*Shimmer Community Treasury: A community-led, committee-based grant program that supports the Shimmer network and empower its ecosystem through granting funds from the Shimmer Community Treasury.

Shimmer Community Treasury Background: The IOTA Foundation developed the Shimmer Protocol Network as a staging network. This allows a new and safe area to implement protocol technical modules and applications. These protocol upgrades can be tested in a real life valued network before porting to the mainnet. The network is similar to what Kusama is to Polk-a-Dot.

The IOTA Foundation developed the protocol and did a fair launch of $SMR tokens equally to all IOTA holders. Individuals only had to stake their $IOTA tokens for 90-days and they received a predefined number of $SMR tokens equally given to all stake holders.

A few months later the community decided to increase the overall supply by 20% in total. This would be distributed to by giving 15% to the Tangle Ecosystem Association (formed in Switzerland as an Association), and 5% given to the community to manage as a Treasury DAO. We, as a community, are now looking for legal formation for our Treasury DAO to manage a portion of the 5% of tokens. We plan to not only convert the tokens to USDT and provide grant funding to projects, but we also want to use the $SMR token as a means of voting for committee delegates and voting on large scale funding plans.

We are seeking which jurisdiction would provide us with the best applicable setup to complete our vision.*

SWISS ASSOCIATION vs. LICHTENSTEIN vs. MARSHALL ISLANDS

OBJECTIVE: The objective for the Shimmer Community Treasury is to find the best country to official form the DAO in. The benefits the Shimmer Community Treasury DAO primarily seek are:

• Liability protection for committee members that run the DAO. This includes (1) program lead (fulltime) and (4) reviewers (part-time).
• Liability protection for any community members that participate in any community vote decision making involving the DAO. These votes would be completed through the Shimmer crypto wallet on the protocol.
• As the DAO will be a non-profit organization, it will wants the ability to conduct for-profit-activities. *Note: All profits will only be used for the running costs of the DAO and to fund ecosystem proposals that support the positive growth of the ecosystem. At no time will profits be distributed back to the community or any representatives or entities involved with the DAO.
• Can the DAO create a subsidiary that “IS” a for-profit-entity that will have the ability to redistribute tokens back to the community if so such a subsidiary-DAO was created?
• Costs to create the DAO and annual running costs. We would like to assess these costs between the different countries.
• Tax implications. We seek a country in which we can form a DAO that provides the least tax implication on when we initially fund the DAO and as we continue converting the tokens into USDT.
• We would love to have a DAO Treasury that is led by a set of delegates, though if governance frameworks were changed, or major funding decisions, we would like to write into the DAOs bylaws if we can require the community to vote through their wallets. We have heard that you can’t do this in Swiss Association necessarily; however, we can possibly in a Lichtenstein and or LexDao organization.

Disadvantages vs. Advantages Questions

DAO Legal Recognition:

• Is there legal ownership precedence of token assets in those countries?
• Does the DAO have legal recognition as a legal entity? Does the DAO have the right to sue a grant receiver if they attempt to steal the funds?
• What company structure would be best suited for a DAO?

Liability and Responsibility:

• What are the liability protection each DAO gives to the committee and anyone that takes parts in any decentralized voting? Also, are there particular legal responsibilities for any actors within the DAO, either the operators or community voters? Particularly to the people running the DAO (ie. the board or committee), as well as, individuals that take part in receiving grants or voting, such as members)?
• Does any of these countries offer better liability compared to each other specifically regarding the USA. The European Union seems very good on developing legal rights compared to the US.

Defining Members (The Community):