Thanks for the valuable feedback. One alternative could be that the clients would not be liable at all for the fees and have a notice that the fees are being paid by a third party with a reference to a DAO grant application (which would have to have been approved, though not necessarily disbursed, prior to executing any of the retainers).
I generally think your estimates on number of hours makes sense, but I see the ordering slightly different:
Evaluate what the Curve IP actually is (presumably copyrights, but are there rights of others embedded in it from other licenses?) and who owns it now (unknown corps? individuals?) and any geographic-relevant topics (i.e. are the authors U.S. persons or non-U.S. with relevance to pre-publication registration issues). 6-8 hours
Evaluate whether there is potential infringement (same as your Stage 1).
your Stage 2.
I currently assume it may be that the options advised in your Stage 2 (my #3) require/recommend some act (i.e. assignment of rights to some sort of a corp/trust/foundation/etc.) prior to going to your Stage 3. My proposal would be to finish the immediate work at that point and separate any work after the recommendations (whether itâs incorporation, direct to C&D letters, or something else) into a separate phase of the initiative. That may be something I would be willing to do, or it might be something that is best handled by someone else, or it might be that by then Curve in general has more offers from other lawyers which are more attractive.
Would be very happy to have your collaboration - DM me on Twitter? @sammiorelli
âIf you want courts and politicians to protect and control you, there is âfinanceâ.If you want a system that is resilient, self sufficient, open, and upgradable, there is DeFi.â
Do you think litigation has a place in decentralised finance?
Michael:
I think it is quite possible as long as there is a legal entity who can do litigation against another legal entity. There is one for both curve.fi and saddle.
But strange to hear it this way from Robert.
Compound was suing dForce iirc when they cloned their 1st version.
Thatâs a bit like saying that Compound is not DeFi.
But anyway. I donât like the idea of suing saddle for other reasons.
Maybe it would be good to continue this discussion from a defensive perspective. Setting Saddle aside, how can Curve lay the foundation to protect itself against legal situations that may come our way eventually? There was a great discussion on Laura Shinâs podcast about Curve and the legal status of DAOs, Iâll just drop some quotes by Aaron Wright that are particularly salient.
âIf Curve was organized as a wrapped DAO [rooted in a legal entity] in some capacityâŚ, if they wanted to walk into court, it would be a lot easier for them to do that. If they wanted to get tax ID numbers and start paying taxes, they could normalize and grow to something thatâs not on the back waters of the internet, but really front and center and prominent in the mainstream. They have an avenue and a path to do that"
âWe can stay as an insular community, but if you believe in this vision that blockchain technology, Ethereum, Bitcoin, at some point is the norm, is mainstream, you cannot avoid that traditional players are gonna need to participate and play around with these structures. So at some point itâs gonna need to be sort out⌠Itâs not gonna be an insular bubble forever. At some point the gravitas of the ecosystem will become large enough that itâs going to pull in the rest of the world, and itâs going to need some of these legal protections to do that.â
âIn structures that donât have a legal backing in some sort of way, they will likely be viewed as partnerships. The way partnership law tends to work is that partners have to account for each other if thereâs some sort of damage. And your liability for any damage thatâs been caused is not limited. So that means the deepest pocket is going to be responsible for it. So if some of the venture capital funds that have backed some of these projects want to participate in governance, if folks who have deep pockets because theyâve acquired a number of digital assets over the years want to participate in DAOs, they can definitely do it, and Iâm sure that many of them will not run into issues, but some will get knotted up in nasty situations involving a DAO that isnât organized, that doesnât have any limited liability protection, and theyâll be on the hook for it⌠If you have a lot of assets, if youâre a mature player, if youâre a traditional player, youâre not likely to want to participate in these Dao structures until you have the certainty of the limitation of liability, until you have the certainty of legal recognition.â
I would point out how DASH (altcoin) protects their global network
Every masternode (holder of a threshold # of staked coins is defined as a beneficiary. This is a general class so no individual names (apart from rep) is named anywhere (aka finacial privacy is preserved)
there is an open election of protectors, who listen to community and have legal power to direct the trustee (within powered defined in deed)
the DevOps firm need not be unique, there can be a fork but the provisions avoid the cardano catfight where the two swiss foundations refused to cooperate
if the trustees are legal owners of the IP, they along with licensees can bring suit to protect the beneficiaries
the same provisions avoid the MakerDAO purple pill partition since both networks if split are still considered beneficiaries but there is power for protetors to sin-bin bad actors if the community governance so desires
The issue is not the underlying regulation of security but one of fairness. Michael has made it clear that he encourages competition but who was it that front-run the initial CRV tokens to amass the low-hanging fruit? What are the things that irks me are
line jumping - there is a clear process for getting onto the white list. Michael has rejected many proposals because they are incremental and not significant innovations. The value of everyoneâs tokens goes up with more creativity and inventive applications. And here you have a me-too queue jumper who is not add any real long-term value but cribbing from existing liquidity providers.
Free rider ⌠Curve has put in all the hard work doing R&D and a bunch of money cats refuse to chip in. This is called parasitic on the community and will encourage others to take the same screw-you attitude.
the whole point of open protocols is that independent security audits can be performed and nobody can put in obscure backdoors into code that manages millions? Is there reason for the same assurance from someone who refuses to provide the same level of audit? Itâs like all the careful normal people wear masks and isolate when detect contagion (remember Asian crisis?) whilst the upstart races around laughing at everyone else. The claim that it was a clean room reimplementation fails the court test ⌠xref Microsoft vs Samba
Collaborate on the protocols, compete on the UX and ease of use. Michael wants competition, but it should be civil (no line-jumping), participatory (not just take and make out) and fair (more than copycat) competition