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Results from the Pan-European Survey on Decentralised Semi-Autonomous Organisation (DSAO) Governance

Exchange of Value in a DSAO

The European Blockchain Association has reviewed its DSAO governance model from a Pan-European legal perspective and is able to publish the initial findings.

The full potential behind the use of blockchain technologies is strongly associated with the concept of the “Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO)”. DAOs enable the individual members of an organisation to interact with each other in an autonomous and automated manner without involving any central party, ultimately removing any need for a middleman as well as facilitating digitalisation and automation of processes.

Supported by blockchain technology’s core feature acting as the single source of truth between independent parties, DAOs can be automated and implemented in code through the use of smart contracts. The early advent and hype around DAOs has, however, faced severe limitations mainly due to legal and other governance considerations. The lack of a central party in a DAO setup makes it difficult to remain in compliance with the various laws applicable in the field of AML, KYC, securities or VAT regulations and additionally complicates fundamental governance questions for communities.

DSAO – A unique RegTech response by the European Blockchain Association.

In response to the unworkable, legal aspects of DAOs, the “European Blockchain Association (EBA)” has started off with the bold vision to come up with a legally-compliant alternative to the DAO model without comprising its revolutionary approach. With this in mind, the EBA has developed and implemented a novel governance model called “Decentralised Semi-Autonomous Organisation (DSAO)”. It ultimately incorporates many of the great benefits of DAOs based on blockchain technology with a legal model fitting well into the existing legal & regulatory landscape.

The EBA itself is the very first user of this new DSAO model and has been established as an “eingetragener Verein (e.V.)” or association in Germany. Compared to DAOs, the EBA’s DSAO model differs in two key ways:

  • The incorporation of the DSAO as a legal entity
  • The installation of a detailed set of governance processes involving the appointment of a (human) Board of Directors as well as an independent (human) appellate body to resolve disputes (Blockchain Arbitration Forum in the case of the EBA).

Like the ordinary DAOs the EBA’s DSAO utilises a cryptocurrency-based incentivisation scheme (CrowdstartCoin XSC) and a decentralised voting system leveraging blockchain strengths.

The EBA conducted a pan-European survey on the legal aspects of the DSAO model.

Having started with the bold ambition of developing a legally workable alternative to the DAO model, it was very important that the EBA assess the legal fit of the DSAO model in other European jurisdictions for the first proof of concept. Relying on a model which comes with significant legal shortcomings in other jurisdictions would not be an option since the principles behind decentralisation call for remote collaboration across the globe! For this purpose, the EBA has drafted a pan-European survey reflecting on various legal matters to take into consideration for the deployment of the DSAO model. The survey is divided into three parts:

  • External representation of a DSAO
  • Tokenisation of membership in a DSAO
  • Exchange of value within a DSAO

During Q2 2019, the EBA was already able to obtain the first responses from various lawyers and governance specialists for several European countries including Germany, France, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

EBA’s key findings from the pan-European survey on the DSAO

We have summarised our initial key findings for the seven European jurisdictions in the following illustrations. 

What’s next?

The EBA keeps further evaluating the legal fit of the DSAO model and is strongly committed to building collaboration models incorporating the principles of DAOs. In particular, we are also happy to assist you in case you are interested in taking the DSAO approach to the implementation stage! 

Further on, we will also plan to discuss the key implications and some country highlights in the course of one of the upcoming EBA meetups. 

If you want to get in touch with us, feel free to contact Kevin Leuthardt, Steward WG Governance: kevin.leuthardt@eublas.org

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EBA becomes official partner of the Value of Bitcoin Conference

We are proud to announce that the European Blockchain Association is an official partner of the Value of Bitcoin Conference. The first-time event takes place on the 3rd of June 2019 and brings together people from different fields and with different opinions on Bitcoin. By doing so, the conference aims to create a multifaceted dialogue about bitcoin.

The Value of Bitcoin Conference will take place on the 3rd of June in Munich, Germany. The talks will be held by 20 international speakers, who are renowned experts on their fields. More than 150 Attendees, among which you can find numerous innovators and thought leaders, are predicted to join the conference. The event is organised by the blockchain experts DW Innovate and the Bayern LB (Bavarian State Bank), who want to promote a lively discourse about the potential possibilities and downsides of Bitcoin. More specifically, the organizers want everyone in the audience to gain a comprehensive understanding of the matter in order to make informed choices about bitcoin in their respective fields.

All members of the European Blockchain Association have the possibility to acquire discounted tickets for the conference. If you are interested, please go to our exclusive member area for more information. We are looking forward to a day full of interesting discussions and innovative ideas around bitcoins.

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EBA Update Round – April 2019

Topics Discussed: The EBA’s legal basis as a German association, new options for augmenting member profiles aka EBA Cards, a pan-european survey of WGGov, and XSC as a means of exchange of services

In this April’s update round, we shared our excitement about the imminent entry of the EBA in the Munich court register – a process that finally comes to its end.

Following this, we discussed new enhanced editing options for EBA Cards:
Each EBA member can now present herself to let others know about her interests and to start conversations based on her expertise. We recently added a number of new fields and options allowing members to add much more information to their profiles. Thus, the EBA Card could become a valuable asset in a blockchain expert’s CV.

