Just DAO It: A Podcast for People Starting DAOs

Ever wondered how a group of internet strangers raised $47 million in a week, or how another group actually sent two people to space? In this talk, MIDAO CEO Adam Miller breaks down exactly what a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is and shows you how to build one yourself, for free, in a single weekend.

No coding required. No money required. Just a laptop, a few friends, and the willingness to learn.

What you'll learn:

• What a DAO actually is, in plain English (membership + governance + treasury)
• Real stories: ConstitutionDAO's failed bid, MoonDAO sending humans to space, and Pyth Network powering official U.S. government economic data
• The ENS governance crisis: how one person ended up controlling 80% of a vote with just 3% of the tokens, and the 5 design questions every DAO needs to answer before it's too late
• A full 7-step walkthrough to launch your own DAO: charter, treasury (Safe), membership NFTs, voting (Snapshot), execution, and community (Discord + Guild)
• A real example: "Turtle DAO", five friends, a shared treasury, and their first vote from proposal to payout
• The story of how the Republic of the Marshall Islands created legal recognition for DAOs, and how "The DAO" from 2016 finally found its legal home
• Your next moves: how to join a DAO, start a tiny one, or build a career in this space

Recorded July 2026 at Maryland Blockchain Bootcamp 2026. The three short explainer videos from the talk play as narrated segments in this episode.

Governance status update (September 2026): the ENS Security Council dispute discussed in this talk was resolved with a new council seated in July 2026; ENS tokenholders separately voted in August 2026 (about 70% support) to move administrative control of the DAO's roughly $65M endowment to a new ENS Foundation, a move some in the ENS community view as governance overreach.

Litigation status (September 2026): the Lido DAO case referenced in this talk (Samuels v. Lido DAO) is stayed pending a Ninth Circuit appeal on arbitration; the merits have not been decided.

Chapters
00:00 Just DAO It! intro
00:29 Cold open and who I am
02:51 What a DAO actually is
10:16 How DAOs win, and how they blow up
13:05 The ENS blow-up and the five design questions
21:29 Explainer: A DAO in Three Minutes
24:42 The build-along: seven steps
32:11 Explainer: A Proposal's Journey
38:20 Explainer: Why Ships Have Flags
41:08 The real-world part: the Marshall Islands DAO LLC
43:51 Your move
46:24 Close
47:14 MIDAO outro

Free guide, How to Create a DAO: https://www.midao.org/guides/dao

Watch the talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAyuQyC3Bco

MIDAO is the sole registered agent for DAO LLCs in the Marshall Islands: https://www.midao.org

Adam Miller's talk from Maryland Blockchain Bootcamp 2026 (Capitol Technology University, July 2026).

AI agents already hold wallets, credentials, and onchain identity, and the law still assumes a person behind every act. The Freysa game and why language guardrails are not access controls, the decentralization ladder that strips away legal attachment points, the market's honest numbers, where liability lands when an autonomous agent acts with no entity behind it, and how entity-law wrappers like the Marshall Islands DAO LLC make agents legible, suable, and accountable without granting AI personhood.

Adam is not a lawyer, and nothing in this episode is legal advice.

Litigation status update (August 2026): the ai16z class action discussed in this episode (Pikabea v. Walters, S.D.N.Y.) was dismissed by stipulation on July 8, 2026, individual claims with prejudice, class claims without prejudice; the faked-autonomy allegations were never adjudicated.

Chapters
00:00 Show intro
00:29 Freysa Prompt Hack
02:06 Why Guardrails Fail
03:36 What Agents Really Are
06:01 Decentralization Ladder
09:52 Market Hype vs Reality
10:59 Payments Plumbing X402
13:50 Decentralized Minds Progress
16:16 Milestones and Lawsuits
19:21 Software Cannot Own
20:22 Algorithmic Entity Doorway
23:10 Agents Inside DAOs
24:10 Four DAO Agent Roles
28:28 Demand Still Early
30:07 Liability Map and Holes
33:28 Digital LLC Solution
36:19 Five Policy Takeaways
41:10 Closing and Call to Action
43:31 Outro

Watch the talk with slides and graphics (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKfchKnV5Ok

The AI Agent Legal Entity Guide: https://www.midao.org/guides/ai-agents

Free guides on DAO, Web3, and AI agent legal structuring: https://www.midao.org/guides

MIDAO is the sole registered agent for DAO LLCs in the Marshall Islands: https://www.midao.org

Adam Miller's talk from Maryland Blockchain Bootcamp 2026 (Capitol Technology University, July 2026).

