate remains uncertain, and it faces opposition from the White House (BeInCrypto) (Cointelegraph).
Celebrity Meme Coin Controversies:
Caitlyn Jenner: Caitlyn Jenner's X (formerly Twitter) account promoted a meme coin named JENNER via the Pump.fun platform, which led to significant trading activity and suspicions of account hacking. Though not technically a “hack”, Jenner’s camp has since alleged it was deceived by an individual who they hired to run their mint. The legalities of this one will be entertaining to watch. (Decrypt) (InsideBitcoins.com).
Rich the Kid: Similarly, rapper Rich the Kid's X account promoted a meme coin called RICH, also launched on Pump.fun. This promotion mirrored the controversy surrounding Jenner's token, with quick spikes in trading volume and market cap, followed by deletions of the promotional posts. This led to further speculation about the security of these accounts and the authenticity of the promotions (InsideBitcoins.com) (Benzinga).
It was a wild month in cryptolaw and legal engineering, there’s no doubt about that. Things seem to be trending in the right direction, with the legislative victories of the SAB121 Repeal and the passage of the Fit21 Act and impending Ethereum ETFs. Celebrities are suddenly racing to release NFTs – erm, I mean memecoins – again (remember 2021, anybody?), and the current presidential administration has made a sharp heel turn to suddenly embrace us. But we must collectively tread carefully and cautiously, so as not to be deceived into embracing a victory that is easy and incomplete. I’m not saying that what’s happening is bad—I’m just saying to be careful. Not everything that glitters is gold.
But god does it feel good to win one.
LexDAO Internal Updates
The Operating Committee has now been meeting consistently every week to discuss strategy and priorities for the DAO since early January. This reinvigorated group has gone all the way back to our roots to bring the legacy ethos of LexDAO forward. We are aiming to maintain a presence across the web3 community to prioritize LexDAO as a sounding board, thought leader, and engineering powerhouse. Our primary goals in the first half of this year have been to stabilize the treasury, ensure funding is being allocated to active and promising projects, setting up our progressive decentralization infrastructure, organizing our repositories on GitHub, and determining the extent of LexDAO's software in various outside ecosystems.
Most of this work is slow and steady. Managing things like membership tokens, tax filings, and other administrative functions while empowering committees across the DAO. As we start moving into the middle of the year, we will be discussing how to beef up re-emerging activities that show promise for our organization from both a revenue and value-add perspective. Here are a few of the key projects that have been in the works.
Key Projects
Tax Filings and 501(c6) status
Diversified Treasury Allocations of Tokens
LexDAO Network Infrastructure through 1155 token map
Budget allocations for community initiatives
Wallet Network Management and Consolidation
Operating System Updates/Refresh
Migration of all governance to the new Membership Token by June 30
Membership
Membership is the foundation of LexDAO. We are actively discussing what it means to be a member of this guild to answer questions like:
What does it mean to be a contributor?
How do we encourage active participation?
How do we deliver real value and benefits to members?
Who should vote on the future of the DAO?
What are the risks to our organization in a pay to play model?
As we ponder these critical questions, we are taking a pragmatic approach to migrate over to the new token while also enabling our legacy members who made this organization what it is able to come forward and re-engage with our new membership.
Earned Membership
Our first cohort of Earned Membership applicants are in the pipeline for the first half of 2024. We had over 10 people raise their hands to contribute to the DAO for a membership token. Since this program is in its infancy, we are asking for prospects to engage directly and show their interest by pursuing projects they are interested in actively. This means engaging in the Discord, contributing at meetings, and collaborating with their peers. Here are the suggestions we've put out as areas the DAO needs additional support:
Weekly and Monthly DAO Editorials
LexDAO puts out a weekly and monthly newsletter. The former is more content syndication and summary. The latter is deeper dives and some information related to what is happening around the DAO. We could use contributors for both. If this is something you’re interested in, please go to the “Work for Membership" channel in our discord and tag @comms to express your desire to assist with one or both of these.
Weekly Committee Meeting Notes and Summaries
Each week there is a governance/operations, grants, and comms meeting on different days. We encourage everyone to attend and could use help with compiling summaries of the discussions in our agenda documents. If anyone has interest in assisting, please tag @ops in the “Work for Membership” thread in Discord.
