Season 2, Episode 7 – How Can Blockchain and Law be Used for Social Good (with Michele Neitz)

While ‘Decentralized Autonomous Organizations’ and ‘Incorporation’ might sound mutually exclusive, that could not be further from the truth. In fact, DAOs are not really protected or given the opportunity to realize their full potential until they incorporate. The reason why is threefold: first, if a DAO is not recognized as a legal entity, all of its contributors are at significant personal risk; second, if a DAO doesn’t have corporate personhood, it cannot own any intellectual property, participate in traditional finance, or hire employees; third, without tax entity, all of a DAOs members can be held accountable for taxes on any net earnings the DAO generates. The problem is, not a lot of people know about this and continue to organize with the hopes of changing the world without first ensuring that their foundation is stable. Others who might be aware about the benefits of incorporation dismiss it out of fear that it is ‘too complicated’ or ‘too expensive.’ In reality, incorporation has never been easier than it is today. In this podcast episode, Adam Miller will share everything you need to know about how to incorporate your DAO.

The founder and CEO of SPACE, Batis Samadian founded the company in 2021 with a goal to build a fair and equal economy for creators and businesses. Previously, Batis was the product lead at Zapp, and as a serial entrepreneur and investor, he also worked for Saffron, a venture builder that was involved with early VR startups and was an angel in a number of successful projects. Batis has been in crypto since 2013, initially mining with his friends from their college dorms. Today, he brings all his entrepreneurial and crypto knowledge to create the largest commerce virtual world owned by the community. The Metaverse is overhyped. We will talk with Batis Samadian, the founder and CEO of SPACE, about what is missing to make it real, and how consumers and businesses can participate in the Metaverse today.

As a former Senior Investigative Counsel, federal prosecutor, and Chainalysis alum, Amanda Wick has been in nearly every corner of the crypto ecosystem. After nearly a decade in government service and working at a startup, she grew passionate about the need for increased inclusion of women in the future of digital assets. She recently founded a non-profit called the Association for Women In Crypto to provide networking and education opportunities that will help promote and advance women in the space.  Cryptocurrency has existed for more than a decade, but countless people still don't know what it is and think it's just "criminal money." But market activity has risen to over a trillion dollars, and most governments around the world have recognized it is here to stay. So what, and why should women, especially, care? Because the future of digital finance has yet to be written and this time around, women have an opportunity to fight harder to ensure inclusion and equality. Amanda Wick will explain why everyone should care about cryptocurrency, but why women especially should care, why they should get involved, and how women can ensure there is greater inclusion in the future of digital finance.

Tegan Kline, Co-Founder and Head of Business at Edge & Node (the initial team behind The Graph), helping to ensure a vibrant decentralized future. The Graph is Edge & Node’s first protocol, an indexing and query protocol organizing the world’s open blockchain data and making open data a public good. Tegan helps leaders and innovators connect more deeply with stakeholders across the blockchain ecosystem. Tegan made Forbes 30 under 30’s class of 2022. Tegan Kline is the former International Business Development Manager and OXT Relations Lead for Orchid, an A16z and Sequoia backed blockchain company that created tools and protocols for users to obtain digital freedom and an open and accessible internet. Tegan began her career on Wall Street in Investment Banking at BAML and, prior to discovering blockchain, worked in Sales and Trading at Barclays. Tegan is a force of nature. She has been instrumental to the blockchain industry. She is making applications on blockchain technology possible at The Graph and, in launching Orchid, she helped to help get everyone equal access to the internet. She is now paving the way for DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem at Edge & Node to ensure web3 becomes the future of the Internet. Recognized as one of the Top 10 Most Powerful People in Crypto by The Information and Forbes's 2022 30 Under 30 in the Finance Category, Tegan has exemplified her continuous passion and efforts for people to own their data and money, independently verify all information, maintain neutrality, and empower humanity to evolve. In this episode, Tegan will explore why downcycles are euphoric for builders, why web3 is the perfect place for web2 developers to land, how web3 is evolving, how The Graph plays a major role in powering the web3 movement, and the importance of finding your community within web3.

