The LAO is launching tomorrow, April 28, 2020. Here, we have a breakdown and walkthrough on how you can contribute to and join The LAO.
The post COVID — 19 the world is rapidly changing. Traditional assumptions are giving way to a new, more modern society.
For the past twenty years, many in Silicon Valley have built a narrative that the only way to build powerful, impactful technology has been to pick up your stakes and move to California. That assumption has changed over the past decade but it is only accelerating with blockchain.
In 2008, after the mortgage crisis, Bitcoin emerged from an overlooked corner of the Internet. Although the notion of digital internet money certainly was not novel, Bitcoin broke a multi-decade dilemma, bringing to life a monetary system relying on the certainty of math. Bitcoin didn’t trust, it verified.
Several years later, Ethereum, a roving global band of cypherpunks, blazed a wider path generalizing Bitcoin into a more generic blockchain that could serve as the backbone for global commerce and the next generation of the Internet. This emergent techno-class realized quickly, and by design, that smart contracts can lower the cost of creating assets, bring communities together and pool and allocate funds amongst each other — from anywhere in the world.
Notably, neither of these projects were born in the heart of Silicon Valley, but rather demonstrated the future of technological development: radically global, Internet-native, emergent, and loosely coordinated. Blockchains have challenged notions of centralization throughout the financial world and venture capital is no different. The assumptions that you need to be in a specific location on the planet and pass through effective middlemen (general partners at venture capital funds) will be put to the test.
Indeed, one of the core purposes of The LAO is just that: to break apart centralized venture capital funds to rebuild Silicon Valley, DAO by DAO. By design, DAOs create an open, decentralized network that is bottom-up controlled and commanded by the group. With Ethereum, venture capital funds no longer need to be constrained to one state, one nation, or a handful of global cities.
To do this, we need to rebuild The DAO, but do so in a way that prevents it from being shut down or FUD’d by the legacy world. The LAO aims to comply with US law, building a democratically managed decentralized organization that can invest in blockchain-based projects in a snap, through the LAO’s dapp and extensions to MolochDAO’s smart contract code.
Joining The LAO
Tomorrow, on April 28th, The LAO will be open for contributions at 12:00p (EST) / 9a (PST) / 6p (CET). Each member can contribute 120 eth for 1% of the LAO’s voting rights and profits (up to 9% or 1,080 eth). If you’re interested in becoming a member of The LAO, you can pre-register here.
The power of the OLE stack (Ethereum, ChainLink, and OpenLaw) means that all relevant legal documents including subscription agreements will be generated for parties to easily come to agreement on relevant market terms. The sale will remain open until all units have been sold.
To start, members must complete the accreditation process here, at which point they will get a notification that all the materials are correct and their ETH address has been whitelisted.
The whitelisted address will open the sale site. Once inside the sale site, you will be able to select the amount you want to contribute from your wallet (Metamask, GnosisSafe, Rainbow, or most other wallets available through Wallet Connect). We wrap your eth and send it into the Moloch v2 smart contracts for processing. Once the transaction has cleared, each member will receive a formal proposal to join The LAO and confirmation of unit ownership. You will sign all of the relevant documents through the sale process, so please read them carefully.
After contributing your ether, then there is a 14 day processing period to finish the approval of the application and fully execute the transaction. This is due to the nature of the Moloch v2 smart contracts, which have a default seven day voting period and grace period to allow existing members to “rage quit” if they disagree with your membership. Over this period, the members, coming on a first-come, first-serve basis will be onboarded to a members-only slack and call to begin organizing governance around The LAO.
In a matter of clicks, you can join a DAO. We’ve come a long way in the Ethereum community and are now bringing to life new structures that can fund entrepreneurs with less of a need for centralized parties. The LAO will have no general partner and no carry and investors can exit at will. The LAO will make capital for projects fast, easy, and seamless. Projects can simply submit a proposal, the members can then vote on it, and then, if more members vote yes than no for the project, the project will receive funding automatically — powered through the use of smart contracts.
Learn More
If you would like more information about becoming a LAO member or project, please reach out to us at hello@thelao.io. For further information, check out our docs, which cover questions about The LAO’s structure and operation, or hit us up via email or telegram.
