Protection of Digital Rights: The Role of Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Abstract

The article examines the main regulatory provisions governing digital legal relations, including the norms of civil legislation and legislation on digital assets. Particular attention is paid to the definition of the features of digital rights that distinguish them from other objects of turnover, as well as to the analysis of the conditions for the emergence, exercise and transfer of such rights in the framework of distributed registers. The legal peculi-arities of smart contracts as software constructions replacing traditional forms of contractual interaction and ensuring the fulfillment of obligations without the participation of the parties after the activation of the algorithm are considered. Legal risks arising in the absence of normative regulation of smart contracts are substantiated, including the impossibility of judicial correction of performance, loss of access to digital assets and uncertainty of identification of subjects. Measures to improve legislation are proposed, including the regulatory consolida-tion of the concept of a smart contract, the establishment of a presumption of ownership of a digital right for a person with access to a key, as well as the recognition of the legal significance of blockchain records in judicial protection. Сonclusion is made about the the necessity of systemic adaptation of civil legislation to new forms of digital interaction and technological autonomy of turnover.