The LexDAO Constitution was the master operating charter that defined the governance, mission, and legal structure of the guild. Rather than a static corporate document, it was meant as a living bridge between real-world legal predictability and decentralized, on-chain coordination. It’s available on GitHub here. The core elements of the Constitution include:
1. Mission and Purposes
At its core, the Constitution dedicated the guild to bringing "the traditional legal settlement layer to code, and coded agreements to the masses". It established the fundamental belief that everyone deserves access to justice provided in a quick and efficient manner and set a mandate to research, develop, and evangelize open-source blockchain protocols that secure promises with code rather than subjective trust.
2. A Nonprofit Cooperative Model
The Constitution initially organized LexDAO as a nonprofit cooperative co-op. Governance was run on a strict "One Member, One Vote" basis, using members-only votes to decide budgets, treasury disbursements, rule changes, and official policy positions.
3. Legal and Code-Deference Architecture
Modeled on SCoDA: The document was based in part on the SCoDA (Simple Code Deference Agreement), which establishes a "dual-track" framework outlining how human-readable legal prose defers to and interacts with smart contract code.
Wyoming Unincorporated Non-Profit (UNA): The Constitution legally wrapped the decentralized community as a Wyoming Unincorporated Nonprofit Association, protecting members from personal general partnership liabilities.
4. Version and Ratification History
The GitHub repository maintained the evolution of the guild's rules through distinct phases:
Version 1: Ratified on-chain via a legacy Aragon multisig vote.
Version 2: The current master operating text, ratified via a Snapshot proposal.
Version 2.A (Spanish): Canonically translated to Spanish by Luis Miranda and Andres Dovales, linked directly to the master English version.
Version 3 (WIP): Formulated to refactor the Constitution to comply directly with Wyoming's Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA) statutory framework under WY §17-32.
5. Creative Commons Licensing
To honor the belief that "law is a public good," the Constitution is presented under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-SA-4.0), ensuring that any other DAO can freely fork and adapt its legal language for their own organizations.