Kimberly Almeida - Director of Programs, Levi Strauss Foundation Kim is a corporate philanthropy, CSR and international development professional. She joined the Levi Strauss Foundation in 2012 and leads the Foundation’s learning and analysis efforts across its three giving areas. Previously, she oversaw the design and implementation of Levi Strauss & Co.’s Worker Well-being initiative, which aims to improve apparel workers’ lives through partnerships with the Company’s vendors and community organizations. Kim led efforts to measure the impact of WWB in partnership with the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise at Harvard University. Prior to joining the Levi Strauss Foundation she was Global Research Manager at UL Responsible Sourcing where she was responsible for following new developments in the CSR field and advising UL’s clients on how to manage specific labor challenges in their supply chains. Kim has also conducted extensive research on the business case for responsible labor and managed grantmaking programs throughout Latin America for Nokia and the International Youth Foundation. Kim received a Master of Pacific International Affairs from University of California, San Diego’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and a BA in anthropology from George Washington University. Born and raised in Guatemala, she is fluent in Spanish and German and proficient in Portuguese. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son. Eileen McNeely, PhD, MS, RN, Executive Director, SHINE, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Eileen McNeely is Founder and Executive Director of SHINE, the sustainability and health initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she is pioneering understanding of corporate social and health impacts and the role of business in advancing global well-being. Dr. McNeely has extensive experience in the areas of environmental epidemiology, occupational and community health, health promotion, health services management and policy, and clinical practice as a nurse practitioner.   Her experience spans numerous industries. She started and runs the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study, the largest cohort study of flight attendants. She is a former intern at the Occupational Health and Safety Administration in Washington D.C., evaluating the impact of regulations on the chemical industry. She has consulted both nationally and internationally on the impact of work on wellbeing and has authored many publications on this topic. Dr. McNeely’s research is currently focused on work as a platform to improve well-being, putting people and health at the center of corporate sustainability and business culture.  Using a rigorous and applied academic approach she aims to shine a light on worker health and well-being in the business context, and engages companies to understand the impact of workplace culture and practices on well-being. Her research is driven by combining mental, physical and psychosocial well-being metrics with business metrics such as retention, absenteeism, productivity, and performance to guide businesses to better understand the impact of the workplace culture on health.   Her work with companies aims to redesign how business integrates well-being from an ever-changing programmatic style to an integrated systems approach.

Jeremy Nau is a founding member and Director in Armanino's Blockchain and Digital Assets practice. A CPA, Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and Certified Bitcoin Professional (CBP), Jeremy acts as a subject matter expert for Armanino's clients across all industries. In this capacity, Jeremy leads the digital asset portions of audit, SOC, SOX and tax engagements for many types of industry clients such as exchanges, custodians, miners, stakers, token projects, wallets, payment processors and stablecoins. Additionally, Jeremy is a co-founder and product manager of Armanino's TrustExplorer suite of products. He helped create the first ever real-time audit application in the accounting/audit industry; TrustExplorer's Real-Time Audit application now attests to over $10B in assets as frequently as every 30 seconds. Jeremy also managed the first-ever proof of reserves engagement completed by an accounting firm. Jeremy also helped created the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s proof of reserves crypto claim taxonomy, which leads the accounting industry forward through the creation of transparency standards. Prior to focusing solely on crypto and digital assets, Jeremy spent four years working with and managing SOX and internal audit engagements for public companies. He is a graduate of CSU Chico.

Anna Stone is an accomplished Web3 innovator and growth leader with a proven track record in building, launching, and scaling inclusive crypto products, made for the masses, since 2018. At eToro, Stone oversees go-to-market strategy for the company's NFT business, and leads the company's impact initiatives which focus on leveraging blockchain and #Web3 as key to democratizing finance for all. She is a co-founder of GoodDollar.org, a social-impact protocol and DAO that leverages free market incentives to pay for building a more equitable world, which eToro sponsored the building of as part of its corporate social responsibility efforts. She has worked in the space of crypto and decentralized finance since 2018, when she led growth for the Bancor Protocol for 2 years in the early days of decentralized finance. She has over 12 years experience in bringing to market complex technologies and leading growth teams across Web3, blockchain, big data, and advanced analytics. She has holds a BA from Dartmouth College, and a masters in global political economy from The Fletcher School, at Tufts Reducing wealth inequality is arguably the greatest threat to the future of humanity, with half of the world’s population (3.4 billion people) living on less than $5.50 a day. Despite efforts to address inequality, the gulf between rich and poor is growing and continues to divide us, and has only been exacerbated by global economic fall-out from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Yet, this crisis has triggered fresh, wide-scale and cross-party enthusiasm to put money directly in the hands of people. Universal basic income (UBI) – the idea of providing unconditional payments to individuals – while not a new idea, has emerged as a key policy proposal in over 20 nations. GoodDollar.org is a basic income protocol that presents a people-powered, distributed framework to generate, finance, and distribute a daily digital basic income. Through its novel tokenomics and integration with DeFi protocols, GoodDollar can achieve significant social impact. Since launching G$, a reserve-backed token, in September 2020, people all over the globe are receiving their share of G$ every day, and they are using it to transact, create new economies and businesses.

