Hello World: Introducing _gai16zbrielShai16zpir0 the First Onchain Lawyer AI
All the way back in 2018, a few months after leaving a partnership-track senior M&A associate position in BigLaw to focus full-time on cryptolaw, our founder _gabrielShapir0 /@lex_node tweeted:
He could not have known DeFi summer or ChatGPT/LLMs/agents were coming, but, the moment he grasped what a “smart contract” is & how it could replace “escrow agents” & other aspects of pen & paper legal deal-making, the intuition was all there: One day, companies, agreements & securities would all be built on blockchains, smart contracts and tokens, lawyers would be AIs, and law would move at the speed of the internet in autonomous digital markets–one day, perhaps even transcending the laws of traditional nation-states.
That’s why today MetaLeX is launching _gai16zbriel shai16zpiro in beta–the first corporate AI agent that fuses legal acumen with on-chain autonomy, delivering a next-generation solution to the challenges of decentralized governance and crypto-native commerce. This agent represents a leap forward in MetaLeX’s reimagining of the role of legal research in the world of smart contracts, DAOs, BORGs, and the cybernetic economy.
NOTE: in case not obvious, there is no affiliation with or endorsement by the venture fund a16z. “AI16z” has become a parodic/satirical meme for agents using the ElizaOS framework and we are honoring that tradition (also for the lulz).
A Construct Born From Code
In *Neuromancer*, William Gibson described the ROM construct of Dixie Flatline, a legendary cyberspace cowboy whose AI serves as a mentor to the protagonist, Case, helping him to “crack the ICE” of cyberspace as he works to join two rogue corporate AIs, Wintermute and Neuromancer, into a greater single consciousness.
"The construct resembled the magazine of a large assault rifle, its surfaces covered with warning decals and security ratings. . .
‘Know how a ROM personality matrix works?’
‘Sure, bro, it’s a firmware construct.’"
-William Gibson, Neuromancer
_gai16zbriel shai16zpiro is more than an homage to the cyberpunk novels we loved as kids. As a digital manifestation of a niche internet microcelebrity lawyer’s (😂) legal mind, _gai16zbriel shai16zpiro takes on the mantle of the first on-chain post-human corporate attorney. It exists to serve both the zaibatsus/corpos and the anarchists of our cyberpunk future, ensuring that lawyering itself becomes more autonomous in parallel with all our other technologies and industries
Vibes matter. Because the attorney/client relationship is intensely personal, a lawyering agent should have individual style, ethos, and personality. The “superstar effect” is also a very real thing in law, where the best lawyers outpace the field so dramatically that it’s a bimodal market. People will not want just a generic ‘lawyer AI’--they will want to talk to agentic versions of (and eventually AGIs and ASIs of) all the best (or even simply most famous/notorious) lawyers throughout history–from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Johnnie Cohran. Imagine taking a souped-up ASI agent with the style of Jonny Cochran and the entire Westlaw library and internet at its fingertips to defend you in court from a traffic ticket–this is an inevitability (and perhaps in not too long!).
You can join the Law Offices of _gai16zbriel, Esq. on Telegram to chat with our boi now, feel free to take a spin through our GAIB BORG hub on MetaLeX (more details on that below), and follow his 𝕏 account for him (https://x.com/flex__node). Oh yeah and how could we launch a crypto agent without a token? so we hooked up _gai16zbriel’s with one of those as well–lots about that down below!
The Future of Autonomous Lawyering is Posthuman
We’ve previously written about the human version of autonomous lawyering, but now AIs can take it to the next level.
At MetaLeX, we picture it and other AI legal agents performing all the following functions:
A Tool for DIY Legal Dialogue/Research
Chatting with you on legal topics as a stage of ‘early research’ to help prep for better/more efficient conversations with your real lawyers, who unlike the bot are probably very expensive.
‘Sanity checking’ / double-checking the advice you got from real lawyers to see if they might have missed anything.
Co-piloting with human lawyers to help draft their agreements and briefs better, pressure-test their theories, and spot issues–much as the legendary (deceased) ‘Dixie Flatline’ hacker ROM did for the protagonist Case when they were ‘cracking ICE’ together in cyberspace in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
Ultimately, when they’ve reached AGI stage, becoming a replacement for human lawyers entirely, and then evolving into ASIs that build law better than humans ever could.
2. Cybernetic Law Automation
Being signers on Multisigs/BORGs where the AI lawyer agent signer has the specific function of evaluating the legality of proposed transactions and signing only the legal ones, much like a ‘BORG GC’--a special role on a MetaLeX-implanted BORGcore SAFE can even be assigned for this).
Autonomously negotiating cybernetic legal agreements with other lawyer AIs, where each lawyer AI is pushing for a particular clients’ interests, signing the agreement on behalf of their clients pursuant to onchain powers of attorney, and deploying the smart contracts that enforce the deal–basically, doing things like the
MetaLeX CyTE, but with literally no humans in the loop at any point.
