CFTC Wins Ruling "A DAO Is A Person"

GM GM. Welcome to Lootbox. This is edition 100, so let’s take a moment to celebrate. Popping the virtual champagne.

Cue it the Oscar Award speech - Thank you, God, thank you, mama and thank you to all readers.

All kidding aside, it’s been a fabulous journey so far having you all read these emails every time it comes out.

Let’s get started with what you came here for

• A DAO is a person?

• Gaming market report from Denton

• The Sneakies

A DAO Is A Person?

The CFTC just won a major ruling that could set a precedent in giving DAOs the corporation treatment.

A DAO is now a “person” under the Commodity Exchange Act.

So what’s this case?

The CFTC filed a case against Ooki DAO, a DeFi trading platform, in the federal court in California, but the DAO opted not to fight back.

Since nobody showed up, the judge passed a default judgment that ordered Ooki DAO to pay a civil monetary penalty of $643,542, permanently banned trading and registration, and instructed third-party web hosting or domain registrars to shut down Ooki’s website and remove its content from the internet.

What this means

If this ruling is held as a precedent for future rulings, DAOs will get the same treatment as an LLC but without liability protections. So DAO members are essentially exposed to legal liability.

Gaming Industry Market Trends

Dentons, a major law firm, came out with their report on the state of the gaming industry.

Here are the highlights of their findings

• They expect free-to-play (F2P) with ads to remain the dominant monetization model with its potential expansion to PC and consoles but see hybrid models continue to develop.

• While the play-to-earn (P2E) model remains relatively fringe, it continues to be an interesting alternative for game companies to gain additional revenues and player base.

• Most executives in gaming believe the video game industry is the center of the metaverse, and nearly half of them are prioritizing investments in virtual, augmented or mixed reality experiences.

• Developers see generative AI as a tool to augment their work, not replace them, while there is still the belief that cloud gaming would revolutionize games the same way it did for music and video.

• The newer generation is more involved in games and uses them as a place to meet and hang out with friends. This has led to the rise of more multiplayer games, and they expect more to come.

• With the rise of e-sports, they found the most profitable markets are currently the US, China, Brazil, and South Korea.

The Sneakies

• Saudi Arabia has turned on the money tap in a bid to dominate the global game industry, spending $8 billion in the last 18 months alone.

• A Blockchain AI compute protocol, Gensyn, has raised a whopping $43 million Series A round led by a16z. The protocol makes it possible for devs to build AI systems on smaller data centers, personal gaming computers and connected gear. The funds would be used to get hire more people and build faster.

• Rethinkable puts out a guide for skills web3 professionals should have.

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