One of the more interesting phenomena in early-stage investing is the recent emergence of initial coin offerings (ICOs), token generation events (TGEs), or similar distributed ledger or blockchain-enabled means for raising capital. Much has been written about whether the tokens issued in these structures involve “securities”, and last week, the SEC issued a report on tokens as securities, using The DAO (a crowdsourced venture capital platform created by Slock.it and based on the Ethereum blockchain) as a lens for analyzing the issue.

For an overview of the SEC’s report and the top 7 takeaways from the SEC’s analysis, please read the Corporate Governance Alert written by our colleagues Andrew D. Ledbetter and Trenton C. Dykes.