On June 26 and 27, BDAP co-hosted two events with the London School of Economics on Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), in connection with the forthcoming book, Foundations of Decentralized Organizations: Blockchain and the Future of Corporate Law, co-edited by Kevin Werbach (Wharton), Eva Micheler (LSE), and Bianca Kremer (BDAP Senior Fellow).
The DAOs in Practice and Theory roundtable brought together DAO operators and legal practitioners with scholars studying corporate law and governance. We discussed how DAOs do and don’t manifest concepts from corporate theory, and the practical questions around legal structuring of DAO ecosystems.
The second day was a hybrid author workshop for the forthcoming edited volume. Authors presented their drafts and engaged in conversations with the other participants. The book, to be published by Oxford University Press, assembles an intellectually and geographically diverse collection of scholars to examine DAOs from a variety of perspectives:
Part I – DAOs as an Innovation in Corporate Form
- Michael Schilling (Kings College London), DAOs and the History of Corporate Law
- Carla Reyes (SMU Dedman School of Law), DAO Legal Forms Around the World
- Shawn Bayern (Florida State Law School), Are Bespoke DAO Forms Needed?
- Anat Alon-Beck and Nizan Geslevich Packin (Case Western Reserve Law School; Baruch College), DAOs as a Means of Collective Investment
Part II – DAO Governance
- Eva Micheler and Daniela Gandorfer (LSE, Westminster), The Theory of the Firm and DAOs
- Jill Fisch (Penn Carey Law School), DAOs and Corporate Governance
- Primavera De Fillipi and Morshed Mannan, Fiduciary Duties of DAO Participants
- Jason Potts, Aaron Lane, and Chris Berg (RMIT), Institutional Cryptoeconomics of DAOs
Part III – Legal Considerations
- Bianca Kremer (Wharton BDAP), DAO Operations and Dispute Resolution
- Florence Guillaume (University of Neuchatel), DAOs and Private International Law
- Chris Odinet, Andrea Tosato, and Kara Bruce (Texas A&M Law School; SMU Dedman School of Law; UNC Chapel Hill), DAOs in Financial Distress
- Iris Chiu (University College London), Navigating the Financial Regulatory Maze
Part IV – The Future of DAOs
- Kelvin Low and Edmund Schuster (Hong Kong University; London School of Economics), What do DAOs Really Contribute?
- Jason Allen and Peter Hunn (Singapore Management University; Docusign), The Law of Digital Organizations
- Kevin Werbach (Wharton), Out of Control: DAOs, AI and the Question of Autonomy