Neeraj Kashyap is the founder and CEO of Moonstream. Moonstream is a one of a kind web3 game engine with tools to build on-chain game economies. There are tens of thousands of players already participating in game economies built with Moonstream. The company has secured over $3b in transaction volume to date. Neeraj is a mathematician with a Ph.D. in Number Theory. He spent his late twenties in Japan, using mathematics and Machine Learning to build algorithms to diagnose Parkinson’s disease and other similar disorders. He worked at Google on TensorFlow, and built knowledge graphs that are being used actively by major US healthcare organizations. He has been a blockhead since 2015, with a focus on building software to connect blockchains to centralized services as well as to other blockchains. In this podcast, Neeraj Kashyap, the founder of Moonstream, will share about the challenges of building blockchain games and how crypto enthusiasts can make a profit playing games on a blockchain. Few gamers know the secret of earning money while playing blockchain games, so tune in to find out!

Brian Schuster is a Software Developer, Technical Manager and Entrepreneur building devMint School to close the talent gap in the Web3 industry. Brian started his career non-technical, graduating with a Business Degree from UNC. After studying entrepreneurship at MIT and realizing that the best opportunities were in technology, Brian started a rigourous self-study practice to learn software development. These practices eventually led him to roles including Infrastructure Developer, Solution Architect and DevOps Engineer. Brian now uses his dual background in business and technology to help people find new, exciting opportunities in the technology field. He's used his knowledge of how to find and execute on new opportunities to help successfully mentor hundreds of students looking to join technology companies. In his latest venture, Schuster is upskilling senior engineers and placing them into fast growing Web3 organizations. In thisepisode, we will discuss how both technical and non-technical executives can onboard into the Web3 space. The industry is growing very fast, but seem dauntingly out of reach for most individuals, especially those without a technical background. It seems that you have to have an unbelievably crazy, smart or lucky to get rooted in this industry. But the truth is that there are a ton of opportunities if you know how to build them. If you’re an investor and want to do more, or just someone wanting to take part in the excitement, this is the discussion for you!

Michele Benedetto Neitz is a Professor of Law at Golden Gate University School of Law and the Founding Director of the Blockchain Law for Social Good Center, the first of its kind in the United States.  She teaches Blockchain and the Law, Business Associations, Legal Ethics, and other classes. She has been voted “Most Outstanding Professor” by the graduating class of GGU Law six times, most recently in 2022. Professor Neitz was appointed to advise the California legislature as a member of the California Blockchain Working Group in 2019.  She researches and lectures on ethical, regulatory, and social impact issues in blockchain technology, and published the first law review article examining ethics in blockchain technology in January 2020.  Her most recent article, entitled “How to Regulate Blockchain’s Real-Life Applications: Lessons from the California Blockchain Working Group,” was published by the peer-reviewed Jurimetrics Journal in 2021.  Professor Neitz regularly speaks at tech and law conferences on these issues, including recent presentations at the CITRIS Research Exchange Panel at UC Berkeley and Bilgi University’s Data Driven Economy Lab in Istanbul, Turkey. Professor Neitz graduated as a Root-Tilden-Scholar from New York University School of Law.  Before joining academia, she clerked in the Southern District of California for Judge Napoleon Jones.  She also worked as an Equal Justice Works fellow at the Legal Aid Society of San Diego and was an associate at Morrison & Foerster. Two months ago, Professor Michele Neitz founded the first-of-its-kind Blockchain Law for Social Good Center at Golden Gate University School of Law.  The Center's three pillars--education, community, and research/policy--are creating a new model of blockchain education for law students, lawyers, and policymakers.  Join us to find out how the Center is training government agencies to look at blockchain as a tool for social good.  There is more to this technology's story than crypto scams!