#38 - Miles Jennings: Decentralization, Web3 & a16z

Miles Jennings (@milesjennings) is the general counsel of a16z crypto, where he oversees the firm's investments, works on regulatory and policy matters, and works with the firm's portfolio companies and DAOs on decentralized operations, protocol design and regulatory matters. 

Miles was previously a partner at Latham & Watkins in its capital markets and emerging companies group, and co-chaired its global blockchain and cryptocurrency task force, which was composed of over 80 lawyers around the globe. In that role, Miles acted as lead counsel for nearly every large investor in the sector, including a16z, Paradigm, Pantera, ParaFi, Ribbit, Coatue and others. In addition, he was a go-to, trusted advisor for countless startups and crypto projects, including ConsenSys, Uniswap, Aave, Bitwise, Avalanche, Element, Idle, Connext, 3Box, and Aztec. 

Miles has written extensively on legal frameworks for digital assets and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and on the design of decentralized systems. He previously co-authored “A Legal Framework for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations” with David Kerr. 

In this episode, we discuss his recently published “Principles & Models of Web3 Decentralization” paper. You find a summarized version of the paper here. 

Show highlights 

[5:08] Legal work in crypto 

[7:52] SAFTs & issues around them 

[10:45] Why he wrote a paper on decentralization 

[14:00] Surprising insights while writing about decentralization 

[20:20] Goal of writing on decentralization 

[29:00] Howey: efforts of others & DAOs - best practices 

[37:50] Conflict of interest for a16z 

[48:20] VCs as legal clients 

[58:00] Information asymmetry 

[69:50] Writing strategies 

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