TL; DR
-
Wyoming just became a legal safe haven for DAOs (aka “communities as corporations”) – meaning we may see a DAO boom in the coming years.
Full story
Suppose you are part of an online community…
Let’s make it something normal, I don’t know, a closed community for fans of singer-songwriter Natalie Imbruglia.
No? OK. Fine. Let’s pretend it’s a walking club (normal enough?).
Suppose this walking club receives requests from brands wanting to promote their goods to members… the community decides collectively:
“Sure, why not, we’ll take some discount codes and some cash… but as for the latter, how can we divide the money fairly?”
One option would be to create a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), also called an automated piggy bank for the community – with set rules, for example:
-
You become a moderator → you are rewarded with DAO tokens.
-
You share new trails/routes → you are rewarded with DAO tokens.
-
You provide helpful responses in the sharing forum → DAO Tokens.
The idea is that these tokens reward active members, and can be converted into fiat money, or held/used to vote on how to spend the public money (the more tokens you own, the more votes you get).
Sounds great right? The only problem is…
Legal frameworks for DAOs are rickety at best.
Some jurisdictions might even try to sue your dear hiking community (or Natalie Imbruglia’s fan club) for selling unregistered securities (also called unregistered public shares in a company).
Here’s the fun part of this story:
Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon just signed a bill that adds to the growing codes for DAOs, which have already been allowed to set up shop there as limited liability companies.
Translation: Wyoming just became a safe haven (or “oasis” as a16z put it) for DAOs.
We’d love to see it.