Lisbon DAO Hackathon

Welcome to the Lisbon DAO Hackathon - A legal and tech hackathon organised by Lisbon DAO Observatory in collaboration with TAIKAI, AstroDAO and Dcentral Lab!

Venue

Hood Lisboa (Edifício Altejo, Rua 3 da Matinha, Lisbon)

About

Decentralised autonomous organisations (or DAOs for short) – as well as similarly decentralised arrangements based on the blockchain – are growing every day and may very well rise to be a true alternative for people to act collectively (whether for profit or not) without having to resort to traditional centralised corporate structures. DAOs present unprecedented legal challenges, and have the potential to be the transformative event for corporate law in the 21st century, putting into question tenets we have had for granted and forcing corporate lawyers to rethink what they hold as immutable and to adapt many corporate law rules to this new reality. At the Lisbon DAO Observatory, a research project set up within the Lisbon Centre for Research in Private Law (CIDP – Centro de Investigação de Direito Privado) of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, we are seeking to find answers for these deeply enthralling and exciting challenges.

Having engaged with the industry in our first event, and having engaged with legal academia in our second event, we will now see law and tech together at work within the context of the industry and the community, through the organisation of a DAO Hackathon that combines legal and tech challenges. As we face new issues head on, we cannot fully separate the legal, governance and technical aspects, as they are deeply intertwined and cannot be fully understood without one another.

As such we invite the legal and tech communities to join forces to solve challenges that will require sharp legal and tech thinking, drawing broader conclusions about DAOs, their organisation, their purpose and their current and future legal status.

How It Works

The Hackathon will take place between 5 pm of October 31st and 5 pm of November 1st, in Hood Lisboa, a co-working and events space in the burgeoning tech and art scene in Marvila and Braço de Prata areas. It is not only a prime location for those with interest in connecting with like-minded people, but the event will take place right before WebSummit, the biggest tech event in the world, which will be right next door! 

Participants must register in multidisciplinary teams, as detailed below - the challenges can only be solved by having people with legal and tech backgrounds working together!

In the first day, the challenge, which will be legal at its core but with several technical aspects, will be presented. It will entail an hypothetical/simulated DAO and problematic legal and technical situations will be laid our, which will be solved by participants using a testnet.

In the second and last day, teams will pitch your solutions which to a highly-qualified jury! The prize will be awarded by the jury to the team that pitched the most suitable and innovative solutions. 

The presentation (between 5 pm and 6 pm of October 31st), the pitching and award ceremony (between 2pm and 5 pm of November 1st) will be held at the venue. 

We recommend you are in Lisbon at this time of year, as the city is bustling with activity from the tech community due to WebSummit and several side events all taking place within days of one another! It will be a great opportunity to connect and to meet new people and get hold of new ideas. If you are not in Lisbon, you're welcome to join and participate along with team members that are here in person. We're happy to support you through the TAIKAI platform, though each team must have at least one person present in the venue. 

The TAIKAI platform allows us to have a community-based transparent hackathon. You can learn about other teams and participants, find a team to work with, and witness how the judging process works. You also can find other attendees to team up in the Matchmaking option available in the TAIKAI platform. 

For any questions contact us on Telegram (t.me/lisbondaohackathon).

Audience

As mentioned above, each team must have between 3-10 members and must be composed of at least one member with a tech background and another member with a legal background.

As for the legal background, everyone is welcome, from students to qualified lawyers and academics! The only recommended requirement is for students to be at least in the last year of their degree. 

Prize

The winning team will get a monetary prize of EUR 6.000.

Jury

Cathy Mulligan (Dcentral Lab)

Jordan Gray (AstroDAO)

José Nuno Sousa Pinto (Aragon DAO)

Madalena Perestrelo de Oliveira (Lisbon DAO Observatory)

Marina Markezic (EU Crypto Initiative)

Pedro Febrero (RealFevr)

Xavier Lavayssissière (University of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Sponsors

Aragon DAO

Cuatrecasas Law Firm

PLMJ Law Firm