Detailed Plan
GOALS:
The aim of this project is to engage the legal community in the Catalyst process for the sake of addressing the pressing policy questions that arising as the Cardano ecosystem grows. The legal landscape for cryptocurrency, smart contracts, NFTs and DeFi is rapidly evolving, and major policy changes are on the horizon. States are writing new laws for smart contracts, but legislators seem to be poorly informed. How to mobilize support in the legal community for good policies?
Solution: Seed a growing network of law students and young lawyers capable of effecting intelligent policy as legislative interns and staff. Support policy research by the community and help organize the drafting of effective policy.
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE:
JEFFREY DOWNARD, professor at NAU specializing in law, ethics and logic. PI of NEH and NSF funded projects to build educational resources, director of crowdsourcing for SPIN project.
TOM DIETRICH, business law
SARAH HOLCOMB, legal advocate
Advisors: <https://www.keplerscs.com/our-team-1>
IP: Open conference and workshop sessions on Zoom in both a live and recorded form. The educational resources we develop will be publicly available via a Youtube channel under copy left permission. The policy recommendations will be published as a set of white papers and sent to federal and state representatives.
Defining success:
Essay contest for public policy analysis of
Use social media to create local, regional and national communities of law students and young lawyers interested in cryptocurrency and defi.
Timeline and Budget:
Months 1-3: Outreach to undergraduate Pre-law students, law students and young lawyers via social media ($1,000)
Website development and and Youtube channel: ($700)
Months 2-4: Creation and editing of an integrated set of video tutorials on the legal issues: ($1,500)
Months 3-5: Workshops for legislative interns and staff to study the policy issues and write model legislation. Outreach to legislative interns and staff. Advocacy. $(3000)
Project direction: ($2,000)
Project participation, oversight and evaluation by members of Board of Advisors months 1-5: 10 hours per week for 20 weeks at $100-250 hour ($1500)
Total: ($9700)
Phases 2 and 3:
Months 6-12: Grow the community and network with staff in congressional offices at the state and federal level.
Links:
References:
Gilian Hadflield, Rules for a Flat World.
Mike Orcutt, States That Are Passing Laws to Govern "SmartContracts" Have No Idea What They're Doing, MIT TECH. REV. (March 29, 2018), access at: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610718/states-that-are-passing-laws-to-govern-smart- contracts-have-no-idea-what-theyre-doing
Ferreira, Agata. "Regulating smart contracts: Legal revolution or simply evolution?." Telecommunications Policy 45, no. 2 (2021): 102081.