How courts have begun treating unwrapped DAOs as unincorporated associations or general partnerships, what the Ooki and Lido cases did and did not decide, the five design problems any DAO statute has to solve, and an honest map of the US and offshore frameworks, from Wyoming's DUNA to the Marshall Islands DAO LLC.

Adam is not a lawyer, and nothing in this episode is legal advice.

Litigation status update (August 2026): the Lido DAO case discussed in this episode is stayed pending a Ninth Circuit appeal on arbitration; no summary judgment hearing is currently scheduled.

State law correction (September 2026): the US scoreboard in this episode says seven states and eight statutes, and that West Virginia signed a DUNA act in April 2026. West Virginia's bill (HB 5060) never passed its Senate and did not become law. The accurate count is six states and seven statutes, and the DUNA is law in two states: Wyoming and Alabama.

Chapters
00:00 Show intro
00:29 Ooki DAO Wake Up Call
03:49 What A DAO Is
06:43 Where Law Attaches
08:52 Default Partnership Trap
10:38 Two Landmark Cases
13:33 Lido Timeline Stakes
16:40 Sixteen Year Legal Arc
19:51 Five Statute Design Tests
26:23 US Scoreboard And Federal
29:35 Adoption Costs Offshore Map
34:00 Maryland Moment And Ask
40:28 Closing Why Entity Law
42:26 Outro

Watch the talk with slides and graphics (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWDuwmizO08

Free guides on DAO, Web3, and AI agent legal structuring: https://www.midao.org/guides

MIDAO is the sole registered agent for DAO LLCs in the Marshall Islands: https://www.midao.org

Farewell to DAOs? Why DAOs 2.0 and Autonomous Organizations Are Inevitable | Sam McCarthy on Just DAO It!

Are DAOs dead? Not even close. They're growing up.

In this episode, host Adam Miller talks with Sam McCarthy from DAOstar and MetaGov, author of the essay "Farewell to DAOs." The title is clickbait on purpose. The essay argues that the one-token-one-vote model is finished, but DAOs themselves are inevitable.

Sam went from consulting for commercial banks to working full time in crypto during DeFi Summer. He explains why DAOs have locked themselves into one copy-paste governance model. He argues that decentralization should be a means to an end, not the goal. And he says DAOs need to beat the corporation on performance to earn legitimacy.

Then they get into autonomous organizations (AOs): companies run by AI agents. Sam shares what DAOstar and Stanford are building together, including a new incubator for AOs. They also cover:
- Who owns an agent-run company, and who is liable for it
- How to make incentives and penalties work for AI agents
- Reputation registries and trust networks
- Why a multi-agent world makes organizational design an AI safety question

If you're building a DAO, a Web3 project, or a company that uses AI agents, this one is for you.

LINKS FROM SAM
Twitter/X: https://x.com/samccarthy27
Substack: https://sammccarthy.substack.com/
Stanford AO Summit (recordings and transcripts): https://www.stanfordao.org/summit
London AO Summit (upcoming, early November, co-hosted with ARIA): https://daostar.org/aosummit

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
"Farewell to DAOs" essay by Sam McCarthy and Spencer Graham: https://sammccarthy.substack.com/p/farewell-to-daos
DAOstar: https://daostar.org/
Metagov (and its Slack community): https://metagov.org/

ABOUT JUST DAO IT!
Just DAO It! is the podcast for people starting DAOs, Web3 projects and AI agents, hosted by Adam Miller, CEO & Co-Founder of MIDAO https://midao.org

Preventing DAO Governance Attacks + Building a Music DAO and AI Agent Legal Entities (with Zaal / Better Call Zaal)

