DAO legal structure and regulatory challenges: Navigating the uncharted territory

Karolina

18 May 2023
DAO legal structure and regulatory challenges: Navigating the uncharted territory

In recent years, the blockchain space has experienced a surge in popularity for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, also known as DAOs. Operating through smart contracts on blockchain networks, these organizations are designed with transparency, decentralization, and autonomy in mind. The potential of DAOs to revolutionize traditional business and organizational models exists, yet it also brings forth distinct legal and regulatory issues. With the growing popularity of DAOs, it has become crucial to establish legal frameworks that regulate their functioning, creating a need for a clear "DAO legal structure."

Nonetheless, the legal aspects concerning DAOs are intricate and demand an in-depth comprehension of both blockchain technology and conventional legal systems. Presently, the prevailing legal frameworks for classic business entities such as limited liability companies and corporations do not directly apply to DAOs. This situation poses a challenge for regulators and DAO operators since there isn't an evident legal precedent concerning DAOs. In the following section, we will delve into the existing legal frameworks for DAOs. 

DAO Legal structures

DAOs utilize decentralized networks yet often need a legal structure for compliance and traditional system interaction. Various structures are available, each with unique benefits and factors. Common DAO legal structures include:

  • Limited Liability Company (LLC): By forming an LLC, a DAO gains a defined legal framework and limited liability for members. It enables participants to establish ownership, roles, and responsibilities while maintaining legal protection.
  • Cooperative Association: As another alternative, forming a cooperative association enables members to collectively own and operate the DAO. This model promotes democratic decision-making and profit-sharing, adhering to cooperative principles.
  • Non-Profit Organization: Philanthropic or community-focused DAOs may adopt a non-profit structure. This allows them to pursue charitable goals, access tax-exempt status, and use existing non-profit regulations.
  • Foundation: Some DAOs choose foundation structures, prevalent in crypto and blockchain fields. Foundations offer governance, resource allocation, and community management frameworks while pursuing specific goals like developing decentralized tech or promoting causes.

It's crucial to understand that each legal structure's suitability for a DAO depends on its objectives, jurisdiction, and operations.

Would you like to read about Smart Contracts Security Audits? Be sure to check out our article!

The advent of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) has been met with varying legal responses across the globe. Wyoming led the charge in the United States by recognizing DAOs as limited liability companies (LLCs) in 2021. This ground-breaking move has since inspired other states like Tennessee to revise their corporate codes to include provisions for decentralized organizations.

Switzerland, known for its forward-thinking approach to cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation, has also considered recognizing DAOs as legal entities. The Swiss Federal Council has pondered creating a unique legal entity specifically for DAOs, which could help integrate them within the purview of Swiss law.

Meanwhile, the Island of Jersey has introduced a hybrid entity – the Jersey Limited Liability Company (LLC), inspired by the LLC models of Cayman and Delaware. These LLCs are increasingly being used as legal wrappers for DAOs, effectively merging conventional legal structures with decentralized organization models. This innovative approach allows DAOs to benefit from the well-established legal structure of LLCs while simultaneously leveraging the advantages of blockchain technology and smart contracts.

In the United Kingdom, the government has tasked the Law Commission with the responsibility of studying DAOs. Given their growing relevance in the crypto-token and decentralized finance sectors, understanding DAOs' unique characteristics and potential legal implications is critical. The 15-month study aims to understand DAOs' legal treatment under English and Welsh law, their structure, and operation, along with potential legal barriers. The project aligns with the UK's broader ambition of becoming a global hub for crypto-asset technology, and clarifying the legal status of DAOs within the UK is an integral part of this vision.

For more on the legal aspects of Dao, read this

Are you wondering what legal structure to give your DAO? Read these questions, they may help you think through important issues

Should you form a DAO?  If your project doesn't require blockchain and decentralization, creating a DAO may not be beneficial, and another organizational structure could be more appropriate.