After these more administrative topics, we had the pleasure of watching Working Group Governance steward Kevin Leuthardt presenting preliminary results of the first pan-european survey of the legal and regulatory impacts of Decentralised Semi-Autonomous Organisations DSAOs, such as the EBA itself.

It was great to see that Kevin managed to get valuable feedback from different countries on a topic which itself is quite sophisticated. Here’s the link to the preliminary results. It would be absolutely great if each EBA member could check in her personal rolodex (for younger members: that’s the archaic version of a contact network) if there are more potential target persons (i.e. European lawyers) we could invite to answer the survey! Please feel free to distribute this link to everybody who matches this requirement.

Let’s say a BIG THANK YOU to Kevin and Rebecca to take care of this survey – great work!

We concluded the update round by discussing how to implement Crowdstart Coin XSC as a means of exchange of services in EBA. On the one hand, we need to find services for EBA members that are valuable in order to justify the member fee, on the other hand, XSC shall be used to exchange services among EBA members individually. Ideas how to foster XSC are welcome – please add them on Slack!

That’s it for today – see you soon!

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Executive Blockchain Education by TUM School of Management, Datarella and EBA

As a foundational technology, Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies DLT are the basis for future data-driven businesses and applications. The Blockchain-inherent decentralisation means a paradigm shift not only for technical architectures and processes, but also for business models and society at-large. For enterprises and their managers, understanding Blockchain and DLT will be an essential component of their future work.

Together with one of Germany’s leading universities, Technische Universität München TUM, and Enterprise Blockchain company Datarella, the European Blockchain Association offers the brand-new program Certified Blockchain & DLT Manager on one of the most promising but also contentious technologies: corporate leaders learn how to implement and manage Blockchain and DLT, and how to unlock its potential for the enterprise.

This Certificate Program covers the technical, business, social and legal aspects of blockchain-based solutions in a balanced and unbiased way. The target groups of this program are both people with IT and management background – employees in companies who are to be developed into Blockchain Managers, distinguishable in:
a) Technically oriented occupational groups
b) Business management oriented occupational groups

The program starts on18 September 2019 and will take place in 2 modules over a course of 5 days. Lecturers, amongst others, are:  Prof. Dr. Florian Matthes (TUM), Michael Reuter (Datarella) Prof. Dr. Joachim Henkel (TUM), Florian Huber (chain.de / Paradigm Ventures), Prof. Dr. Jürgen Ernstberger (TUM) and Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe (TUM).

The program is open for applications.

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Code is Not Law But it Can Be Governance

LaTeX Editor

The European Blockchain Association governance framework has been getting a fair amount of attention in legal and industry circles lately. We’ve been working hard on operationalizing the governance in practice and outlining the practical steps everyday people need to take officially become EBA members and even contribute to our governance.

After the signing of the american constitution, it is said that someone asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government they would have. He responded, “A republic if you can keep it”. What he meant is that governance is not a static thing written in stone, but rather a living set of procedures, checks, and balances, intended to allow a group of people to address unforeseen circumstances going forward into an indefinite future.

The governance of the EBA is not unlike traditional governance frameworks in this regard. The governance that the EBA founding members have drafted is intended to change over time. The unanswered question however up until now was, “How will it change?”

Today we can answer that question. We’ve converted the original plain text of the EBA governance document and membership forms into code which itself outputs a beautifully typeset final document in .pdf format. We’re using LaTeX, the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. By writing our governance as LaTeX code we are able to ensure a single always up-to-date version is available to everyone. Feel free to check out the code here.

Furthermore, we’re handling the governance as we would handle any open source codebase. We’ve put it under git version control which will allow vast numbers of people to contribute in a highly organized and transparent manner. In the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing guidelines outlining the user journey for EBA members. We’re also working on a detailed description of the technical steps EBA Members need to take in order to get access to our github organization and submission guidelines for EBA Governance Improvement Proposals via pull request.

Additionally, we’ll be publishing procedural guidance on how to form working groups and extra working group entities. Further procedural guidance will include how to set up teams within the github organization in order to collaborate on the code and non-code outputs of those groups. Keep an eye on our wiki as we plan to repurpose it for organizing all of the operational guidance built on top of the EBA governance.

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European Blockchain Association teams up with Nooor

Armenian Blockchain Association

We are happy to announce that the European Blockchain Association is now an official partner of the Armenian Blockchain Association Nooor. The non-profit organisation Nooor was founded in 2017 and connects and supports various stakeholder in the blockchain realm, thus following the same goals as we do.

Both the European and the Armenian Blockchain Association are built on the pillars of education, community and a strong network in order to foster economical and personal growth among the members. Furthermore, our shared purpose is to build a bridge between Central Europe and Armenia for start-ups, corporate businesses, developers and other blockchain experts to create a powerful network of blockchain enthusiasts by joining our forces. We believe that a cooperation between our two associations is going to bring major benefits to all our members in reaching their goals and in building a sustainable international network.

