Crypto Governance Advisory MetaLeX Raises $2.75M

Prominent crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro’s MetaLeX raised $2.75 million at a $27.5 million valuation.

The project creates new governance standards for crypto groups to use during decentralization.

Crypto supporters argued that “code is law.” Courts and legal experts ultimately forced the phrase to be retired. But there’s still plenty of money left to figure out how the two are intertwined.

One such effort is crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro’s MetaLeX, a hybrid law firm/technology company focused on the mess created by crypto projects trying to “centralize.” MetaLeX recently raised $2.75 million in seed funding led by Cyber ​​Fund. It’s currently worth $27.5 million, Shapiro said.

Unlike their “centralized” counterparts in traditional business, many crypto projects aim to “centralize” by giving token holders control of budgets and other core operations. It’s a costly, cumbersome, and failure-prone journey that has gotten major DeFi players like SushiSwap into trouble and often leaves the organization open to making arbitrary decisions that violate its own ethics.

Stepping into this fray is Shapiro’s incredibly niche MetaLeX. In an interview with CoinDesk, he described it as a “business-to-business, crypto software-as-a-service” company that designs standardized, smart contract-based processes for what are called decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, to properly govern themselves. -chain.

In MetaLeX parlance, this newfangled structure is called the Cybernetic Organization, or BORG. Think of it as a cyborg equivalent for legal entities. According to the project whitepaper, they will be governed by hard-coded, smart contract-enforced rules built into their contracts.

“What makes them unique is the way they enforce smart contract functionality in their operations,” Shapiro said, “which makes them ‘cybernetic.’

He said MetaLeX’s first product will be an operating system for DAOs to BORGify their governance decision processes with structures that will handle grantmaking, emergency closures, and venture investments made on behalf of the organization.

Shapiro said crypto projects, including two “blue chip” projects, are reaching out “every day” to join the MetaLeX OS waiting list, but he declined to identify them beyond saying they are a layer 2 blockchain and “traditional DeFi DAO.” “

‘Totally BORGify’

“Both want to completely BORGize their operations,” he said.

Not every crypto project can be easily BORGized. Shapiro said that working with those who have already introduced tokens and DAO governance processes is more difficult than with pre-token projects.

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MetaLeX itself is not a BORG, DAO, or anything crypto-specific. It is an umbrella brand for a Delaware corporation (technology company) and Texas limited liability partnership (law firm led by Shapiro and Alex Golubitsky). Customers can use either or both, Shapiro said.

Shapiro said MetaLeX could one day have its own token if it becomes a legal protocol that requires management of its customers.

“It will probably take us a while to get to that point. But I think we will get there eventually,” he said.