Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Corporate Wrapper Obstacle Épistémologique

Abstract

The relevance of this study is driven by the necessity to transform modern civil law doctrine toward a post-non-classical stage. Civil law constantly faces challenges from newly emerging relationships. The new decentralized internet, Web3, has shifted the paradigm for perceiving the elements of civil legal relations; as this article demonstrates, a new legal object exists on the blockchain, even though current civil norms state otherwise. In this regard, decentralized autonomous organizations are not merely a technological phenomenon but also a challenge to existing civil law theories and an instrument for protecting human rights amid the identity crisis of the information society and "surveillance capitalism". The purpose of this work is to substantiate a paradigm shift in research on decentralized autonomous organizations and to analyze their legal status by deconstructing the values they defend: privacy, dignity, and autonomy. The methodology is based on the axiological and historical approaches to Roman law and Kantian ethics to comprehend the depth of privacy problems and the relevance of these decentralized entities, alongside the synergetic method, which views a decentralized autonomous organization as a dissipative structure. The results demonstrate that such an organization is an autopoietic system where the protocol acts as a slaving principle (teleonomy of the code), while in bifurcation points preserving teleology of the community. It is argued that applying general corporate laws is dogmatically flawed due to the absence of affectio societatis (mutual trust) and undermines the very causa finalis of these decentralized systems – advocating for a decentralized internet and a shift of power to users, rather than creating just another form of a limited liability company. Prospects for further research include the proposal to treat these decentralized organizations as a sui generis construct. It is concluded that regulators should create "strange attractors" by applying the legal construct of Zweckvermögen (purpose-bound patrimony) to smart contracts, allowing these structures to participate in offline legal relationships without destroying their unique nature.