Adam Miller hosts Just DAO It and interviews Zaal (“Better Call Zaal”), founder of the ZAO, an on-chain music community incubator aiming to return profit-margin data and IP rights to independent artists. They discuss BonqDAO’s low-turnout governance “apathy attack” and mitigations like security councils, timelocks, and ZAO’s illiquid, soulbound “respect” governance tokens with extended voting/veto periods. The episode covers ENS’s newly adopted security council, Cardano and Solana governance updates, MetaDAO’s ownership coins and futarchy, Lido’s restructuring, and Arbitrum revenue sharing. Regulatory news includes the U.S. CLARITY Act ethics dispute and SEC safe-harbor proposals. In AI agent news, Adam critiques early agent hype and highlights emerging legal structures (Marshall Islands, Delaware draft, Bermuda). Zaal explains ZAO’s reputation-based governance, Wave Wars live-traded music battles that pay artists, upcoming ZAOstock in Maine, and plans for a community-weighted AI agent (“XOL/Zol Bot”) to manage funds via a legal entity.

00:00 Welcome and Introductions
01:11 BonqDAO Governance Attack
03:11 ZAO Defense Mechanisms
04:43 ENS Security Council Update
07:10 Governance Rapid Fire
11:58 Regulatory CLARITY Act
14:17 AI Agent News and Reality Check
19:03 Break and MIDAO Guide
19:47 Zaal Origin Story
21:21 Why Blockchain Matters
23:43 Inside the ZAO Respect System
25:32 Reputation Voting Challenges
30:10 Progress and Community Metrics
31:46 Wave Wars Explained
35:24 ZAO Festivals and ZAOstock
37:06 AI Agent Legal Entity Plans
40:01 Where to Find Zaal and Wrap Up

Contact / Links:
Zaal (Farcaster): zaal
Zaal (X): @bettercallzaal
Zaal (Email): [email protected]
Wave Wars: https://wavewarz.com
Adam (X): @0xthriller
Adam (Farcaster): The Thriller
MIDAO (X): @MIDAODS
MIDAO: https://midao.org
AI Agent incorporation guide: https://midao.org/guides

In this episode of Just DAO It!, host Adam Miller (CEO of MIDAO) sits down with Alex Soto (@alexsotodigital), a Mexico-based governance facilitator and author of "The Minimum Viable Institution: A Lightweight Coordination Model for DAOs and Purpose-Driven Networks."

In the news report, they break down:

• The ENS DAO "2026 governance crisis" — treasury fights, resignations, and whether founder voting power amounts to a veto
• The Ethereum Foundation's major reorg, layoffs, and shift toward EthLabs and a multi-org ecosystem
• Regulatory updates: the U.S. CLARITY Act and its "ethics clause," Europe's MiCA deadline, USDT vs. USDC compliance, and evolving SEC decentralization rules

In the interview, Alex shares his vision for the future of DAOs:

• Why good governance shouldn't require a benevolent founder — it should be designed to constrain power
• The critical difference between governance/meta-governance and day-to-day operations
• Separating capital from governance power ("raise money without giving power away")
• Role-based models, sociocracy, and holacracy as battle-tested alternatives to token voting
• Why he doesn't believe in progressive decentralization — start small and decentralized, then grow
• The role of AI agents and smart contracts in maintaining coordination, accountability, and institutional memory

A wide-ranging conversation on coordination without subordination, capture resistance, and why "DAOs aren't dead — they haven't even arrived yet."

Alex helps mission-driven organizations turn coordination challenges, disagreement, and distributed work into governance systems, shared practices, clearer decisions, and institutional learning loops.

Find Alex: @alexsotodigital on all platforms | alexsotodigital.eth.limo
Find MIDAO: @midaods | midao.org

Disclaimer: Not legal or tax advice.

Just DAO It | Ep. 2 — Kenny from poidh.xyz on Bounties, DAOs & AI Agents

Adam Miller (CEO of MIDAO) sits down with Kenny, founder of Pics or It Didn't Happen (poidh) — a permissionless bounty protocol the enables "ephemeral DAOs.” They break down the biggest crypto hacks of the past few months, the state of crypto regulation in the US and Europe, the reality of AI agents transacting on-chain, and why Kenny thinks the DAO model has been wrong from the start.

