Navigating the legal landscape
As a founder in the digital assets space can be overwhelming—and costly. In traditional startups, legal challenges typically scale with the growth of your business. You start with a simple entity setup in your local jurisdiction, pull together templates from the internet, and rely on affordable self-serve legal products to manage the administrative tasks. Hiring a local startup lawyer at an affordable rate usually comes later, once your business is more established. By the time you’re dealing with Series A documents or an M&A offer, you’ve already entered the big leagues.
However, this model doesn’t hold up when you're running a Web3 startup
One moment, you're coding in your living room or participating in a hackathon. The next, an angel investor or venture capital fund is offering to lead your seed funding round with an eight-figure valuation. The initial excitement quickly gives way to a barrage of legal questions.
- Where should I incorporate my company?
- How do I get a term sheet?
- What documents do I need to sign with investors?
- Is it legal to sell tokens to investors?
- Could my project expose me to legal risks or even imprisonment?
- How do I hire and pay anonymous contributors from around the world?
Resources on these topics are scarce. Advice from peers varies widely, with exotic jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Seychelles frequently recommended. Words like ‘foundation,’ ‘labs,’ and ‘token issuer’ start to surface, adding to the confusion. Online searches yield little help, as most articles are thinly veiled marketing pitches from service providers.
When you try to consult a lawyer, the situation doesn’t improve. Big law firms with polished websites take weeks to respond and require a hefty deposit before charging hundreds or thousands per hour. Even so-called ‘Web3 lawyers’ offer conflicting advice, leaving you unsure of who to trust. Suddenly, you’re looking at five-figure quotes just to run your funding round, and now you’re being told you need entities in multiple jurisdictions, each with its own costly requirements.
It feels like you have no choice but to pay the toll, sacrificing time and money just to navigate the legal maze and focus on what truly matters—building your project.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
GVRN was founded to eliminate the friction between Web3 founders and the traditional legal infrastructure.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Structures are confirmed with licensed counsel during setup.
