Very fascinating, thank you. Maybe a bank-less account at Avanti Bank? 
Thank you for posting this. A legal entity such as Wyoming LLC is critical.
I hope other DAOs such as Index Coop adopt this approach soon.
FWB just announced how they are going to form their legal entity (as a c-corp)
Iâm also interested in exploring Wyoming as a jurisdiction.
I also think we should bite the bullet and assume $BANK is a security. This does not mean the DAO is any less a DAO, I just mean weâll need to do some work to mesh the two worlds.
BanklessDAO to become a legal entity in order to make it easier to be regulated and pay salaries - isnât this an oxymoron? Isnât the point of Bankless to push the limits in terms of how individuals and orgs can function outside/on the fringes of the current financial-legal system? Otherwise, what are we trying to achieve here?
Having full-time employment contracts and paying salaries via the existing system seems like a step backwards to me. Whatâs preventing us from paying full-time level salaries in BANK / USDC, without dictating the number of hours people have to work and without calling it employment? Some contributors will be freelancers, some will have LLCs, most will just be token holders paying their own capital gains tax. I think SUSHI has one of the best practices in this sphere that can be followed.
Lastly and importantly, I would steer clear of incorporating in the US, given the current adversarial regulatory climate. Letâs face it, being US-based legally speaking will seriously hamper much of the envelope-pushing activities we are trying to promote, down the line. Just look at Coinbase. Iâm assuming it will also vastly complicate providing the same type of âfull-time employmentâ and various types of other rights to people based outside the US and potentially fragment the DAO.
I understand that currently many of our core contributors and most of our key decision makers are US-based (which I think is an issue we need to address down the line, when voting in positions of power), and this proposal to me feels like itâs more geared towards protecting such US-based individuals than it is towards protecting the DAO.
I suggest we remain on-chain as long as possible, if we really canât, letâs incorporate in the most tax and regulation-friendly friendly jurisdiction possible (Cayman / Singapore / Malta / ?), and not just default to the US out of complacency. We do have large membership and also people inside the legal guild familiar with some of these options.
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Also +1 on âThe new system, doesnât COME ALONG. We have to build it ourselves, and should really be the task here.â - Indeed. Uber didnât get a local taxi license and wait around to see the taxi laws change, in order to make their big platform move. The taxi laws changed because Uber had the tenacity to call themselves a platform, go against the taxi monopolies, get millions of customers on board, and show the regulators that the change is here already.
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For this one, Iâm not surprised. They raised money from A16Z and other US-based VCs. No coincidence they are announcing this right after. Those VCs want to protect their interest by making sure there is a US-based corp they control shares in. But there is another way. Notice Compound vs Aave, Uni vs Sushi. Personally, Iâm betting on the latter, more agile and distributed one, in both pairs.
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I would respectfully disagree with these positions in particular #2 - creating a legal entity does not âprotect the assets of the DAO itselfâ, to the contrary, it presents the X on the Map of where to locate and to attack the assets to take them away.
Donât get me wrong, I am not against ultimately forming some entity for certain purposes. The media and off-chain experienced create a certain level of malformed rhetoric that reinforces bias in thinking.
These conversations here and elsewhere are helpful because it enables us to get closer to the issue we are trying to resolve.
For example, the Bankless DAO, at the moment at least, from my perspective is closest to an unincorporated social club - which exist all over the world, in most places are not subject to much compliance of any type. If I buy a club jersey to play pick up hockey for $200 or I buy Bankless Merch - its the same thing. If the club paid the designer of the hockey jersey a small fee, technically a contract fee, the club doesnât issue anything, in most of the planet. My point is not to nay-say these real and valid concerns about forming a legal entity, but to encourage these proposals and conversations because it will ultimately force us to think about what is the minimum of what needs to be done, if any, and why.
@0xJoshua Follow up for you. How do you process payroll for US Daoâs that have no FEIN?
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We are completely agnostic to where your (the individual contributorâs) income comes from.
The money goes into your LLC/S-Corp as 1099 income (tho you wonât receive a 1099, and it doesnât particularly matter that you wonât get the doc) - you (via your employment vehicle) join the cooperative as an Employee Member (we W2 you).
The question youâve asked is one of our primary use-cases and one of our great value-propositions. Most of our Members âwork forâ entities without a legal entity. Thatâs our bread and butter.
The answer to your question is âwe donâtâ because we arenât processing payroll âfor the DAOâ weâre processing it for the individual contributors. And it is through this method that the members of a DAO are derisked (because their LLC/s-Corp is the contributor to the DAO).
This comes up more and more, Iâd be happy to do an AMA.
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Lol I think they were bamboozled by VCs to extract value from the community. Iâm a DAO member, I hold $FWB, I wasnât issued c-Corp shares and no one else I know in the DAO did either. I was told âthe DAO owns the C-corpâ lol - well if $FWB holders donât own the c-Corp, who does?
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A Colorado Cooperative is a significantly more conducive framework than a Wyoming DAO LLC, which is all the Wyoming DAO law does, shove a square DAO peg at a circular LLC hole. It lets a smart contact address be the owner of an LLC, basically- but as Iâve said before, thatâs not really the infra we need. The law was a great step forward, but for specific folks with a specific use case in mind, and itâs not for DAOs lol
Moving to archive. Please reply to reopen.
This will be || a lvl1+ LeDAO rogue lâextern test|| to compare the shifting attitude of members from early days to now as to the depth of legal formalism ⌠including new meta-LeX.
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