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