A Common Purpose – The DAO Opportunity For Guernsey Trustees

It may not be "conventional" private client work, but the rapidly evolving nature of the digital economy has created exciting opportunities for Guernsey trustees and trusts professionals, with Guernsey purpose trusts establishing themselves as popular structures for decentralised autonomous organisations ("DAOs") to bridge the gap between online and traditional economies.

This article discusses how purpose trusts are utilised by DAOs in Guernsey, the opportunities for trustees in Guernsey who are willing to deal with digital assets and innovative business structures, and the issues that trustees need to consider in respect of dealing with digital assets.

What is a DAO?

The key difference between DAOs and traditional corporate structures is that DAOs have no single central governing body or individual, instead the management and decision making is distributed across the DAO community. Membership to a DAO is obtained through the acquisition of tokens. Members