LexDAO Engineering Year Review — 2020–1

2020 was quite busy for LexDAO legal engineering. We grew the Coop. to 40+ insightful members and have remained adamantly do-acratic, flat. Deployed a *ton* of contracts and models for trustless agreements. Made a comment to FinCen on wallets. Scribed on “fair launch” dynamics. And more stuff than we can even remember.

Really though: While the world seemed to lock and buckle on old corrugated financial and info systems, smart contracts showed deep resourcefulness. Lawyer heads were turned. And in the mix, the core blocks for legal engineering were raised as “builds in public” 🏗️.

Looking ahead, LexDAO engineers are exceptionally pleased to see computational law begin to bear fruit and reach fast production on public blockchains like Ethereum ⚖️ 🦄. Suffice to say: The worm has turned.

This brief writeup catalogues LexDAO engineering experiments, products and goals from 2020 that we see great potential to build on in this coming year. We welcome new members and contributors from all backgrounds who share our mission to accelerate and change how agreements work for people online.

// 👉 For folks that want to skip and get a feel for the LexDAO engineering elephant, check out our growing library of legal and solidity templates to make deals and orgs. work better without humans — LexCorpus📕.

ASSET TECH

SECURITY TOKEN Protocol

Following research into how to represent regulated assets on-chain, we combined the TokenSoft ERC-1404 (“whitelist”) and atpar ERC-2222 (“dividend”) token implementations to create a permissioned token that can pay out earnings to holders based on their respective shares — `Simple Restricted Funds Distribution Token`. Further, to add a legal layer, we hard-coded recovery for misplaced or disputed balances to LexDAO member votes 👨‍⚖️.

We are pleased to see this code put to good use. On this front, MetaCartel Ventures, an investment DAO, used our `LexSecurityTokenFactory` in production to tokenize 20 MCV investments 👺. This is pretty cool, as MCV is a DAO holding ~$10 million in member assets. The LexDAO security token factory is deployed at: `0x697D15d97af389A5f7922eFECEab39A688A74A99` 🏭.

Looking ahead, we will build on this standard for security tokenization in 2021 and make interfaces and reduced-gas deployment for general public use.

PERSONAL TOKEN Protocol

LexDAO engineers have whittled tokens down to core scripts, as well as thought through (perhaps too much) “what the heck kinda value are these based on?” For example, we have whimsical projects like `litetoken.sol` which spells an ERC-20 in ~20 lines, a `GAMMA` NFT design for erc721 market in 100 lines, etc., but more practically for guild members and our community, we have implemented low-code tokens that pack a punch for launching “offers” and other utilities on-chain: LexToken.

To make it easy to test a LexToken, our engineers have deployed a factory on Ethereum, dApp (`“LexTokenize”`), and verified code on etherscan, so every deployed token gets its own custom interface that anyone can find. We have also provided a “Personal Token ToS” that can be added to a token as an ipfs hash.

Further, to dogfood and demonstrate how LexToken works in practice, LexDAO has tokenized its own access and governance using this same factory code, deployed as $LEX 🔐. Among other perks in this system, users who launch a new LexToken automatically earn $LEX, as part of our beta testing incentive program.

(For folks who want a simpler deployment that also uses our gas-reduction code (minimal proxy), we have also created a “Standard Token Deployer” available here as a dApp based on the latest OpenZeppelin preset.)

ORG TECH

MOLOCH UPGRADED

Moloch DAO simplicity in solidity lends to quick iteration. As a lean DAO framework focused on capital pledges with well-understood rails to deploy that capital and manage members, it’s a great starting point for legal engineers to get creative and “own their code” to run assets on custom rules 👹.

To demonstrate this accessibility, and in a collaborative sprint with other Moloch DAO users, LexDAO engineers delivered a more gas efficient and extended version of Moloch DAO as a “2x” upgrade while maintaining a single smart contract architecture 🕴️. Among other features, this upgrade allows for ERC-20 compliant member tokens/loot, ETH support, arbitrary function calls from guild banks, as well as multi-summoner and ‘funded’ deployments.

To illustrate and continue iteration of LexDAO org. contracts, this v2x code powers the governance of LexToken factory, LexLocker escrow and our arbitration services (see below, DISPUTE TECH).

Further, the LexDAO Cooperative (40+ members) that steers the LexDAO mission and core concerns has been deployed on a simpler sister contract, `v2.1`, to demo iterative org. with low-costs on the xDAI sidechain. Check out COOP DAO here.

MOLOCH EXTENDED

LexDAO engineers have also produced extensions to make Moloch DAOs easier and more effective for “command and control” of other contracts. To this end, we have implemented a contract design for “Moloch Member Exclusive” functions (`MolochBenefits.sol`) — used by FlamingoDAO members to mint exclusive NFTs, an ETH `ZapMol.sol` to streamline joining orgs., as well as a factory to “summon” Minion contracts inspired by Raid Guild work in designing this base contract.

DISPUTE TECH

DISPUTABLE ESCROWS in LexLocker

The business use case of deploying Ethereum smart contracts to program time, role, and event-based logic over escrowed funds has long been on our minds.

To this end, LexDAO fashioned several iterative escrow patterns (adding new functions based on feedback from other DAOs) under the brand `LexLocker`. Most substantively, we iterated with Raid Guild wizards to make a hardened escrow contract for handling client funds, and now provide an arbitration DAO account to resolve such disputed escrow funds entirely on-chain.

Review our arbitration project , get in touch on discord to voice governance needs, and more importantly, make pull requests! (Our current LexLocker contract design and deployment for LexDAO purposes is documented here.)

From Raid Guild overview of their escrow program: `In case of a dispute, the legal engineers at LexDAO handle the arbitration, distributing the disputed funds to the appropriate party based on the facts. `

We look forward to challenge and opportunity of crafting real dispute resolution SOLUTIONS for web3 based on our deep legal experience and technical know-how.

ONWARD

The next phase of LexDAO legal engineering will likely look like a great “consolidation” of the concepts and code we hashed and rehashed over the year to reach market uses cases in permissioned tokens, dao_org customization, and resolution scripts. ASSETS, ORGS, DISPUTES. Fine fettle for legal and coders alike to make tools and rules that “just work” for our digital lives 💪 .

If this sounds interesting, join our discord and chat around our project and members. We’re cool, probably. BUT We Love Challenges.

Follow us on Twitter to get the latest updates 🐦. Subscribe to this substack, and if a $LEX holder, follow our token-locked Outpost blog for fresh legal engineering hot takes and products ⚡.

Many Thanks

LexDAO could do nothing of any sort, any year, without drawing from the passion of the larger web3 movement. The folks who have made LexDAO into a truly productive banner for legal engineering are too numerous to count. But to attempt a start:

Thanks to kinchasa.eth for making our dope pixelated logo 🧑‍🎨, and to the awesome DAO guilds in our network pushing the future farther and quicker ahead than we thought would have been humanly possible in 2020 🧙.

@RaidGuild — Web3 service Guild ⚔️.

@DAOhaus — Magic internet communities for all 🏰.

@MetaGame — Real life role playing game to build the future 🐙.