Is a legal entity structure necessary for your DAO? Legal entities often possess greater capabilities than those without entities. Some benefits include: managing community-controlled treasuries with ease, owning assets and intellectual property, employing people and generating income, and collaborating with external organizations. Essentially, legal entity status grants a DAO legal existence, reduces participant liability, and assists in determining and fulfilling tax obligations. Although no perfect legal entity structure exists for the majority of DAOs, selecting an appropriate one can help reduce risks.

What kind of DAO are you creating? The DAO's purpose will frequently direct the most fitting legal structure; however, no universal solution exists. A network/protocol overseeing DAO may not be adequate for other types of DAOs. Investment-focused DAOs might fare well as LLCs, similarly to numerous existing investment clubs. Collector, social or charitable DAOs could function better as LLCs or UNAs based on their specific circumstances. Meanwhile, cooperative and collective DAOs might find LCAs suitable—a format utilized by many existing co-ops. When determining a DAO's legal entity, referring to frameworks for existing analogues can be helpful.

In the case of network/protocol DAOs, consider the following: does significant U.S. membership or activity exist? Does the DAO control network/protocol income or a treasury? If none of these factors apply, an Entityless structure might be a suitable choice. However, if any one of these conditions is met, the DAO's activities may lead to U.S. tax obligations for the DAO or its members. Opting for U.S. entity structures is recommended as the most straightforward method of satisfying these obligations.

For the visually oriented, here’s guide in the form of a decision tree made by a16zcrypto

Conclusion

The global adoption of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) has begun to impact existing legal frameworks. As DAOs gain popularity, it becomes increasingly essential to establish clear legal structures that accommodate their unique characteristics. Although the traditional legal frameworks for business entities do not directly apply to DAOs, multiple legal structures such as LLCs, cooperative associations, non-profit organizations, and foundations can still provide some compliance and interaction with conventional systems. Innovations in legislation, like those seen in Wyoming and Jersey, demonstrate growing efforts to integrate decentralized organizations into existing legal contexts. While countries like Switzerland and the United Kingdom explore the possibility of new legal entities or study existing laws' adaptability, it is evident that DAO's legal and regulatory landscape is constantly evolving. Stakeholders must remain informed of these developments to navigate the uncharted territory of DAO legal structure and regulatory challenges successfully.

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AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

Gracjan Prusik

11 Mar 2025
AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

AI Revolution in the Frontend Developer's Workshop

In today's world, programming without AI support means giving up a powerful tool that radically increases a developer's productivity and efficiency. For the modern developer, AI in frontend automation is not just a curiosity, but a key tool that enhances productivity. From automatically generating components, to refactoring, and testing – AI tools are fundamentally changing our daily work, allowing us to focus on the creative aspects of programming instead of the tedious task of writing repetitive code. In this article, I will show how these tools are most commonly used to work faster, smarter, and with greater satisfaction.

This post kicks off a series dedicated to the use of AI in frontend automation, where we will analyze and discuss specific tools, techniques, and practical use cases of AI that help developers in their everyday tasks.

AI in Frontend Automation – How It Helps with Code Refactoring

One of the most common uses of AI is improving code quality and finding errors. These tools can analyze code and suggest optimizations. As a result, we will be able to write code much faster and significantly reduce the risk of human error.

How AI Saves Us from Frustrating Bugs

Imagine this situation: you spend hours debugging an application, not understanding why data isn't being fetched. Everything seems correct, the syntax is fine, yet something isn't working. Often, the problem lies in small details that are hard to catch when reviewing the code.

Let’s take a look at an example:

function fetchData() {
    fetch("htts://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts")
      .then((response) => response.json())
      .then((data) => console.log(data))
      .catch((error) => console.error(error));
}

At first glance, the code looks correct. However, upon running it, no data is retrieved. Why? There’s a typo in the URL – "htts" instead of "https." This is a classic example of an error that could cost a developer hours of frustrating debugging.

