On March 7, 2024, SF50, the Wyoming Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act, was signed into law with an effective date of July 1, 2024. The bill was closely modeled on Wyoming’s existing Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act, but it is purpose built for decentralized organizations.
Just as Wyoming’s previous DAO law (W.S. 17-31 Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement) can be thought of as a “Digital LLC”, SF 50 can be thought of as a “Digital UNA.”
Think of DUNA as the Web3 equivalent to a family office whose purpose is to replace inheritance procedures and protect the family business’s standards and operations by enforcing the codes and covenants of the family office, which ultimately serves the interests of the inheritance and beneficiaries with their families.
Legal recognition of On-Chain transactions is the first step in search for the matching legal framework validating blockchain-based governance as enforceable under relevant trust and inheritance laws.
A smart contract is a prewritten software program automatically performing each party’s obligation in an “if-then” format and must be treated as binding instrument, while taking advantage of blockchain’s decentralized verification system.
The aim is for Decentralized Autonomous Trusts to function seamlessly beyond individual lifetimes, ensuring perpetual adherence to predefined governance rules to avoid the need of manual restitution in case of rogue actions.
Verifying indetities, and ensuring that only authorized participants can validate and access tamper-proof transaction records prevents situations leading to rogue actions (see the restitution example of Sanus Coin).
