ANALYSIS: New Crypto-Friendly Law Creates the DAO of Wyoming

The decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, is a corporate formation concept that most today know, if at all, only from a spectacular failure a few years ago. In 2016-17, an early DAO project—conveniently named “The DAO"—raised $150 million in cryptocurrency in an initial coin offering (ICO), lost a third of its assets after a breach of its cybersecurity, and then became the subject of the first SEC action declaring crypto token sales to be subject to the securities laws.

Now, a Wyoming law, enacted April 21 and effective July 1, specifically approves DAOs as a form of corporation and establishes ...