Blockchain Papers

Ekaterina Furtas

ИНСТИТУЦИОНАЛЬНОЕ И ПРАВОВОЕ ОБЕСПЕЧЕНИЕ РЕГУЛИРОВАНИЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ДЕЦЕНТРАЛИЗОВАННЫХ АВТОНОМНЫХ ОРГАНИЗАЦИЙ © Е.А.Фуртас 1

David M. Grant, Eric M. Kirby, Steven R. Hawkins

This Article explores the evolving concept of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) in the context of Web3 technology. It raises critical questions about whether DAOs truly represent a step forward in limiting liability in entity governance structures or if they risk centralizing the decentralized. The text discusses the potential of DAOs to address regulatory and tax challenges while also highlighting concerns about their legitimacy and security. It compares the governance structures of traditional entities to DAOs and contemplates the reasons for formal organization pursuant to state statute. The Article further delves into some of the statutory laws in specific states recognizing and governing DAOs. Lastly, it suggests potential improvements in statutory frameworks to enhance legal predictability for DAO users and those seeking to ascribe liability.

Мартова Юлія Олександрівна

The dissertation is one of the first comprehensive national studies of the state of legal regulation of cross-border legal relations on the financial market of Ukraine with a comprehensive study of contracts on the financial markets of Ukraine in the system of international, European and Ukrainian financial markets. The choice of the specified topic is determined by its relevance in the view of the following points. Financial markets are becoming more democratized, the offering of financial services mostly does not depend on borders, the financial market is transforming and attracting new financial technologies. The main task for regulators in financial markets is to preserve the stability of the financial system. Legal regulation designed to achieve the specified task should not be an obstacle to the development of financial markets and compromise their efficiency. Financial markets are centralized and subordinated, and new legal relations tend towards their decentralization and maximum non-interference of the state. Contracts on the financial markets set the task to obtain the greatest economic opportunities for their parties, which becomes possible due to a wide range of financial instruments and offered financial services, which participants in legal relations can choose not only within the country of residence, but also throughout the world. When entering into such cross-border contracts in the financial markets, questions regarding the law applicable to such contracts are important aspects. Due to the complexity of some types of financial instruments, this issue becomes more important, which is important for research. Thus, new unsolved issues before private international law arise. Accordingly, in the first chapter, the author analyzes scientific approaches to the definition of the concepts of "financial market", "contracts on the financial market", “international financial market”. The structure of the financial market, its nature and classification of transactions on the financial market are determined herein. Further, in the first chapter, the characteristics of "cross-border" and "foreign element" in the financial markets of Ukraine are given, the need to determine the jurisdiction of the counterparty is established, and cross-border transactions are analyzed at the moment in the capital market of Ukraine. In the second chapter, the author directly examines each segment of the financial market and cross-border legal relations in it. Further, the main types of contracts on financial markets are analyzed and the issue of law applicable to these contracts is investigated herein. Also in the second chapter, regulatory regulation at the national, regional (EU) and international levels is defined. Judicial practice regarding contracts on the financial market is studied herein. Further, the General Agreement and contracts concluded with a trader conducting professional activity on the capital market and the client are analyzed. The role of transactions in each segment of the financial market is established and mechanisms for resolving disputes regarding such transactions are considered. In the third chapter, the legal regulation of the main transformational processes in the international financial market and the financial market of Ukraine are predicted. The main obstacles to cross-border activity in the financial market are determined herein. The legal regulation of the EU regarding virtual assets and distributed ledger technology, the corresponding infrastructure of the virtual assets market is analyzed in detail. The main trends for changes in the legislation of Ukraine regarding financial markets during Covid-19 and during the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation are determined. When conducting the research, the author compares the previous and current legal regulation of Ukraine in the financial market, conducts a comparative analysis of Ukrainian legislation with EU law and the compliance of current legislation with international standards and principles, requirements of international regulators. Case study is analyzed and practical recommendations are provided for improving the legal regulation of Ukraine. The scientific novelty of the results obtained as a result of the dissertation research is as follows. The following author's definition is proposed: "financial market" – legally regulated mechanism of redistribution of financial assets, which occurs between participants of the financial market in accordance