CoinDesk Live: How This 'Legal Wrapper' for DAOs Could Democratize Venture Capital

It's tough out there for a blockchain startup trying to raise money.

Not only has interest in crypto and blockchain projects tapered off some over the past year or so of declining coin prices, but traditional venture capital has pivoted to focus on funding businesses that in some way overlap with the new normal of lockdowns, remote work and public health crises.

But the blockchain space has proved itself innovative as it relates to sussing out hidden capital. (Remember the ICO boom? Doesn't that feel like a decade ago?)

In our livestream series reboot of CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition, CoinDesk journalists and virtual audience members chat with speakers from Consensus: Distributed, our first virtual conference May 11-15.

In this episode, CoinDesk business editor Zack Seward speaks with Aaron Wright and Priyanka Desai of OpenLaw, a company that plans to launch a for-profit DAO next week. What does that even mean? Digging into the structure of this new limited liability autonomous organization, dubbed The LAO, is just one of the topics in this week's episode.

Other topics include:

• LAOs as the next chapter of capital formation
• Novel use cases for DAOs
• How non-accredited investors can get involved in The LAO
• Funding technology, such as privacy-enhancing tech, that traditional venture capitalists have been hesitant to
• Tokenizing individuals
• The continued interest in non-fungible tokens or NFTs
• DeFi downside risk mitigators, like insurance, which are going to become more important as hacks and thefts continue
• DeFi's open and participatory nature overlapping with broader internet trends
• Rage quitting or redeploying your capital where it suits you
• Governance whales
• Limiting the consolidation of powers
• Digital first work environments
• DAOS for content creation
• And finally: "There should be a bitcoin DAO!"