CFTC v. Ooki DAO

commodity / Commodity Exchange ActDAO liabilityoff-exchange leveraged trading

Forum: U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
Docket: No. 3:22-cv-05416-WHO
Decided: 2023-06-08
Judge: Judge William H. Orrick
Posture: CFTC motion for default judgment
Agency: CFTC
Status: Default judgment for the CFTC. Ooki DAO ordered to shut down and pay a $643,542 penalty.

Summary

A landmark on the COMMODITY side. The court held that a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a "person" under the Commodity Exchange Act and can be held liable, and that the Ooki DAO ran an illegal off-exchange leveraged/margined retail commodity trading platform.

Holdings

Can a DAO be a liable 'person' under the Commodity Exchange Act?

Yes. The DAO is an unincorporated association of token-holders that qualifies as a "person" under the CEA, and it was liable for operating an illegal trading platform through its protocol.

Quote as reported (operator-verify): “Ooki DAO, via the protocol, executed (or confirmed the execution of) contracts for the purchase and sale of commodity futures by controlling the Protocol and providing the platform and liquidity pool that allowed these transactions to occur.”

Source: Proskauer (quoting the order) · fetched 2026-06-04

Why it matters

Ooki DAO is the leading authority that "code is not a liability shield": a DAO and its token-holders can be regulated and sanctioned. It anchors the CFTC's commodity-side jurisdiction that the CLARITY Act would formalize.

Mortgage relevance

None directly: commodity/DAO enforcement precedent.

Operator-verify. This is a point-in-time summary, not legal advice. Quotes are sourced to the URLs above and have not yet been mechanically confirmed against the official opinion. Confirm any quote and holding against the court’s published opinion before relying on it.