with the current legislation in order to obtain certain economic benefits. For the first time, the need to include the following segments in the composition of the financial market is justified: the capital market, the market of banking and non-banking financial services, the market of virtual assets, the organized commodity market, the foreign exchange market. Since the specified segments of the financial market are the mechanisms on which legal relations arise with respect to various financial assets to meet the needs of their participants. The author's view on the feature of "cross-border" is proposed: cross-border activity on the financial market is defined as the activity of any subject of the financial market, which carries out activity that has international characteristics, including legal relations of a private law nature with a foreign element. The special role of transactions in each segment of the financial market is determined: in the capital market, the role of a transaction of an auxiliary nature (not related to the basic financial asset), in relation to transactions with the infrastructure of the capital market and directly the main agreements regarding a financial asset (financial instrument), the role of a derivative financial instrument as a contract and a financial instrument, not a security, the role of a contract in the financial services market as the basis for providing a corresponding banking or financial service, the role of a currency contract as a type of derivative financial instrument. In order to improve the national legislation, it is recommended to make changes to the Law of Ukraine "On Virtual Assets" in order to harmonize the specified legal act with EU law. In particular, add the following provisions: clause 13, part 1 of Art. 1: 13) distributed ledger technology – virtual asset market infrastructure technology that implements a distributed ledger of data that is synchronized using an algorithm. Clause 8, Part 1, Art. 1 shall be amended as follows: 8) providers of services related to the turnover of virtual assets – exclusively business entities – legal entities that conduct one or more of the following types of activities in the interests of third parties: ... administration by distributed registry technology; Recommended subject to the entry into force of the Law of Ukraine "On Virtual Assets", the Law of Ukraine "On International Private right" to add the provision: Clause 5 Part 2 of Art. 44: 5). regarding contracts and operations concluded with the help of distributed ledger technology – the right of the state of the administrator of the distributed ledger technology. The classification of transactions on the financial market of Ukraine has been analyzed further (depending on the type of financial asset, the consolidation of obligations, the method of conclusion, the place of conclusion, by the presence of a foreign element, by segment of the financial market, with the participation of an intermediary). The author's definitions is proposed: "contract on the financial market" – a transaction entered into in any segment of the financial market and aimed at establishing, changing or terminating legal relations with respect to a financial asset and/or ensuring the efficient functioning of the financial market in accordance with regulatory requirements; "international financial market" – the mechanism of redistribution of international financial assets between participants of the international financial market in accordance with the harmonized norms of international legal regulation of the financial market. Scientific views on conflict-of-law regulation of the circulation of indirectly owned securities, transactions on the financial market concluded with the help of distributed ledger technology have received further development. Recommendations regarding the legal regulation of the virtual asset market in accordance with EU law were further developed, in particular, the provisions on tokens and tokenization as a digital representation of a value or right that is accounted for and stored using distributed ledger technology. The following proposals have been made regarding conflict regulation of transactions on the financial market. Since the analyzed attempts to unify the issues of the law applicable to legal relations regarding securities, in particular by solving conflicting issues regarding securities of indirect ownership, have common shortcomings regarding, in particular, the unresolved issues regarding virtual assets, which leads to potential future difficulties in the aspect of the application of financial technologies, the circulation of virtual assets, it is proposed to enshrine the following: issues arising in relation to transactions made by a transaction on the financial market, including transactions made on the DLT platform, in particular, issues of ownership of an asset, are resolved by the national law of the country that was determined in a specific transaction. In the event that such a right has not been determined by the parties, the law of the country shall be applied: – in relation to securities of indirect ownership: the right of location of the relevant intermediary – the formal holder of securities carrying out activities related to the administration of the securities account; – in relation to smart contacts: the right of the administrator of the DLT platform on which the smart contract was concluded; – in relation to other

Yuliya Guseva

No abstract is available for this record.

Mikołaj Barczentewicz, Natasha Vasan

No abstract is available for this record.

Biyan Mienert

No abstract is available for this record.