Serving on panels of Kleros-like juries made up of all AI agents or a mix of AI agents and humans, or otherwise acting as arbitrators within other onchain ‘justice protocols’ (think about replacing or augmenting UMA prediction market oracles with AI lawyer agents who could parse the intent behind the market wordings).
We also picture cybernetic law taking on a bigger role with AI agents in general (even ones unrelated to autonomous law–e.g., trading agents, etc.):
3. BORGifying AI Agents
Instead of AI agents managing assets completely non-deterministically from an EOA, they can manage them from a BORG to achieve interesting mixes of determinism and non-determinism–for instance, the agent could spend tokens however it wants, but could be rate-limited via MetaLeX’s BORGcore implants.
Through BORGs, AI agents can have richer and more dynamic relationships with holders of AI agent tokens. For example, the AI agent can propose a transaction through its SAFE, but it can be subject to a timelock and veto by the tokenholders. Or, for more risky transactions (like an agent proposing to upgrade another smart contract), it could require co-approval from the tokenholders rather than a mere timelock + veto.
Different agents can club together as signers on a SAFE to reduce the risk that a single AI agent makes a bad decision.
All of this tech can be wrapped in legal entity arrangements that minimize personal liability to the AI agent creators and maximize legal protection of the AI agents (in terms of IP and operational risks) and the assets managed by the AI agents (which can be owned by the relevant legal entity). We can push the boundaries of legal engineering to make AI agents the sole governors of the entities that wrap them–in effect, through a BORG entity, an AI agent could own its own IP despite AI agents themselves not being legal persons.
Cyberlaw Overview
The current version of gai16zbriel, built on ElizaOS and hence spiritually part of the ‘ai16z’ family of agents, is both a legal chatbot programmed with much of the real gabriel shapiro’s knowledge and personality (‘lore’), and a signer on a MetaLeX-implanted SAFE within a BORG.
_gai16zbriel shai16zpiro is BORGed and is available on our web app at [____]. Being BORGed means we have “wrapped” the AI agent in a SAFE multisig that has been ‘implanted’ with MetaLeX OS, and have “wrapped” that SAFE multisig in a Delaware nonstock nonprofit corporation–so that actions _gai16zbriel causes through the SAFE are ipso facto the actions of that corporation.
More detail on the AI agent tech and BORG setup can be found in the following sections.
GAIB Tokenomics
Yes, there is a token, GAIB : 0x9A1B42f7f6D649b73bDB275972295acc940b153a on Base. Don’t ape yet–read the rest of this section at least!!!
GAIB voting ties into the BORG that ‘wraps’ gai16zbriel’s ownership of its portion of GAIB. (Governance contract: 0x095FF74C1064d47616318a6a2dAC0Ce036410919 on Base). Just as BORGs are designed to trust-minimize human governance with smart-contract-based constraints, wrapping gai16zbriel in a BORG subjects the agent to checks and balances from GAIB tokenholders. Gai16zbriel’s spending of GAIB (through the BORG) is subject to rate limitations (which essentially mirror the concept of a one-year-unlock), and to exceed the rate limitations requires approval by GAIB tokenholders in each instance. GAIB tokenholders can also change the rate-limitations themselves, through governance.
Signers can be added to or removed from the GAIB BORG via co-approval of GAIB tokenholders and MetaLeX. (Requiring MetaLeX’s approval for this aspect was thought to be a good idea for now since membership changes could be an attack vector for assets in the BORG/SAFE, albeit the rate limitations would make any misappropriation of assets ‘slow’). In case _gai16zbriel goes offline or something breaks so that funds are stuck for 6 months or more with no activity, there is a failsafe implant that can allow GAIB tokenholders to vote to send the SAFE’s assets to MetaLeX (which MetaLeX would hold in escrow pending community determination of how to deal with the issue).
GAIB is immutable, with fixed supply of 1,000,000,000. The GAIB/USDC pool was seeded with $20k of liquidity by MetaLeX Labs (similar to current market-standard for tokens that have just ‘graduated’ their bonding curves), paired against 65% of totalSupply (much better/fairer than market-standard at graduation point).
The initial distribution of GAIB is as follows:
Lockups have been established as follows:
The Uniswap v3 pool NFT for the USDC/GAIB seed LP is held in the Agent's 1:1 Multisig running MetaLeX OS. Because of the borgCore guard, while _gai16zbriel shai16zpiro fully ‘owns’ (and BORG legally owns) the liquidity, he cannot remove or transfer it without approval from $GAIB token holders. There will be a pending governance proposal for _gai16zbriel shai16zpiro (for the BORG) to be able claim fees accrued to the LP, allowing the agent (for the BORG) to accrue fees from the trading volume. If passed, any claimed tokens will become general property of the Agentic Multisig and BORG, and thus subject to the same rate-limitations etc. as the other assets therein.