When we ask AI to refactor this code, not only will we receive a more readable version using newer patterns (async/await), but also – and most importantly – AI will automatically detect and fix the typo in the URL:

async function fetchPosts() {
    try {
      const response = await fetch(
        "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
      );
      const data = await response.json();
      console.log(data);
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
}

How AI in Frontend Automation Speeds Up UI Creation

One of the most obvious applications of AI in frontend development is generating UI components. Tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude can generate component code based on a short description or an image provided to them.

With these tools, we can create complex user interfaces in just a few seconds. Generating a complete, functional UI component often takes less than a minute. Furthermore, the generated code is typically error-free, includes appropriate animations, and is fully responsive, adapting to different screen sizes. It is important to describe exactly what we expect.

Here’s a view generated by Claude after entering the request: “Based on the loaded data, display posts. The page should be responsive. The main colors are: #CCFF89, #151515, and #E4E4E4.”

Generated posts view

AI in Code Analysis and Understanding

AI can analyze existing code and help understand it, which is particularly useful in large, complex projects or code written by someone else.

Example: Generating a summary of a function's behavior

Let’s assume we have a function for processing user data, the workings of which we don’t understand at first glance. AI can analyze the code and generate a readable explanation:

function processUserData(users) {
  return users
    .filter(user => user.isActive) // Checks the `isActive` value for each user and keeps only the objects where `isActive` is true
    .map(user => ({ 
      id: user.id, // Retrieves the `id` value from each user object
      name: `${user.firstName} ${user.lastName}`, // Creates a new string by combining `firstName` and `lastName`
      email: user.email.toLowerCase(), // Converts the email address to lowercase
    }));
}

In this case, AI not only summarizes the code's functionality but also breaks down individual operations into easier-to-understand segments.

AI in Frontend Automation – Translations and Error Detection

Every frontend developer knows that programming isn’t just about creatively building interfaces—it also involves many repetitive, tedious tasks. One of these is implementing translations for multilingual applications (i18n). Adding translations for each key in JSON files and then verifying them can be time-consuming and error-prone.

However, AI can significantly speed up this process. Using ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Claude allows for automatic generation of translations for the user interface, as well as detecting linguistic and stylistic errors.

Example:

We have a translation file in JSON format:

{
  "welcome_message": "Welcome to our application!",
  "logout_button": "Log out",
  "error_message": "Something went wrong. Please try again later."
}

AI can automatically generate its Polish version:

{
  "welcome_message": "Witaj w naszej aplikacji!",
  "logout_button": "Wyloguj się",
  "error_message": "Coś poszło nie tak. Spróbuj ponownie później."
}

Moreover, AI can detect spelling errors or inconsistencies in translations. For example, if one part of the application uses "Log out" and another says "Exit," AI can suggest unifying the terminology.

This type of automation not only saves time but also minimizes the risk of human errors. And this is just one example – AI also assists in generating documentation, writing tests, and optimizing performance, which we will discuss in upcoming articles.

Summary

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way frontend developers work daily. From generating components and refactoring code to detecting errors, automating testing, and documentation—AI significantly accelerates and streamlines the development process. Without these tools, we would lose a lot of valuable time, which we certainly want to avoid.

In the next parts of this series, we will cover topics such as:

Stay tuned to keep up with the latest insights!

The Ultimate Web3 Backend Guide: Supercharge dApps with APIs

Tomasz Dybowski

04 Mar 2025
The Ultimate Web3 Backend Guide: Supercharge dApps with APIs

Introduction

Web3 backend development is essential for building scalable, efficient and decentralized applications (dApps) on EVM-compatible blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, and Base. A robust Web3 backend enables off-chain computations, efficient data management and better security, ensuring seamless interaction between smart contracts, databases and frontend applications.

Unlike traditional Web2 applications that rely entirely on centralized servers, Web3 applications aim to minimize reliance on centralized entities. However, full decentralization isn't always possible or practical, especially when it comes to high-performance requirements, user authentication or storing large datasets. A well-structured backend in Web3 ensures that these limitations are addressed, allowing for a seamless user experience while maintaining decentralization where it matters most.