Hackathon - USPTO Appeal
Dr. Lau has been working on a hackathon where we will be compiling a rebuttal to our recent trademark rejection with the U.S. Patent Office. Obtaining this trademark is a critical path for the DAO to own its intellectual property and will make for an incredible case study in the wider web3 community. If you are interested in assisting or participating, please tag @LexEd in the “Work for Membership” thread.
Grants Proposals and Events Opportunities
The grants committee is hard at work trying to ensure we have a strong pipeline of incoming grants, strengthening DAO to DAO partnerships, and maintaining a presence at upcoming events around the world We want to get better organized on what opportunities to pursue and explore. If you want to participate in helping structure and work this project please tag @grants in the “Work for Membership” thread.
Membership Drive
We're only about 20 members into our goal of 250 members for the year. As we've talked about, the DAO will eventually move off the old token standard and will move entirely to the new 721 token. This means that legacy token holders from 2022 will no longer be able to vote on key initiatives and may lose access to guild channels.
Help us to encourage adoption of the new token and if you have the resources to pay for a new membership, we ask that you please do so. Every dollar helps us push our core agenda for 2024 which is "Law is a Public Good".
Old Token Deprecation
LexDAO’s 2022-2023 Polygon “Cred” token is being officially sunsetted on June 1, 2024. If you have not already, make sure to purchase your new membership token today by visiting LexDAO’s very fancy, new website. The new membership token is an erc-721 token on the Polygon Mainnet (PoS) with a 365-day expiration, the result of a several decades-long effort of experimenting with various web3 sorcery and late nights of heated debates amongst our legal engineers.
You can self-mint your membership token today by following the link on our website, providing a little information about yourself, and paying 300 DAI on Polygon Mainnet (PoS) through Unlock Protocol. You may also purchase one with a credit card or with Google Pay or Apple Pay through Unlock. If you have any trouble or questions, please tag @deleted-role in the LexDAO membership channel. Additional payment methods forthcoming, but you may pay for membership by sending $300 of Eth, 300 DAI, 300 USDC, or 300 USDT to LexDAO's Eth Mainnet Treasury at:
0x5a741ab878Bb65f6AE5506455FB555eaf3094B3F
which resolves to joinlexdao.eth and email operator@lexdao.org for manual minting and confirmation of information and directory entry. Token sunsetting will involve the removal of discord roles and snapshot voting eligibility tied to the prior token.
USPTO Hackathon with Dr. Lau
Earlier this month, LexDAO’s legacy LEETH Holder extrodinaire, Dr. Lau (@drllau), put together an excellent Hackathon for our membership to build our appeal to the USPTO for trademark recognition. As many of your know, the USPTO rejected our initial application and we believe we have the grounds to contest this with strong research and a knack for filing process. This Hackathon was an opportunity for LexDAO’s members to hone their arguments on our appeal of the USPTO’s decision, and we are very thankful for Dr. Lau’s support in putting this together.
If you were not able to attend but are still interested in supporting LexDAO’s appeal, you can make your voice heard by reaching out to us on Discord before the submission deadline on June 4.
Upcoming Events
LexDAO Study Group on Kleros
Following on the heels of the DUNA Study Group’s success, LexDAO’s Paolo Maria Gangi (@pmgangi) will be hosting another study group session, this time about Kleros, the decentralized arbitration center, on Monday, June 3, at 10:30 AM PT/1:30 PM ET. This Study Group will be moderated by Paolo and feature several panelists: Ines Braganza, Stephen Palley, Alexandre Perez, Alexandru Stanescu, and Facundo Trotz. To join the Google Meet, click this link!
MCON
Metacartel is hosting MCON III on September 26 - 28, 2024 in Detroit, MI. This will be “…a [three day] gathering of dynamic DAO Operators, Governerds, and Builder-Philosophers to reconnect to the vision and values of decentralization, and dive deep into innovative onchain experiments and the spiciest topics of Web3.” LexDAO will be joining the event as co-organizers and sponsors. Any and all LexDAO members interested in attending should reach out today to get involved!
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!
