For centuries, merchants relied on personal reputation and family ties to manage long-distance trade. Before formal entities, ventures like Marco Polo’s rides on Pax Mongolica protection and the Lex Mercatoria honor code. Early partnerships such as the commenda offered limited liability—investors lost only their stake—but they dissolved after a single voyage or disaster. The Florentine compagnia improved durability by pooling multiple partners, yet everyone still faced full personal liability because commercial ventures hadn’t yet gained separate legal personhood. That changed in the 17th century with the Dutch East India Company (VOC). As the first modern corporation, it combined limited liability, transferable stock, and perpetual life. Raising public equity became feasible, helping fund large-scale, capital-intensive projects. But the VOC also highlighted classic principal–agent gaps: a board in Amsterdam (the Heeren XVII), remote ship captains and traders in Asia, and passive shareholders all had overlapping but imperfectly aligned incentives. Solving that misalignment spawned audits, bonuses, profit-sharing, even surveillance—and brought its own abuses. Over the 19th century, the U.S. moved from rare congressional charters—like the First Bank of the United States in 1791—to general incorporation statutes in New York by 1811. Limited liability spread, and by 1899 Delaware’s General Corporation Law set the template most states follow today. Corporations cut coordination costs and shielded investors, but also bred bureaucratic bloat and centralized control. Now software protocols bypass much of that overhead. Emerging alongside crypto and decentralized networks is the DUNA, a new legal form under consideration in Congress. It aims to fit internet-native ventures by blending legal recognition with on-chain governance, reducing middlemen and layers of management. As organizations evolve, the DUNA may become the next leap in coordination tools.