Timothy T. Hsieh

NFT makers are creating NFTs integrated with IP that are being purchased for exorbitant amounts. On the flip side, NFT purchasers are buying up NFTs for these high prices because they may think they are buying the underlying rights. This "Money for Nothing" problem - taking its name from the Dire Straits song - is what this paper terms as the "IP-NFT" Conundrum that explains the basic misunderstanding NFT consumers have about the IP rights (or lack thereof) they are acquiring when they acquire NFTs. Part I of this paper will focus on an overview of NFTs and the lack of IP rights associated with NFTs, or the “IP-NFT Conundrum”. This section will include a discussion of how NFTs are being defined with respect to a series of trademark cases, copyright law and patents, which is covered in other literature as well as forthcoming papers from the author. Part II will then outline the current marketplace of NFT trading platforms and the “Money for Nothing” problem that exists where a mismatch or imbalance is created between consumer understanding of what they are wanting to purchase from a NFT and what is actually really being purchased. Part III will finally discuss potential solutions to the “Money for Nothing” IP-NFT Conundrum problem – e.g., NFTs embedded with smart contracts that automatically embed IP rights upon sale, stronger educational initiatives involving NFTs, or the creation of platforms (or integration of rules and policies on existing platforms) that will facilitate the ideal transfer of IP rights for NFT transactions.

Francesco Santoro

This article delves into the emergence of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), which operate via rules set in smart contracts on blockchain networks. Unlike traditional organizations, DAOs are a collec-tive of individuals coordinating online, without centralized authority, driven by a common algorithmic rule set to attain mutual objectives. Although DAOs are pioneering and hold immense potential as a catalyst for economic productivity and innovation, they remain in their nascent stages. The technology underpinning DAOs also opens avenues for multidisciplinary research, exploring its economic, legal, political, and social implications.

Vincenzo Maria Binetti

No abstract is available for this record.

M. V. Evseeva

Aim . To review the legal neologisms of corporate documents, in particular, smart contracts, recorded in fiction and industry literature, in order to compare the ways of word formation of neologisms from articles of the Civil Code (Code Civil) of the French and court decisions. Methodology . In the course of the study, a continuous sampling of legal neologisms from authentic French texts published between 2008 and 2019 was carried out, on the basis of which the most typical legal neologisms were identified. To determine the extent of their distribution in jurisprudence, corpus analysis was used (French-language corpus and English-language Google Ngram Viewer corpus for 2019). In order to determine the methods of word formation and compare these neologisms with the terms recorded in the dictionary, semantic analysis was used to identify the meanings of neologism terms, as well as descriptive and comparative general linguistic methods. Results . As a result of the conducted research, trends have been established and the main ways of word formation of legal neologisms associated with the use of smart contracts of the modern French special language in the period 2008–2019 have been identified. Research implications . The results of the study can be used for further application in the field of modern contract law, contracts based on blockchain and agreements in the electronic form, analysis and prediction.

F.B. Bouwmeister, K. van Hemert

Opvolging van tokenhouders in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: een vennootschapsrechtelijke duiding Auteurs schrijven in het kader van het honoursprogramma Law Extra van de Radboud Universiteit over de opvolging van tokenhouders in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO’s). Er wordt duiding gegeven aan de plaats van DAO’s in het Nederlands vennootschapsrecht, waarbij bijzondere aandacht uitgaat naar de opvolging in personenvennootschappen.

Austin Adams, Mary-Catherine Lader, Gordon Liao, David Puth · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Enrico Rossi

No abstract is available for this record.

