Just DAO It: A Podcast for People Starting DAOs
Oct 6, 2026 · 43 min · 15 segments
Adam Miller's talk from Maryland Blockchain Bootcamp 2026 (Capitol Technology University, July 2026). How courts have begun treating unwrapped DAOs as unincorporated associations or general…
Adam MillerHost
It's Legislative Day, which I take to mean most of this room reads statutes for a living.
In 2022, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued an organization that, in the eyes of the law, did not exist.
Ooki DAO had no certificate of formation, no registered agent, no officers, and no address.
The CFTC's theory was that this collection of people amounted to an unincorporated association, which meant it could be sued and its members could be held liable.
Because there was no front door to knock on, the commission served process through the help chat box on the organization's own website.
Not executives, not directors, people who had bought a token and voted on governance proposals.
Some of them had no idea that clicking yes on a proposal might connect them personally to a federal enforcement action.
Real organizations managing real money, coordinating real people that the law cannot see.
What happens to those organizations and what happens to the people inside them, and what good legislation does about it.
I went to MIT, grew up professionally alongside the early internet, and spent years building software and companies.
In 2021, I took the most interesting assignment of my career, helping the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a sovereign Pacific nation, design a legal framework for decentralized organizations.
I've since helped write laws and a regulatory framework that have passed there, and I'm the CEO of MyDAO, the registered agent for the entities formed under that framework.
Hundreds of entities have been registered through it since, which means my team and I have watched this problem from the inside at production scale for five years.
It's Legislative Day, which I take to mean most of this room reads statutes for a living.
In 2022, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued an organization that, in the eyes of the law, did not exist.
Ooki DAO had no certificate of formation, no registered agent, no officers, and no address.
The CFTC's theory was that this collection of people amounted to an unincorporated association, which meant it could be sued and its members could be held liable.
Because there was no front door to knock on, the commission served process through the help chat box on the organization's own website.
Not executives, not directors, people who had bought a token and voted on governance proposals.
Some of them had no idea that clicking yes on a proposal might connect them personally to a federal enforcement action.
Real organizations managing real money, coordinating real people that the law cannot see.
What happens to those organizations and what happens to the people inside them, and what good legislation does about it.
I went to MIT, grew up professionally alongside the early internet, and spent years building software and companies.
In 2021, I took the most interesting assignment of my career, helping the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a sovereign Pacific nation, design a legal framework for decentralized organizations.
I've since helped write laws and a regulatory framework that have passed there, and I'm the CEO of MyDAO, the registered agent for the entities formed under that framework.
Hundreds of entities have been registered through it since, which means my team and I have watched this problem from the inside at production scale for five years.
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