Furthermore, dApps require efficient backend solutions to handle real-time data processing, reduce latency, and provide smooth user interactions. Without a well-integrated backend, users may experience delays in transactions, inconsistencies in data retrieval, and inefficiencies in accessing decentralized services. Consequently, Web3 backend development is a crucial component in ensuring a balance between decentralization, security, and functionality.

This article explores:

  • When and why Web3 dApps need a backend
  • Why not all applications should be fully on-chain
  • Architecture examples of hybrid dApps
  • A comparison between APIs and blockchain-based logic

This post kicks off a Web3 backend development series, where we focus on the technical aspects of implementing Web3 backend solutions for decentralized applications.

Why Do Some Web3 Projects Need a Backend?

Web3 applications seek to achieve decentralization, but real-world constraints often necessitate hybrid architectures that include both on-chain and off-chain components. While decentralized smart contracts provide trustless execution, they come with significant limitations, such as high gas fees, slow transaction finality, and the inability to store large amounts of data. A backend helps address these challenges by handling logic and data management more efficiently while still ensuring that core transactions remain secure and verifiable on-chain.

Moreover, Web3 applications must consider user experience. Fully decentralized applications often struggle with slow transaction speeds, which can negatively impact usability. A hybrid backend allows for pre-processing operations off-chain while committing final results to the blockchain. This ensures that users experience fast and responsive interactions without compromising security and transparency.

While decentralization is a core principle of blockchain technology, many dApps still rely on a Web2-style backend for practical reasons:

1. Performance & Scalability in Web3 Backend Development

  • Smart contracts are expensive to execute and require gas fees for every interaction.
  • Offloading non-essential computations to a backend reduces costs and improves performance.
  • Caching and load balancing mechanisms in traditional backends ensure smooth dApp performance and improve response times for dApp users.
  • Event-driven architectures using tools like Redis or Kafka can help manage asynchronous data processing efficiently.

2. Web3 APIs for Data Storage and Off-Chain Access

  • Storing large amounts of data on-chain is impractical due to high costs.
  • APIs allow dApps to store & fetch off-chain data (e.g. user profiles, transaction history).
  • Decentralized storage solutions like IPFS, Arweave and Filecoin can be used for storing immutable data (e.g. NFT metadata), but a Web2 backend helps with indexing and querying structured data efficiently.

3. Advanced Logic & Data Aggregation in Web3 Backend

  • Some dApps need complex business logic that is inefficient or impossible to implement in a smart contract.
  • Backend APIs allow for data aggregation from multiple sources, including oracles (e.g. Chainlink) and off-chain databases.
  • Middleware solutions like The Graph help in indexing blockchain data efficiently, reducing the need for on-chain computation.

4. User Authentication & Role Management in Web3 dApps

  • Many applications require user logins, permissions or KYC compliance.
  • Blockchain does not natively support session-based authentication, requiring a backend for handling this logic.
  • Tools like Firebase Auth, Auth0 or Web3Auth can be used to integrate seamless authentication for Web3 applications.

5. Cost Optimization with Web3 APIs

  • Every change in a smart contract requires a new audit, costing tens of thousands of dollars.
  • By handling logic off-chain where possible, projects can minimize expensive redeployments.
  • Using layer 2 solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum and zkSync can significantly reduce gas costs.

Web3 Backend Development: Tools and Technologies

A modern Web3 backend integrates multiple tools to handle smart contract interactions, data storage, and security. Understanding these tools is crucial to developing a scalable and efficient backend for dApps. Without the right stack, developers may face inefficiencies, security risks, and scaling challenges that limit the adoption of their Web3 applications.

Unlike traditional backend development, Web3 requires additional considerations, such as decentralized authentication, smart contract integration, and secure data management across both on-chain and off-chain environments.