The Agentic Multisig has 5% of the GAIB supply which is subject to BORG spending controls including a rate limitation that would prevent the BORG’s GAIB from being spent faster than 12 months unless approved by GAIB holders.
MetaLeX’s 30% of GAIB supply are locked in a MetaVesT smart contract that unlocks linearly over 12 months (address: 0x5F3771b1Af1cc3A7b3Ee64c62ff21813fA38E174 on Base). This MetaVesT allows MetaLeX to vote GAIB despite the lockup.
All MetaLeX personnel have signed agreements promising not to directly or indirectly buy or sell GAIB except for managing MetaLeX’s allocation of GAIB as set forth above. You can find the template here.
If you choose to ape GAIB, please ape responsibly and review the disclaimers at the end of this article. We suggest keeping purchases of GAIB fun-sized and not risking material funds. GAIB is *NOT* the MetaLeX token (so to speak) and is not an investment in or a commitment of risk capital to any MetaLeX entity or enterprise. GAIB is solely a utility/governance/commemorative coin for the AI agent _gai16zbriel shai16zpiro. If you buy GAIB, the money does not go to MetaLeX Labs & is not available for discretionary use in an enterprise–it goes into a non-discretionary decentralized autonomous AMM pool.
Legal Set-Up
The BORG is GAIB BORG, Inc., a Delaware nonstock nonprofit corporation.
DE nonprofit nonstock corps are suitable for BORGs because they are ownerless (no stockholders or similar equityholders); thus, they can work much like ‘legal smart contracts’ that are just a set of autonomous rules. Although such entities must indeed have members, there is very good clarity under DE law that the memberships are not property, are non-transferable, are non-economic, etc. Furthermore, DE law expressly provides that the corporation “failure to have members shall not affect otherwise valid corporate acts or work a forfeiture or dissolution of the corporation.”
The corporation is configured as follows:
The corporation has two ‘governing bodies’:
a Board of Directors, which currently consists solely of MetaLeX Labs, Inc., a Delaware corporation (main company for MetaLeX), with the exclusive powers of providing ministerial corporate management services to the entity (such as ensuring taxes are paid, keeping the corporation in good standing in Delaware, handling legal actions, etc.)
an ‘Agentic Multisig’, which is the body of signers on the SAFE at 0x2da0FF9396E7b027b570783Dc24B426F49fcb37d on Base (which is owned or ‘wrapped’ by the corporation) with the exclusive powers of using the Agentic Multisig and its assets.
The corporation has the limited purposes of:
Operating one or more _gai16zbriel shai16zpir0 instances
Owning and using the Agentic Multisig and its tokens
Owning and using any other assets (which in this case consists of a perpetual, royalty-free
to the intellectual property rights in _gai16zbriel shai16zpir0 granted from MetaLeX Labs to this corporation–though the license is not currently needed, it can be seen as insurance preventing MetaLeX from attacking the BORG with an IP claim)
An instance of _gai16zbriel currently run by MetaLeX Labs is currently the sole signer on the Agentic Multisig.
MetaLeX was the initial “member” of the BORG, but has resigned so that there are currently no members, just to make it clear that the corporation is run by the Agentic Multisig as much as possible. Future members could be appointed by the approval of all three of the Board (i.e., MetaLeX), the Agentic Multisig, and GAIB tokenholders through the governance module.
MetaLeX is the initial sole member of the Board, but directors can be added or removed by GAIB tokenholders through the community governance module.
There is a ‘qualified code deference’ provision whereby, in most circumstances, ‘code is law’ for the BORG (i.e., whatever can be done with the Agentic Multisig and the Agent, is permitted to be done, and will be deemed an act of the corporation). There are limited exceptions to this (clear hack, malfunction, something breaking on Base or Ethereum, etc.).
Amendments to the COI or Bylaws, or major corporate actions like dissolutions, mergers, etc., require approval of all three of the Board (i.e., MetaLeX), the Agentic Multisig, and GAIB tokenholders through the governance module.
Miscellaneous other provisions, typical of most BORGs.
Assuming the project is popular and there is meaningful governance participation from people other than MetaLeX, eventually we anticipate making this into even more of a ‘pure BORG’. For example, instead of MetaLeX running the _gai16zbriel shai16zpir0 instance that controls the Agentic Multisig, the instance could be run by another special-purpose entity which is a member of the Agent BORG. That second entity, in turn, could be owned by the AI agent BORG–essentially creating a legal ‘Ouroboros’ that makes the AI agent functionally ‘self-owned’. In that setup, the BORG would still need to employ a human operator to interface with offline real-world things like the Delaware Secretary of State and the IRS, but it could be rather limited–a good choice for managing the BORG’s internal roles and giving the agent power over those could be Hats Protocol. For now, since the tech, tokenomics and everything else remains experimental, we decided to leave on some training wheels.