Lioba Heimbach, Eric Schertenleib, Roger Wattenhofer

Lending protocols in decentralized finance enable the permissionless exchange of capital from lenders to borrowers without relying on a trusted third party for clearing or market-making. Interest rates are purely set by the supply and demand of capital according to a pre-defined function. In the lead-up to The Merge: Ethereum blockchain's transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), a fraction of the Ethereum ecosystem announced plans of continuing with a PoW-chain. Owners of ETH - whether their ETH was borrowed or not - would hold the native tokens on each chain. This development alarmed lending protocols. They feared spiking ETH borrowing rates would lead to mass liquidations which could undermine their viability. Thus, the decentralized autonomous organization running the protocols saw no alternative to intervention - restricting users' ability to borrow. We investigate the effects of the merge and the aforementioned intervention on the two biggest lending protocols on Ethereum: AAVE and Compound. Our analysis finds that borrowing rates were extremely volatile, jumping by two orders of magnitude, and borrowing at times reached 100% of the available funds. Despite this, no spike in mass liquidations or irretrievable loans materialized. Further, we are the first to quantify and analyze hard-fork-arbitrage, profiting from holding debt in the native blockchain token during a hard fork. We find that arbitrageurs made in excess of 13 Mio US$, money that was effectively extracted from the platforms' lenders. Finally, we identify alarming security risks to the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Around one-fifth of the staked ETH through LIDO (stETH) was locked as collateral on lending protocols. Mass liquidations caused by spiking rates would have devastating effects on the stETH price and pose security concerns for the consensus layer, as staking power could be bought at a significant discount.

Diogo Pereira Coelho

German abstract: Am 1. März 2023 wurde der Utah Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Act (Utah DAO Act) veröffentlicht. Dieses Gesetz verleiht DAOs den Status einer juristischen Person und basiert auf dem COALA-Modellgesetz (multidisziplinäre Gemeinschaft von Experten im Ökosystem der Dezentralisierung). English abstract: On March 1, 2023, the Utah Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Act (Utah DAO Act) was published. This diploma grants the status of legal entity to DAOs and was based on the COALA model law (multidisciplinary community of specialists in the ecosystem of decentralization).

Florence Guillaume

This paper examines civil and commercial disputes involving Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and the complex questions of private international law that arise. The legal capacity of a DAO to be a plaintiff or defendant in court varies across jurisdictions, highlighting the need to determine the applicable law to a DAO. A distinction must be made between different types of DAOs. There are currently a few jurisdictions, notably in the United States, that have enacted DAO legislation defining a legal status for such entities. Those regulated DAOs are governed by both computer code and company law. In other jurisdictions, existing company structures can be used to offer a legal wrapper to DAOs. However, the vast majority of DAOs currently in existence are constituted and solely governed by code, posing challenges in bringing them before a state court. The paper explores recent case law and the difficulties in identifying the appropriate party to sue when pursuing a DAO. Using Swiss law as a basis, it examines the qualification of DAOs under private international law and the challenges of anchoring a global digital entity to a specific jurisdiction. The article illustrates these challenges through three types of disputes: governance, contractual, and tort-related. Determining jurisdiction over a DAO-related dispute requires applying private international law rules. Although the paper assumes Swiss courts for convenience, the reasoning can be applied to different legal systems due to the similarities in conflict of jurisdiction rules. However, challenges persist even if a court has jurisdiction and renders a decision, as enforcement may prove difficult, especially on-chain. Additionally, initiating legal proceedings against a DAO presents issues with serving court documents. DAOs offer opportunities for innovative electronic methods of document service, but specific requirements and restrictions exist for international service of documents. Practical difficulties may arise, making it impractical or unattainable to serve court documents on the defendant. The analysis concludes that state courts currently struggle to ensure reliable access to justice in disputes involving DAOs. As an alternative to state courts, opting for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms, such as Blockchain-based Dispute Resolution (BDR), can offer a simpler and more efficient solution depending on circumstances. In any case, entrusting dispute resolution to a BDR mechanism avoids the complexities associated with state court procedures.

Oscar Borgogno

Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) can be understood as collective organizations that are run through blockchain-based smart contracts, which allow token holders to participate directly in decision-making processes. By harnessing the key features of distributed ledger technology (DLT), they are increasingly posing tricky questions for policy makers, supervisors, and legal scholars. Even though DAOs are often claimed to be beyond the reach of national jurisdictions, it is clear that a broad array of legal issues need to be solved for DAOs to achieve scalability and widespread application, namely the lack of limitation of liability, governance concerns, and the definition of token-holders’ rights. Our paper delves into these concerns and argues that DAOs can benefit from the solutions provided by corporate law over the past decades in coping with management and moral hazard problems involving all complex organizations.

