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# System prepended metadata

title: Methodology for Assessing Legal Engineering Impact

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The following research was conducted for [LexDAO](https://lexdao.org/) by Spencer Saar Cavanaugh of [Clinamenic LLC](https://www.clinamenic.com/). Funding for this research was provided by the [Hypercerts Foundation](https://hypercerts.org/docs/about/).
## Abstract

The field of legal engineering is an applied field within computational law, and has seen a variety of innovative and experimental mechanisms developed to bridge legal systems with technologies like blockchain, specifically in the latter's capacity as a peer-to-peer virtual machine and financial settlement layer. Viewed through the lens of law as a public good, the field of legal engineering has the potential to democratize and streamline a variety of legal processes, such as blockchain-based ("onchain") reporting and compliance, onchain entity formation, and the facilitation of contracts. While this industry has already seen a number of exciting products and services developed, such as [multisignature accounts](https://safe.global/) and [legal wrappers](https://www.wrappr.wtf/), there remains a systematic need for mapping and evaluating the work being done. The establishment and promotion of an evaluative methodology for legal engineering products and services, geared around the fundamental nature of such products and services as capture-resistant and permissionless public goods, can help ensure that such innovation remains accessible and interoperable as institutional adoption increases and regulatory regimes develop. 

## Introduction

This prospectus is concerned with outlining some initial practices around how legal engineering projects can be evaluated on the basis of the impact they have as public goods. Specifically, this research will be exploring how certain protocols, such as [Hypercerts](https://hypercerts.org/) and [Ethereum Attestation Service](https://attest.org/), can be used for such impact evaluation. However, while much of the conversation around blockchain public goods has been geared around assessing impact as it is made, this research concerns how legal engineering products and services can be evaluated on the basis of potential impact. More specifically, this research concerns the development of an analytic methodology whereby legal engineering products and services can be evaluated on the basis of certain public goods criteria. Not every legal engineering product or service need be oriented around such an evaluative paradigm, but this prospectus is focused on those products and services which constitute public goods and which embody this notion of law as a public good. 

Before any methodological considerations, we will first address the manner in which these open-source protocols can be understood as public goods. We will then examine the basic mechanisms underpinning Hypercerts and Ethereum Attestation Service, seeing as these two protocols, themselves constituting public goods, can be used together to methodically evaluate public goods in general. 

### Open-Source Software as a Public Good

Open-source software has so far been the primary focus of web3 public goods funding initiatives. This is partially because many of the funding mechanisms involved are themselves open-source, thus enabling a feedback loop to develop and enhance these funding systems in general. Another reason is that most open-source software is developed with granular version control and attribution of contributors, which allows funding mechanisms to precisely evaluate the contributions of developers involved. By virtue of being open-source, software can qualify as a public good according the [classical economic criteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)), namely by being non-rivalrous and non-exludable.

Beyond open-source software, onchain grant programs have gradually included such other domains of public goods, such as environmental stewardship efforts and the creation of educational content. In the case of this research, the field of legal engineering may encompass categories of public goods such as open-source software, educational content and events, policy research, and more.

### Hypercerts

Hypercerts are onchain certificates designed to facilitate the assessment and funding of public goods. Someone working on a public good can mint a hypercert, specify the work they are doing, and sell a number of these hypercerts to funders who want to support public goods. This last step can also be understood as issuing a donation receipt to funders of public goods. 

Like other protocols in the blockchain public goods space, hypercerts were designed with the intention of supporting an ecosystem. That is, they are configured to be interoperable within a network of developers, funders and beneficiaries revolving around public goods, all of whom having their own information to share and seek. People building public goods need to convey the work they are doing and the impact it is having, in order to receive funding. People funding public goods want to see evidence of the impactful work being done, in order to feel confident that their donations are being effectively allocated. 

### Ethereum Attestation Service

Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) is a protocol built on Ethereum mainnet and certain other EVM-compatible networks. At its core, it is a framework for users to publish statements, content, and other data to the underlying blockchain, and/or to "offchain" storage layers such as [IPFS](https://www.ipfs.com/). Users can create attestation schemas, which are essentially preconfigured forms consisting of various field types, and deploy attestations via these schemas. 

For example, a "Customer Feedback" schema could consist of a "Name" field for the user to fill out their name, and a "Review" field for them to share their review of a product. This user would then deploy, or publish, this attestation, and if the schema is configured to be onchain, then everyone would see this attestation, and that it was deployed from that user's Ethereum address. 

EAS allows for a wide variety of applications. In the case of this research, it allows for an industry-wide knowledge graph to be built, consisting of statements made by various users, and responses made to these statements. Because attestations can reference other attestations, one user's statement can be deployed in response to another's, according to however the schemas are configured. For example, a grantee can deploy an "Milestone Description" attestation including details about the work they've done with grant funding, and the grantor can deploy a "Milestone Evaluation" attestation in response. In this case, this evaluative dialogue between the grantee and grantor would be publicly transparent, much like how the underlying transactions from grantor to grantee are transparent.