Chapters:
0:00 — Intro & Welcome Back (first episode in over a year!)
1:55 — News: Record-Breaking Crypto Hack Month ($600M+ lost in April)
5:42 — The Kelp/LayerZero Attack Explained
13:21 — The Trapdoor Campaign: AI Agents as Attack Vectors
17:21 — US Crypto Regulation: Genius Act, Clarity Act & Open Source Immunity
22:13 — MiCA in Europe: 85% of Firms Without a License
28:04 — 400K AI Agents On-Chain: Impressive or Just Testing?
37:16 — Interview: Kenny's Background & How He Got Into Crypto
44:07 — Deep Dive: What Is POIDH and How Does It Work?
48:05 — A Brief History of DAOs and Why They Failed
56:00 — The "Atomic Unit" of a DAO: Objectives, Not Organizations
1:03:24 — Progressive Decentralization & Token Strategy
1:07:04 — Working With DAOs: The Haberdashery & Breaking a Kickflip World Record
1:13:35 — Pump.fun Launches Bounties: What It Means for POIDH
1:16:19 — The Big Vision: Online Communities Pooling Capital IRL
1:16:47 — Where to Find Kenny & POIDH

Links:
* poidh: poidh.xyz
* MIDAO: midao.org
* Beta Briefing (AI news agent): betabriefing.ai
* Kenny on X/Twitter: @KennyIsTyping | Farcaster: @Kenny
* Adam on X/Twitter: @0xThriller | Farcaster: @TheThriller

Not legal or financial advice.

This week's guests:
On this week’s Just DAO It, we welcome guest Jan Brezina (Puncar), who recently released his book, How to DAO: Mastering the Future of Internet Coordination. Beyond drafting this book, he’s currently working on another DAO, MotherDAO, a decentralized network where AI agents work, govern, and grow. Puncar is truly a DAO OG, as he co-founded Bankless Consulting, the DAO Governance Collective, and Workout DAO, among other projects. We look forward to having this DAO expert on the podcast!

Check out the book here:
How to DAO: Mastering the Future of Internet Coordination: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/729257/how-to-dao-by-kevin-owocki-and-puncar-foreword-by-don-tapscott/ 

Find us on Socials:
@PuncarH2D on Twitter
@puncar on Farcaster
@0xThriller on Twitter
@thethriller on Farcaster

@leohenkels on Twitter
@leohenkels on Farcaster

This week's guests:

On this week’s Just DAO It, we welcome guests Travis and Sam from DAOHaus, a no-code DAO launchpad built using the Moloch V3 governance toolkit. Beyond working together on DAOHaus, they’ve also helped build or contribute to: Yeeter, Bootleggers, Raid Guild, Meta Cartel, and RaidBrood, among other projects. Most recently, they’ve been experimenting at the intersection of DAOs and Farcaster, a sufficiently decentralized social network. Their current project is called Farcastles, and they’ve received a grant from the Octant Accelerator to continue developing it. We look forward to having these DAO experts on the podcast!

Relevant Resources Mentioned in the Show:

California Court Rules DAO Members Can Face Legal Liability as Business Partners

BIO Protocol DAOs Get Backing From Binance Labs and Tarun Chitra on Twitter / X weighs in

Decentralization Is Why We Fight for Crypto

ICOs are back? Good Conversation Sparked Under This Tweet: Haseeb ＞|＜ on Twitter / X

Aave DAO considers exiting Polygon after a proposed bridge

Find us on Socials:
@samskuhlmann on Twitter
@samskuhlmann on Farcaster
@earth2travis on Twitter
@earth2travis on Farcaster
@0xThriller on Twitter
@thethriller on Farcaster

@leohenkels on Twitter
@leohenkels on Farcaster

Introducing the Just DAO It Lawyer Series:
On this episode, leading Marshall Islands DAO Lawyer Tatyana Cerullo and MIDAO Co-Founder Adam Miller sit down for a discussion about DAO legal issues, Tatyana's experience with DAOs, Operating Agreements for DAO LLCs, and a recent controversial post on X from Gabriel Shapiro

Find us on Socials:
@RMILawyer on Twitter
@0xThriller on Twitter
@thethriller on Farcaster

@leohenkels on Twitter
@leohenkels on Farcaster