DAOs under Portuguese Law: current framework and perspectives for future regulation

António Garcia Rolo

Chapter 11 in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations in the Legal Landscape, 2025, pp 211-227 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can be perceived as a novel way for people to organize themselves and carry out collective activities, based on the blockchain and with a degree of decentralization that traditional forms of organization such as companies, associations, or foundations do not provide. With some exceptions, it is rare to find jurisdictions with bespoke regimes for DAOs. However, this vacuum does not mean DAOs escape the law – in most jurisdictions, DAOs will be considered partnerships, with common themes of informality, lack of legal personality, and unlimited liability of members. Portuguese law is no exception, and this chapter provides a review of how Portuguese civil law partnership (sociedade civil) law would apply to DAOs and to what degree it is compatible with their purposes. However, as will be pointed out, the treatment of DAOs as partnerships is unsustainable, and any future tailor-made regulation must keep some essential issues in mind.

Keywords: Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO); Blockchain; Web3; DAO regulation; Civil law partnership; Decentralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035341610
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035341627.00021 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23695_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().