Re:Court Ruling Could Affect the Future Direction of DAOs
by MichaelZuo on Friday April 07, 2023 @07:32AM
(#35480518)
So a single individual who participated in the Bitcoin network would be viewed as ' jointly and severally liable' for the entire network?
The default form of legal structure for a cooperating group of people is general partnership--unless you take specific legal steps to avoid forming a general partnership, that is how the courts will view the partnership. General partnerships means that all partners are jointly and severally liable.
In layman's terms, that means you just have to find one person involved in the DAO, and sue them, and then you get to collect the full judgement from that person (alone), and it's now their problem to get cooperation from the other partners for the liability.
(If this sounds like a terrible idea, it is. That's why there exists all sorts of fancy legal structures that avoid putting people in this position. But if you're not going to use any of them, you get the terrible idea instead!)