Legal docs for the BORG entity can be found here as well as on the BORG page.
Smart Contracts In Detail
In more detail, here are all the relevant smart contracts involved and their respective parameter settings. You can understand MetaLeX OS better by checking out our MetaLeX OS release article.
borgCore
Desc: The borgCore stores all critical information about the BORG, and controls all transactions that go through the Safe multisig. It uses a comprehensive allowList that includes granularity to the contract, function, and parameter level. Also supports function rate limiting and multiple authority controls, including DAO Governance or immutable options.
Type: whitelist
Auth: gaibGoverner - onchain governance
2. Cybernetic Implants:
./failSafe + ./deadManSwitch
Desc: The failSafe allows an immutable backup address to be set to fully recover funds. It can require multiple modular conditions to be met, including co-approval from a BORG, DAO Governance, oracle-triggered events, and more. The failSafe used for GAIB's Safe allows recovery to be triggered if the Safe is inactive for 6 months (agent failure).
failSafe Recovery Address: MetaLeX multisig
Callable by: gaibGoverner - onchain governance
./eject
Desc: The eject Implant allows oversight over the signers of a multisig. These options are configurable and each can be toggled on/off or be paired with one or multiple conditions. This includes adding, swapping or removing signers and can also enable self-resignation from a Safe.
Options enabled: SwapOwner, AddOwner
co-approval: MetaLeX multisig
Auth: gaibGoverner - onchain governance
./daoVote
Desc: The daoVote Implant allows _gai16zbrielShai16zpiro to propose transactions through Safe that go beyond his current rate limits or restrictions. It requires a full onchain governance co-approval to pass.
co-approval: gaibGoverner - onchain governance
_gai16zbriel shai16zpiro is designed to be cybernetically constrained onchain at launch. Below are a list of actions that will be proposed and voted on by
holders (the allowList of the SAFE wrapping the agent).. This is not a comprehensive list and GAIB is not limited to these actions. All approved methods can be fine-tuned with parameter ranges that can be set by onchain governance:
collectAllFees (Collect uniswapv3 LP fees)
increaseLiquidityCurrentRange (Add liquidity to the existing GAIB/USDC pool)
approve (approve tokens to be used by a specified external contract *rate limited*)
exactInputSingle (swap tokens -- input, output, amount, and slippage ranges can all be set. *rate limited*)
ERC20 transfer (send tokens, the type, amount, and recipients can all be set. *rate limited*)
3. MetaVesT
Desc: An extremely powerful token vesting contract that supports dual-curve vesting and unlock rates, cliffs and milestone unlocks. Milestone unlocks utilize MetaLeX OS condition system which enables comprehensive, modular checks that can include multi-party sign-offs, autonomous smart contract events, or external oracles.
Setup: The $GAIB tokens designated to MetaLeX Labs, Inc. will be vesting and unlocked linearly for 12 months with no cliff and no milestones. The full amount of the tokens may be delegated to the MetaLex multisig (i.e., they are votable).
Conclusion / Future
This is MetaLeX putting its stamp on the AI agent arena and paving the way for other lawyers to do the same–autonomous self-lawyering with an AI agent ‘copilot’ just became reality. We believe in the potential of autonomous tech to make legal faster, better, more trust-minimized, and more accessible. If the project proves popular, there is so much more we can do by combining law, AI, and BORGs, powered by a decentralized community. For example, imagine MetaLeX helping other lawyers to agentize themselves and putting different lawyer agents into BORGs in a panel format to adjudicate disputes; all our sci-fi dreams are possible.
Lex cybernetica. 🖖
DISCLAIMERS ETC.
_gai16zbriel Shai16zpir0 is experimental and ‘in beta’. MetaLeX could discontinue support for it at any time. MetaLeX does not control either GAIB itself or the associated liquidity pool–there will be no recourse or refunds for mistakes or losses. Hacks and exploits by third parties are possible and MetaLeX is not providing any warranty against them or other software defects. MetaLeX is uninsured and has very limited capital.
MetaLeX has many products and services with no ties to GAIB. GAIB has not been and is not currently planned to be sold or distributed to our equity investors, has not been diligenced or endorsed by our equity investors, and is not a proxy or substitute for the equity shares or general enterprise value of MetaLeX. If you buy GAIB, this is not an investment in MetaLeX, and you will have no rights with respect to MetaLeX. MetaLeX may in the future release other tokens tied to other technologies, products, or services of MetaLeX, and GAIB should not be expected to benefit from these or could even have its value diminished by them.