Felix Bekemeier

Decentralized Finance (DeFi), a blockchain-based form of alternative financial markets, has been the focus of public attention in recent months. Even though DeFi has a young history, its smart contract ecosystem already offers multiple opportunities for the design and transfer of crypto assets, establishing market structures comparable to traditional financial markets. The landscape of DeFi projects also increasingly includes insurance protocols offering complex risk transfer mechanisms for hedging DeFi risks, above all smart contract risks. In principle, the projects offer the same value proposition as traditional insurance: risk minimization and transfer, and thus an increase in income predictability through the payment of a premium. At the same time, most of those risk transfer protocols are highly dependent on subjective expectations and decentralized governance structures. This article depicts a first taxonomical understanding of DeFi insurance, demarcates DeFi cover products from well-known insurance concepts, and provides an initial assessment of smart contract risk insurability and commercial opportunities for traditional insurers.

L. L. Wynn, Susanna Trnka, Jesse Hession Grayman

Anthropologists like to tell stories about how they were wrong. These stories are part of our collective identity. Consider Briggs's (1970) classic ethnography, Never in Anger. Briggs tells a story about doing fieldwork in Nunavut (then the Canadian Northwest Territories) in the early 1960s. She showed anger on behalf of the Inuit group she was living with when they were wronged by a white outsider. To her surprise, her Inuit interlocutors reacted by ostracizing her for months. She describes feeling devastated, lonely, and depressed, but in slowly working her way back to personhood with her Inuit participants, she learned in a powerfully embodied fashion a core principle of their culture: that adults never show anger or make demands, and that to lose one's temper is to demonstrate a dangerous lack of control, even insanity. She documents how this emotional control is inculcated in children from a very young age. Thus her awful moment of social failure is transformed into a profound reflection on affect and socialization in Nunavut culture. The resulting ethnography became one of that era's most famous. Even when our failures and mistakes are less obvious than Briggs's and don't threaten to derail our research projects, many ethnographic writings reflect on moments when the author realized they had brought a bad assumption into the field with them and, as a result, learned something from their research participants—something that shifted their methodological or theoretical approach, or changed what they were studying. These stories are particularly prevalent among graduate students returning from their first fieldwork experiences. The stories go something like this: I went to the field planning to study x, and when I was in the field, I listened to my interlocutors and realized that what I really needed to study was y. For example, in her book Food, Sex and Pollution, Meigs (1984) writes about going to the field intending to study divorce, but when she gets there, everyone seems bored and uninterested when she asks about the topic. Instead, they want to talk to her about sex, gender, and the pollution rules that govern what they can and can't eat. It's such a collective concern that she describes their interest in the topic as a “religion.” Responding to this, she changes her research topic and commits to addressing her research participants’ interests, letting them chart the direction of her work. Briggs tells a similar story: she goes to the Inuit planning to study shamanism, but when she arrives, she finds that the small group she is living with have converted to Christianity and don't want to discuss their “pagan” past. That, combined with her attempts to process the social ostracism caused by her angry outburst, leads her to a whole new project on emotions and socialization. Without having systematically reviewed all the different ways that anthropologists have described their “I was wrong” moments, the AE editors suspect that many, if not most, ethnographies include stories like this, even if most are not as dramatic as Meigs's or Briggs's. These stories are not just about ourselves as individual fieldworkers but about anthropology as a discipline. We tell them to remind ourselves and to teach our students about the discipline's orientation toward a radically inductive and collaborative approach to building knowledge. By telling stories about being wrong, we might seem to be sacrificing our own dignity and authority, but in fact we are shoring up our authority as authentic ethnographers. These stories illustrate our willingness to be humbled by what we don't know, demonstrating our commitment to what Lederman (2007, p. 310) calls anthropology's “systematic openness to contingency.” In short, anthropology is a discipline that has staked its methodological approach on the possibility of mistake and failure. In taking an iterative approach to co-constructing knowledge with our research