Polkadot Legal Bounty

shut up and take my money!

Good idea but coverage needs to be split up by geo... e.g., US based startups should be represented by a US based law firm, etc.

Hello team,

The initiative looks very interesting and promising because the proposal includes regulatory advice, compliance, templates/wiki, etc.

Said that, I consider some points of failure:

1.- ¨One single point of contact (guaranteeing attorney-client privilege) and leverage a large international network of lawyers to obtain the best possible support, from choosing the right setup structure to helping with legal issues, such as contract and corporate law, IP law, data protection, regulatory issues and supervisory law as well as providing legal templates".

I believe that the concept of bounty is distorted because legal services are being provided by a ¨bounty¨ that is not a law firm or company dedicated to providing legal services and is prohibited by the law of many countries. It could be considered illegal practice in the legal profession.

I understand that the bounty should not be providing legal services, it should be curating the services of the projects with the lawyers who have the projects and not provide legal services.

In addition to that, the contingency for Polkadot is huge in case of conflict of interests, misconduct, corruption, lobbying, insider trading, violation of IP etc. of the curators or the lawyers/legal firms.

2.- The full legal service coverage is focused on lawyers based in Switzerland and their extensive network.

Polkadot is a world blockchain with projects all around the world and the service should consider different perspectives and not focus on Europe and its regulations.

3.- Costs of the services

The applicable hourly rates depend on the experience and seniority of the involved professionals and start at CHF 120.- plus 8 DOT up to CHF 290.- plus 28 DOT (DOT locked for 6 months).

The costs of the services are based on payments in Switzerland and it looks unnecessary that the treasury allocates funds to pay an intermediary in Switzerland plus the cost of local lawyers, plus curators.

4.- The legal bounty does not include lawyers?

The curators will receive 80 CHF per hour.

How could the curators curate the work that performs the lawyers and the costs of the services if they are not lawyers?

The legal bounty must include lawyers and the cost should be in hours only to review the performance of the work but should avoid providing legal firms or recommend lawyers.

For that reason, I will vote NAY

With regards to this a +1 for the enhanced compliance with the discussion and socialization and WFC (ours is a position of vote is law as many WFC cannot be really enforced however). With respect to the fact that recipients are curators we still have not been able to make that separation efficiently on other bounties so this is technically correct but other bounties do the same to some extent. Though, with respect to the fact that many legal services base their work on pre-ensambled rigs and work upon them, it usually makes sense for an industry such as ours which is perceived as high risk by many jurisdictions and entities. It also works for other industries like gambling and adult. Global Networks like Logion obviously help but legal specificity and high degree of choice in a broad number of jurisdictions is something we, as an industry even outside of Polkadot, don't have the luxury to enjoy yet. Even within jurisdictions that are crypto friendly and crypto neutral, finding such services and custom approaches in person is a really challenging process. This comes from our own experience to engage with legal providers on a crypto neutral jurisdiction that many incorporations base their operations at. This is the main concern if we want to see it operate efficiently. What would there be alternative approaches if not this one? would be our counterquestion to this comment.

https://discord.com/channels/961984944656236574/1319256536299864095/1325416970232795267

The solution seems to be an update to a proposed curator set more or less that can be done in a latter referendum for time sake (the curator approval referendum), that could be done as they seem to be open for new curators but no applications have been published yet. We'll be waiting for the proposers and commenter answer.

Dear @Amforc,

Thank you for your proposal. Our vote on this proposal is NAY.

The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum and simple majority according to our voting policy. This proposal has received three aye and five nay votes from ten members, with two members abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:

The referendum faced mixed feedback, with significant opposition focused on concerns about the structure of the bounty. Critics highlighted potential conflicts of interest with Amforc acting as both curator and executor, as well as critical grey areas that rely on subjective curator decisions. Many suggested a broader curator set, including legal professionals, and a restructuring to allow startups to propose their own legal firms for reimbursement. Supporters emphasized the need for legal support, particularly for smaller teams, viewing the proposal as worth exploring but requiring close monitoring. A few abstained, citing uncertainty about demand or discomfort with the concept. Overall, concerns about governance and structure dominated the discussion.

The full discussion, along with individual members' votes and comments, can be found in our internal voting.

Kind regards,
Permanence DAO

How are you selecting legal firms to work with (specifically in the US)? I have plenty of firms who would be interested in participating.