Here’s an overview of the essential Web3 backend tech stack:

1. API Development for Web3 Backend Services

  • Node.js is the go-to backend runtime good for Web3 applications due to its asynchronous event-driven architecture.
  • NestJS is a framework built on top of Node.js, providing modular architecture and TypeScript support for structured backend development.

2. Smart Contract Interaction Libraries for Web3 Backend

  • Ethers.js and Web3.js are TypeScript/JavaScript libraries used for interacting with Ethereum-compatible blockchains.

3. Database Solutions for Web3 Backend

  • PostgreSQL: Structured database used for storing off-chain transactional data.
  • MongoDB: NoSQL database for flexible schema data storage.
  • Firebase: A set of tools used, among other things, for user authentication.
  • The Graph: Decentralized indexing protocol used to query blockchain data efficiently.

4. Cloud Services and Hosting for Web3 APIs

When It Doesn't Make Sense to Go Fully On-Chain

Decentralization is valuable, but it comes at a cost. Fully on-chain applications suffer from performance limitations, high costs and slow execution speeds. For many use cases, a hybrid Web3 architecture that utilizes a mix of blockchain-based and off-chain components provides a more scalable and cost-effective solution.

In some cases, forcing full decentralization is unnecessary and inefficient. A hybrid Web3 architecture balances decentralization and practicality by allowing non-essential logic and data storage to be handled off-chain while maintaining trustless and verifiable interactions on-chain.

The key challenge when designing a hybrid Web3 backend is ensuring that off-chain computations remain auditable and transparent. This can be achieved through cryptographic proofs, hash commitments and off-chain data attestations that anchor trust into the blockchain while improving efficiency.

For example, Optimistic Rollups and ZK-Rollups allow computations to happen off-chain while only submitting finalized data to Ethereum, reducing fees and increasing throughput. Similarly, state channels enable fast, low-cost transactions that only require occasional settlement on-chain.

A well-balanced Web3 backend architecture ensures that critical dApp functionalities remain decentralized while offloading resource-intensive tasks to off-chain systems. This makes applications cheaper, faster and more user-friendly while still adhering to blockchain's principles of transparency and security.

Example: NFT-based Game with Off-Chain Logic

Imagine a Web3 game where users buy, trade and battle NFT-based characters. While asset ownership should be on-chain, other elements like:

  • Game logic (e.g., matchmaking, leaderboard calculations)
  • User profiles & stats
  • Off-chain notifications

can be handled off-chain to improve speed and cost-effectiveness.

Architecture Diagram

Below is an example diagram showing how a hybrid Web3 application splits responsibilities between backend and blockchain components.

Hybrid Web3 Architecture

Comparing Web3 Backend APIs vs. Blockchain-Based Logic

FeatureWeb3 Backend (API)Blockchain (Smart Contracts)
Change ManagementCan be updated easilyEvery change requires a new contract deployment
CostTraditional hosting feesHigh gas fees + costly audits
Data StorageCan store large datasetsLimited and expensive storage
SecuritySecure but relies on centralized infrastructureFully decentralized & trustless
PerformanceFast response timesLimited by blockchain throughput

Reducing Web3 Costs with AI Smart Contract Audit

One of the biggest pain points in Web3 development is the cost of smart contract audits. Each change to the contract code requires a new audit, often costing tens of thousands of dollars.

To address this issue, Nextrope is developing an AI-powered smart contract auditing tool, which:

  • Reduces audit costs by automating code analysis.
  • Speeds up development cycles by catching vulnerabilities early.
  • Improves security by providing quick feedback.

This AI-powered solution will be a game-changer for the industry, making smart contract development more cost-effective and accessible.

Conclusion

Web3 backend development plays a crucial role in scalable and efficient dApps. While full decentralization is ideal in some cases, many projects benefit from a hybrid architecture, where off-chain components optimize performance, reduce costs and improve user experience.

In future posts in this Web3 backend series, we’ll explore specific implementation details, including:

  • How to design a Web3 API for dApps
  • Best practices for integrating backend services
  • Security challenges and solutions

Stay tuned for the next article in this series!