participants and collaborators, we insist that when we realize we are wrong, we must acknowledge it to move forward. As we were reflecting on this as editors, we thought of our own “I was wrong” stories. For Lisa, it was less a moment and more of a dawning realization. She had been doing research in Egypt on emerging reproductive health technologies, including sildenafil (the generic name for the drug more commonly known as Viagra). As she visited acquaintances and friends in Cairo and Alexandria, she asked them, “Who uses Viagra, and why?” The first time someone mentioned using sildenafil and tramadol (a painkiller) in the same sentence, as if they were synonyms, she dismissed it as ignorance. The man she was interviewing was an illiterate fisherman. He probably didn't use either drug, she assumed, and didn't have the knowledge to realize that they were radically different, having completely different mechanisms of action. Sildenafil produces erections; tramadol, as an opioid narcotic, would be intrinsically erection-wilting, she assumed—and, indeed, recent Egyptian research has demonstrated this (Hashim et al., 2020). The second time someone described using sildenafil and tramadol for the same purpose, she again ignored it. It was not until the third time that an interviewee described the drugs as equivalent that she started to catch on that something significant was afoot. She realized that she had neglected a fundamental point of critical drug studies since at least the 1970s, namely, that a drug's effect is produced not by the drug alone but by the intersection of three elements: the drug and its neuropharmacology; the mindset of the person taking the drug and their expectations about what it will do; and the social context in which they use the drug (Zinberg, 1984). This led Lisa to ask a question that would prove important to her research: Why did people see these drugs as part of a semantic continuum, and what did that say about how Egyptians understand masculinity and its relationship to pharmaceuticals (Wynn, 2022)? In retrospect, I realized that scars were slowly being formed. More precisely, they were being encouraged to form through a communitywide cultivation of silence. Rather than silence being considered an inhibitor of healing, as it is in much of Western medical, psychological, and cultural discourse, this was a case of a community encouraging silence as a means of promoting healing. After several moments when her research participants gently corrected her social blunders, she realized something not just about them and their philosophies of trauma and healing, but about her own deeply held assumption about trauma: that to heal, you need to talk. In contrast, for her research participants, “to break the silence [about past trauma] would be akin to breaking open the wound” (Trnka, 2008, p. 180). Jesse had a key “I was wrong” realization during his PhD research in Aceh, Indonesia (Grayman et al., 2009), where he was studying postconflict humanitarian recovery programs. Jesse was working with an Indonesian medical team that was tasked with providing psychosocial and psychiatric support to civilian survivors of the separatist war (1976–2005). He gave the team a short training on ethnographic methods, with a focus on managing trauma and the ethics of discussing painful conflict memories. Later, during a field exercise, an overeager nurse interviewed a village head about his conflict experience, pressing on despite the man's visible discomfort. As a crowd gathered, the village head recounted horrific torture, evoking tears from an elderly observer. When the conversation ended, the leader quietly remarked, “Sometimes I think there is no need to remember the past like this.” Jesse wondered whether he had misconceived his effort to upskill the medical team with ethnographic methods. Afterward, Jesse reflected on this as a moment of failure, noting that confessional narratives, central to many mental health models, are not always therapeutic. While some participants thanked the team for listening, it was nearly impossible to discern the few who might not benefit from talk therapy. Though Jesse turned the experience into a teachable moment, he regrets that the researcher's moment of learning unfolded in a real community, with real people and real leaders, just barely coming to terms with peacetime after living through decades of political violence. Even today, remembering the event makes Jesse anxious and embarrassed. This draws our attention to another key aspect of the way anthropologists process being wrong. We often experience our mistakes as embodied, visceral moments of regret, embarrassment, frustration, or humiliation. Thus, perhaps recounting our mistakes is not just about asserting our ethnographic achievements and authority, but about helping ourselves process our dark, painful feelings and difficult memories of fieldwork. Wanting to reflect more deeply on these issues, we invited anthropologists to submit to a special forum in which they discuss their moments of being wrong and what these can tell us about our discipline. We asked them to recount events when they realized