OtoCo’s first half 2022 lookback and outlook for the second half of the year

Crypto winter feels less harsh when busy building, and OtoCo’s workload hasn’t changed.

In this post, we’ll look back to what we’ve done so far in 2022.

We will then be looking forward to the second half of the year in terms of product, code, and community. 

We conclude with a reaffirmation of our vows. 

1. 1H 2022

Funding and Governance

Despite the changing funding environment, in late March we’ve raised over a million dollars from OtoCo users and the wider community.

We used a bonding curve token reservation process which we designed and audited specifically for this purpose. We subsequently made this smart contract available as a plugin to OtoCo users.

We plan to top up this initial community funding with US$ 3 million from a token sale out of OtoCo’s Treasury, set to commence in September. Thanks to introductions by some OtoCo community members, we’ve got a substantial part of the funds soft-committed.

OtoCo also formed a US-based developer company, OtoCo Inc., as the project’s main development entity, and created the OtoCo Foundation to promote OtoCo’s long-term vision and gradually hand-over its governance entirely to the community.

Functionality 

However, since January, our main focus has been on shipping new features. 

This includes a legal templates page (more details below) and an onchain signing function.

We also integrated OtoCo with Gnosis Safe, which allows multi-sig wallets - and by extension DAOs - to create and control an LLC as their incorporated agent in the “real-verse”.

Finally, we used the best part of three months to completely refactor our OtoCo smart contract suite (see technical post in this issue of The Otonomist).

User experience

Improving UXUI is a constant task. In June we started on a systematic scrub of OtoCo’s entire front-end, going through every page of the dApp, starting with our onboarding page and moving on to the Manager Dashpanel next.

2. Highlights

Over the next three sections, we’re going to highlight some of the most recent upgrades we’ve made to OtoCo in more detail.

LLCs as NFTs

It is now possible to hold your LLC or DAO information directly in your wallet and have it visible to you and others. As an NFT, you’ll have a visual representation of the entity to easily verify it vis-à-vis third parties.

All these OtoCo created companies can be viewed on Rarible! 

Holding this NFT will allow you to access the entity’s Dashpanel on OtoCo, add and remove plugins, initiate funding launchpools, sign documents, and more. 

Some of you will have noticed that there is also an Original Edition NFT badge.

This badge signifies that this entity existed before we refactored our smart contracts and adopted the ERC-721 standard for our entities. All of these entities were created before June 15. There are currently about 546 entities that feature the original edition badge, and that number will never increase. 

Polygon

We’ve brought OtoCo to Polygon!

It will now be cheaper than ever to create an entity on OtoCo and utilise the features in our Dashpanel. For cents instead of dollars, you’ll be able to spin up funding launchpools, sign documents, create tokens, and more. 

These Polygon entities will come with their own Polygon-themed NFT!

Legal templates

Important legal documents have been added as templates directly to the OtoCo Dashpanel. 

We currently have a Crypto Asset Pledge and an Independent Contractor/Contributor Agreement. 

These templates can be used to upgrade your LLC and make it a more robust limited liability layer for your crypto projects.  

More templates will be added based on the needs of the community!

3. What about the next 6 months?

During the second half of 2022, we’re going to be delivering multi-member LLCs, adding a new product (a filed, stand-alone LLC) and doing a bigger push on business development and partnerships for our community growth. 

More code

There’s a need for some LLCs to tokenize “shares” or membership interest in their company and become a multi-member/owner LLC. The difficulty with doing this currently is that users can put their company’s legal validity at risk if there are unfettered permissions with regards to membership interest transfer in the form of ERC-20 tokens. 

LLC tokens that represent equity cannot be freely transferred, sold, bought, or burned. These decisions are subject to approval by all other owners of the LLC. 

To deal with this, OtoCo is going to be creating a DAO contract that can be used to manage the membership interest of a company. Membership transfers that get approved will be carried out directly by the DAO contract—token balances reshuffled to represent the new ownership stakes. 

Look out for this new, multi-member, tokenized LLC to be released during the summer!

New product

OtoCo is also exploring bringing a new product in the form of a filed LLC. These will be standalone, traditional, registered LLCs as opposed to the Series LLCs OtoCo currently creates, but will live on blockchain. 

The benefit of a filed LLC is that it provides an easier way for OtoCo to add additional traditional services layered on top of the entity, such as EIN support and bank account opening.

The trade-offs with a traditional LLC, as you might expect, are to do with the limited ability to automate things at the registry level. Registered agents for Delaware and Wyoming require 24-48 hours to create one of these LLCs, rendering instant formation impossible the way OtoCo currently provides it. 

However…

OtoCo has a plan to automate and provide standalone, registered LLCs instantly without any delay. Stay tuned for the final quarter of 2022 to see how we do it ;-) 

Bigger community

We’re committed to making a sustained efforts in the way of partnerships, business development, and collaboration for the second half of 2022. 

We’re starting off strong with a new Aragon DAO partnership as part of their DAO Experts project. We’ll be providing support in legal entity formation to DAOs using Aragon as their backend. You can find us in their Discord helping people turn DAOs into real legal organisations! 

We plan on working with other communities, DAO formation agents, and crypto projects like NEAR Foundation’s Creatives DAO to help provide services to their users who need to bring their work under a company umbrella.

3. Wrapping up the year

With all the new stuff we’re releasing, and a renewed effort on marketing, we feel confident we can finish 2022 strong and bring more companies than ever on-chain.

We’re currently at 590 entities as of the time of this writing and believe we can hit the 1,000 mark before 2023. 

2023, of course, will be the year of the OtoCo Plugin Marketplace!

> Join the official OtoCo Telegram channel today to help out in any form you see fit.