Additionally, this cooperation brings both organisations one step closer to their overarching goal of creating an internationally active blockchain hub for their respective areas. Through the exchange of thoughts on ongoing research projects and by sharing relevant results, we hope to foster the innovation process and to enable real-life applications of the findings. With a strong and well-established network of partnerships with Blockchain supporters worldwide and especially in eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East, Nooor is the ideal partner for us to further expand our network and to offer access to those regions to our members. 

We are looking forward to cooperating with Nooor and learn and thrive together. We will be working hand in hand to bring Blockchain with all its benefits to the next level and to establish an all-encompassing network of Blockchain supporters. The European Blockchain Association will keep you updated and share the progress with you on this blog.

The first event of both organisations is the blockchain summer camp in Munich and Berlin, where blockchain enthusiasts from Armenia and Europe share their knowhow.

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TOKEN2049: Exclusive EBA Discount Code TOKENCP281

TOKEN2049 | Hong Kong, 13-14 March 2019

TOKEN2049 is the premier crypto event in Asia, taking place 13-14 March 2019 in Hong Kong, to explore in-depth the growing crypto ecosystem and shine a light on the global developments of this new asset class.

Torken2019
Torken2019


The 2019 edition will host 2,000+ attendees from around the globe and 100+ high-profile speakers, including Charlie Lee (Litecoin), Bill Barhydt (Abra), Justin Sun (TRON), Max Kordek (Lisk), Xinshu Dong (Zilliqa), and Saifedean Ammous (Author “The Bitcoin Standard”). Join thought-leaders, global media, and thousands of participants for two productive and insightful networking days.


Register now to benefit from the Early Bird rate, and use the discount code TOKENCP281 (valid until 28th Feb).

https://www.token2049.com/tickets


TOKEN2049 will be a part of Asia Crypto Week, 11-17 March 2019.

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First XSC Distribution To New EBA Members

As in every new organisation, let alone a decentralised semi-autonomous organisation DSAO, first members are first movers in the truest sense of the word: they may face some hiccups at the beginning.

After we finalised the first version of our governance model last week, we are now ready to start the distribution of CrowdstartCoins XSC to our new members. In order to provide EBA members with a a basic budget of our internal currency XSC, we today sent 2.000 XSC to each new member’s Ethereum wallet. If you registered lately, just have a look into your wallets and enjoy!

If you want to know more about CrowdstartCoin XSC, you can inform yourself here and here. If you don’t have an Ethereum wallet, feel free to download the original XSC wallet here – there is an iOS, as well as an Android version.

Those EBA members who have not yet added their Ethereum wallet address to their member profiles, don’t worry. If you add your address, we will take that into account for the next distribution!


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The European Blockchain Association Governance Model

Governance of decentralized systems is a matter of numerous debates in technological, as well as political and sociological circles. For the European Blockchain Association EBA, we have created a comprehensive governance model, based on existing, widely accepted regulatory frameworks, such as Eclipse, or Apache, as well as based on our practical experiences creating and working with blockchain networks. 

Our governance model specifically addresses the needs of our organisation which is designed as a decentralized semi-autonomous system DSAO: starting as an association (legal entity) based out of Germany, EBA is set to incentivize all members in a way that no central incentive will be needed to run and bring the organisation forward. A token-based incentive scheme is used to reward members for adding value to the organisation.

Beside being organised by its governance model, the members of the organisation must have the ability to change its own governance model – i.e. the ability of self-regulation.

Finally, the EBA governance model has been designed in accordance with other existing and widely accepted regulatory frameworks, such as Eclipse and Apache, in order to facilitate the acceptance with potential members.

These three key principles, the ability of self-regulation, being based on accepted regulatory frameworks, and the integrated incentive scheme, should constitute a sound basis for a successfull start of our decentralized semi-autonomous organisation.

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Rewarding Blockchain Innovation With CrowdstartCoin XSC

Some weeks ago, our friends over at Crowdstart Capital announced that they would donate a large chunk of their crypto currency CrowdstartCoin XSC to the European Blockchain Association. You can imagine how happy we have been! 

The way, the Crowdstart team has been distributing XSC until then, you could call ‘reactive’: they have screened Github for valuable code that had been added to the blockchain ecosystem. Then, developers were rewarded with XSC for their completed jobs and projects.

We want to turn this process upside-down: since there is so much work to do – not only real programming, but also research, marketing, and even administrative work – we have decided to put projects out for tender. The projects will be diverse, ranging from technical ones; i.e. coding, to communicational, administrative or marketing tasks. All  projects will be rewarded with CrowdstartCoins XSC. Here, find the first invitations to tender.

Each project will contain:

  • Project title and description
  • Contracting entity
  • Deliveries
  • Schedule
  • Reward in XSC

Initially, projects will be announced and XSC will be provided by the EBA. Later, after XSC have become more evenly distributed,  EBA member can announce projects themselves and reward suppliers with XSC. If you plan to put a project out for tender yourself, add it to our #innovation Slack channel. The EBA team then takes care and adds it to the list of actual projects. Looking forward to seeing many innovative and helpful ideas popping up and being rewarded with XSC!