CLP - Decentralised Autonomous Organisations:Technology, Finance & the Law

Speaker: Dr Joseph Lee Nazzini (University of Manchester School of Law)

Chair: Mr Justice David Waksman (Judge in Charge of the Technology and Construction Court and a Judge of the Commercial Court)

Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) represent a novel form of digital organisation, designed to raise funds and allocate control for various objectives, ranging from issuing cryptocurrencies and managing dispute resolution processes to stabilising the value of crypto assets. Their defining features of ‘decentralised’ and ‘disintermediated’ introduce significant governance and legal risks. By operating through decentralised ledger technologies (DLT) and other emerging systems, DAOs not only increase cybersecurity vulnerabilities but also present legal risks. DAOs have facilitated capital raising, notably through initial coin offerings (ICOs), and have also functioned as mechanisms for ‘monetary’ stabilisation. These developments highlight the need to reassess regulatory assumptions and adapt legal frameworks to the evolving nature of digital organisations. DAOs have catalysed a new wave of legal studies in organisational law, financial regulation, property law, and private international law. They operate at the intersection of technology, finance, and law, prompting a new wave of legal scholarship in financial regulation, property law, organisational law, and private international law. As these programmable/code-based organisational structures challenge traditional legal forms, a coherent regulatory and conceptual paradigm is needed to ensure trust and safety in this emerging digital space.

Dr Joseph Lee Nazzini is a Reader in Corporate and Financial law at the University of Manchester School of Law. He is the founding programme director of the Manchester Online LLM in International Commercial and Technology Law. He is the author of Crypto-Finance, Law and Regulation: Governing an Emerging Ecosystem (2021) and the editor of several influential books including Web3 Governance: Law and Policy (2025); A Research Agenda for Financial Law and Regulation (2025); and Data Governance in AI, FinTech and LegalTech: Law and Regulation in the Financial Sector (2022). He is the Research Director for Digital Technology, Crime and the Law at the Centre for Digital Trust and Society at the University of Manchester. Dr Lee leads cross-disciplinary research on the intersection of commercial law and emerging technologies. He has been the principal investigator of research projects funded by the UKRI, the British Academy and the British Council. He has held visiting positions at prestigious institutions, including Bocconi University, KU Leuven, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Liège, National Taiwan University and Tokyo University. He serves on the advisory board of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence AI-2-TRACE-CRIME, at Neapolis University Pafos. He is also an attorney-at-law of New York State. He acts as a consultant on legal, regulatory and strategic issues related to DeFi, digital and crypto-assets, DAOs, Metaverse, Web3, emerging technologies including DLT and Quantum Computing, exchange and trading platforms, legal-tech and online dispute resolutions platforms.

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