Smart contracts in the context of digitalization: the legal realities of world experience

Abstract

The development of digital technologies is forcing lawyers to analyze phenomena that have recently looked fantastic. This means that a phenomenon like smart contracts has ceased to be a theoretical idea of improving commodity monetary transactions and now needs a legal justification. In this article, we have analyzed smart contracts in terms of their belonging to digital technologies and the legal field, that is, how they can be equated with legal agreements, if they are their analogues, what application can it find given the legislation in the field of civil (contractual) law. The purpose of our study was to establish a link between smart contacts and their legal regulation, with the feature of smart contract implementation perspectives. The methodology used are systemic and formal-legal methods, as well as methods of analysis and synthesis. The results found highlight that a smart contract is a computer code that is entered into a blockchain network to execute a transaction, the usual expression of which is an agreement between the parties. From a legal point of view, smart contracts are only a part of ordinary agreements (contracts) under the practice of international and national law.