A Bitcoin based corporation?

[Elwar]

I am trying to think of a way that a company could be set up so that no incorporation is required, any product sold gets filtered to the employees via mechanisms of multi-sig and time locks.

So a simple store with a store owner and a single employee would have owner A open a LN channel with employee B when the employee is hired. Employee B makes and sells a widget for bitcoins with a Bitcoin address that goes to A. A then pays B an agreed upon wage.

Simple enough. If B tries to sell the widget to a different address he is immediately fired. If A does not pay B then B just quits.

.        A
.         |
.         v
.          B

Add more.

A hires B to make widgets and C to sell them. Same thing. A pays B and C. C sells the widget for an address that goes to A.

.        A
.       | |
.       v v
.      B  C

All simple so far.

A hires D to manage B and C. A creates a LN channel with D. D creates a LN channel with B and C.

.        A
.         |
.        D
.       | |
.       v v
.       B C

At this point, D would need funds to open the channel with B and C right? Not sure how that part would work.

My other question comes to board members. Perhaps they control a multi-sig wallet that pays A who then pays various department heads (D), etc.

The idea of this whole thing is to make it all trustless and allow each individual in the company to be anonymous, including A. And have it be such that nobody in the chain can just walk away with all of the company's money (except those that own the company). Any fraud would be minimal (a week's pay, or a single product, etc.).

Yes, I know you can make ETH tokens or whichever. But nobody buys products in ETH. This would be a company that could be up and running and only accept bitcoin and be up and running without needing to incorporate, open a bank account, etc.

[PrimeNumber7]

I am not sure where the LN channels are suppose to come into play. Are they to pay the various employees? Or to serve as some kind of bond?

If everyone is anon, a dishonest employee could steal product and continuously get rehired. If the widgets that are being produced have a 10% profit margin, the employee could steal the widgets they are producing and end up with a minimum of 10 days worth of work if his theft is detected immediately. If it takes three days to detect theft (not entirely unreasonable), the employee could potentially get away with a month's worth of wadges before he is fired, and the owner would have no recourse if his identity is unknown.

[HeRetiK]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't even the most basic building block of this decentralized sales agency easily broken?

Simple enough. If B tries to sell the widget to a different address he is immediately fired. If A does not pay B then B just quits.

.        A
.         |
.         v
.          B

Add more.

1) The problem of trust doesn't seem to be solved. What prevents A from repeatedly not paying their employees? (ie. A does not pay B so B quits, so then C joins. A does not pay C so C quits, so then D joins...)

2) The problem of verification doesn't seem to be solved. What happens in case of a dispute between buyer and seller? (ie. B sells and delivers the widget but the customer claims the item has never arrived or is faulty)

[Elwar]

The use case I am thinking for this is an eventual corporation that does not need to follow all of the SEC BS for forming a company and the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to become compliant. Allowing for investors and such but still being able to move forward.
Working for various seasteading companies we did not quite fit into the square box of incorporation that other companies can deal with. An international company, not really planning on doing anything in any nation with international investors and employees.

The part about someone stealing...I am assuming when they are hired they are hired based on their reputation. They can be anonymous with a good work history that is provable or they can be known. Mainly hired contractors from freelancer websites.

The CEO hiring someone over and over and firing them would also receive a bad reputation. The company would be known. And the first week tends to be not very productive anyway so the work they get out of someone would be very minimal, mostly a hassle of training or getting someone set up.

I think the multi-sig part comes in mainly when it gets more complicated with investors who are shareholders that have some sort of vote in the board and get dividends. That becomes super complicated but I'm wondering if it is plausible by having the above simple mechanisms in place just expanded tremendously. Same concept just on a Google sized level. Maybe each board member is part of a multi-sig wallet that hires the CEO and sets the incoming cash flow to go through him. Then they can fire the CEO and change that cash flow to someone else. I'm not sure how shareholders and investors would work.

[TheWolf666]

I am trying to think of a way that a company could be set up so that no incorporation is required, any product sold gets filtered to the employees via mechanisms of multi-sig and time locks.

The idea of this whole thing is to make it all trustless and allow each individual in the company to be anonymous, including A. And have it be such that nobody in the chain can just walk away with all of the company's money (except those that own the company). Any fraud would be minimal (a week's pay, or a single product, etc.).

Yes, I know you can make ETH tokens or whichever. But nobody buys products in ETH. This would be a company that could be up and running and only accept bitcoin and be up and running without needing to incorporate, open a bank account, etc.

While the idea is good for anonymity and trust the main issue is that A has to pay upfront to get B starting to work.
In a real life situation, B is starting to work and after one month get paid.

Most corporation are working based on loans, they loan the money to run next month and pay the employees once the work is done. That would not possible with this type of corporation.

[DooMAD]

Working for various seasteading companies we did not quite fit into the square box of incorporation that other companies can deal with. An international company, not really planning on doing anything in any nation with international investors and employees.

If I take this to mean you're not giving up on the seasteading concept, then I'm pleased to hear it.  But in terms of fitting into one of those neat little square boxes that regulators are so fond of, I suspect anything related to Bitcoin, or crypto in general, is going to make that a more difficult task.  Most countries don't have legislation that would naturally encompass any attempt at creating a "Digital Autonomous Company" (which I think is what you're talking about here, but please correct me if I'm wrong).

[Elwar]

Working for various seasteading companies we did not quite fit into the square box of incorporation that other companies can deal with. An international company, not really planning on doing anything in any nation with international investors and employees.

If I take this to mean you're not giving up on the seasteading concept, then I'm pleased to hear it.  But in terms of fitting into one of those neat little square boxes that regulators are so fond of, I suspect anything related to Bitcoin, or crypto in general, is going to make that a more difficult task.  Most countries don't have legislation that would naturally encompass any attempt at creating a "Digital Autonomous Company" (which I think is what you're talking about here, but please correct me if I'm wrong).

The plan would be to not worry about fitting into those regulations. The seastead company itself would not be the only one. There would be several companies residing on the seastead that will not need to be regulated but will still need some sort of structure.

What I would want to do is create a sort of Bitcoin business software where you configure the software for your own business and now you can get started (accepting bitcoin, payroll, assigning roles, etc.). Just like loading up Wordpress, choosing a template, company name, some pictures and blurbs you now have a company website.

The anonymity is not too severe as far as the employer not knowing the employees or the employee never seeing the employer. You can have an anonymous CEO if you incorporate in Belize. I am thinking more in the lines of protecting those that are running the company in the same way you would want to incorporate in Belize to avoid the meddling of certain super powers into your affairs.

True, it would need up front money as opposed to going on loans. Which brings in the investors. That part I cannot figure out unless you have an x of y multi sig wallet where y is the amount of shares with x being at least 50/66% of y. Which would need to be changed for each new share holder. That could get complicated very quickly. Which is fine if software is handling everything in the background. But it just needs to make sense and not have holes.