In this blog, we take a look at the five key features a true Web3 employment partner needs to achieve to provide a complete Web3-native employment solution.

“Work” in Web3 is remote, global, decentralized, flexible, democratized, asynchronous… the list goes on. We throw out all of the norms of the 9-5 and most of the norms of remote working. It’s a new way of working, creating value, and earning a living. In this blog, I want to take a look at a few of the things you need to understand to hire employees legally and fairly in Web3.

The recent release of Part 2 of a16z’s Legal Framework for DAOs, focussing specifically on the features of different legal entity structures, has many in our community asking; “What impact do legal structures have on employment in Web3. 

In this blog, we put together our vision for what the future of the Web3 employee benefits stack should look like. We’ve centered it around 3 key principles that are fundamental to the values of Web3; 1) Loved by the community, 2) Tailored for fully remote & asynchronous teams, & 3)Designed by decentralized teams, for decentralized teams.

Web3 organizations that expect to attract the best global talent need to be able to provide payroll to their contributors through means other than just fiat currencies. But they need to be able to do so with a very clear understanding of the regulatory landscape in which they are operating in order to avoid inadvertently entering into (or violating) regulated activities.

With increasing regulatory scrutiny, Web3 teams are asking themselves; “Are we hiring and compensating our contributors legally and compliantly?” This is an extremely complex question. Labor regulations present perhaps the most involved requirements of any type of regulation in human history.

The Bank Secrecy Act is US legislation that requires financial institutions to provide documentation to regulators whenever their clients deal with suspicious cash transactions involving sums over $10,000 in value.

DAOs are the future of collective capacity. They represent an unprecedented ability to coordinate and organize resources and people towards a common cause. But, for DAOs to continue to scale and build at the rate required, they need to be able to provide a legal and compliant employment environment for their contributing workforce.

DAOs have a ‘liability problem’. In fact, they have a number of liability problems. And these problems have serious repercussions on how a DAO can compliantly provide legal and fair employment and compensation. DAOs should be free to design any contributor compensation structure which fits the mission but shouldn’t need to solve the regulatory and legal hurdles associated with those choices.