Innovating the Web3 Legal Space

About this Episode

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Chrissy Hill, General Counsel, and Alica Schiffhauer, Legal Operations Specialist, from Parity’s legal team. This episode focuses on the legal side of Web3 and all that it entails, including the challenges of working within compliance for a codebase with no existing legal precedent.

They discuss the unique aspects of working within Web3 law, such as needing a working knowledge of complex technology, blockchain-specific terminology, staying on top of evolving blockchain regulation, as well as their recommendation to become familiar with the legal side of the blockchain space. In addition, you'll learn how legal teams support Web3, by bridging the gap between national laws (to avoid what happened with FTX, for example), identifying and mitigating risks, and how accountability works for breaches of the law within a decentralized system.

Links

Parity Technologies
The General Public License
Less Trust More Truth: DOT has morphed and is Software, not a Security
Coindesk policy and legal sections

Highlights

00:50 The journey from Web2 to Web3 legal

07:30 Working for a legal team in a blockchain company

17:50 Challenges as legal professionals within the blockchain space

25: 45 How Parity and the wider ecosystem benefits from legal knowledge

27:00 Compliance for a codebase with no exciting legal precedence

32:00 Open source licensing 101

37:00 DIsadvantages of open source licensing

40:45 Deciding on GPL as the license for Polkadot and Kusama

44:30 How to learn more about DOT morphing into software

47:00 Cross-ecosystem collaboration across legal teams

50:20 Code is law philosophy vs. rule of law