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On the Recognition of Legal Personhood of Cross-border Decentralized Autonomous Organizations in the Web3.0 Era

Author(s)

Kaixin Tang

Affiliation(s)

Law (Specialized Program in English for International Legal Affairs), Shantou University, Shantou, Guangdong, China

Abstract

Built on smart contracts and distributed ledgers, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) cut across the territorial boundaries and hierarchical structures of traditional organizations, leaving the recognition of their legal personhood in genuine doubt. This paper argues that the difficulty originates in the wholesale failure of formal criteria centred on registration, domicile and nationality, and that the way forward lies in shifting the inquiry from formal criteria to substantive elements. On this basis it proposes a function–governance dual-orientation framework. The functional dimension asks whether an organization actually performs legal functions such as contracting, holding property and bearing liability. The governance dimension examines how governance power is actually distributed and where decisions are in fact made. Combining the two allows DAOs to be identified in a tiered manner. At the level of connecting factors, the paper refines the Centre of Main Interests (COMI) into the actual centre of governance decision-making and, drawing on the nerve-centre test developed in U.S. corporate law and the functional approach of the UNIDROIT Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law, answers the private-international-law objection that COMI cannot meaningfully be applied to DAOs. It closes with a proposed Chinese response built around tiered identification, reconstructed connecting factors, and dispute resolution.

Keywords

Decentralized Autonomous Organization; Legal Personhood; Function-Governance Dual-Orientation; Atual Centre Of Governance Decision-Making; Cross-Border Choice of Law

References

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