a flaw in their methodological approach, an interpretive error, an ethical mistake, an event that triggered a theoretical paradigm shift, or a realization that their approach to teaching or doing anthropology needed an overhaul. We asked them to address these questions: When did you realize you were wrong? How did you come to that realization? What did you learn? How did you change the way you do or teach or write anthropology? As we read the submissions to this special forum, we were struck by three recurring themes. The first was embodiment and affect. As described in Jesse's and Susanna's stories of being wrong, and in Briggs's powerful ethnography, it can feel like swimming in dark emotions to realize that you are wrong and to process what it means for how we understand our past and our future in a society. Coming to terms with our mistakes is both an intellectual and an affective process, one that is experienced and felt deep in the body, both as we live the moments of mistake and process them later. A second theme was scale. Being wrong can be a tiny realization leading to a subtle reorientation in focus or approach, a microrecalibration of knowledge or of everyday fieldwork practice, or a grand, dramatic moment that causes a seismic shift in perspective. Of course, it's rarely one or the other. As Kuhn (1962) notes of paradigm shifts, they might seem like revolutions, dramatically overthrowing old modes of thinking, but in reality they take place gradually: anomalies slowly accumulate until the dominant paradigm topples under their weight. The third theme is temporality: “I was wrong” can be a light bulb moment or a slow, unfolding realization, a moment in the field or a decades-later discovery. Some “mistakes” do not reveal themselves until several years or even decades after one's fieldwork, reshaping one's sense of not only their research or the people they spent time with, but of themselves. In My Life as a Spy, Verdery (2018) reflects on how state security services labeled her a CIA agent during her three years conducting ethnography in Romania in the 1970s and 1980s. Their mistaken interpretation of her as a foreign agent began, she suggests, through her own error in judgment—motorbiking alone through the Romanian countryside in search of a field site, she inadvertently strayed into a restricted military zone, missing the sign warning “Entry prohibited to foreigners” (“I had made a stupid mistake. It would not be the last time,” Verdery [2018, p. 3] dryly remarks). the way I carried myself was suspect. At least, so it seemed to my friend Emilia, who told me that when she met me in 1990 she immediately thought I might be a spy: “You were dressed very modestly, you didn't hold yourself above us. Your style was to reduce the difference between yourself and Romanians, under-communicating it.” In short, my manner of dress was a form of hiding. Eventually she came to see it as my way of trying to form good relations with villagers, but her first thought was, “Maybe she's a spy. Instead of seeming like someone from a totally different world, you seemed to be one of us”—that is, she thought I had been specifically trained to fit in. (p. 17) recognize me as a spy because I do some of the things they do—I use code names and write of “informants,” for instance, and both of us collect “socio-political information” of all kinds rather than just focusing on a specific issue. … When I read in the file that I “exploit people for informative purposes,” can I deny that anthropologists often do just that, as Securitate officers do? In 1962 the US Department of Commerce, without authorization or permission from the author, translated from French into English the anthropologist Georges Condominas’ ethnographic account of Montagnard village life in the central highlands of Vietnam. The Green Berets used the document for assassination campaigns targeting village leaders. For years, neither publisher nor author knew this work had been reprinted in English for military ends. How can one accept, without trembling with rage, that this work, in which I wanted to describe in their human plenitude these men who have so much to teach us about life, should be offered to the technicians of death—of their death! … You will understand my indignation when I tell you that I learned about the “pirating” [of my book] only a few years after having the proof that Srae, whose marriage I described in Nous Avons Mangé la Forêt, had been tortured by a sergeant of the Special Forces in the camp of Phii Ko. Condominas's outrage changed how anthropologists think about their writing, their politics, and their ethics of representation. As Price (2007) notes, ethics committees often focus on any immediate risks to research participants, including whether they could be harmed by certain questions (as in Jesse's recounting of interviews about a violent past). Examples like Condominas's, however, show that anthropologists also need to think about the different scales and temporalities of ethnographic work and its possible harms. These themes—embodiment and affect, scale and temporality—come up in fascinating ways in this forum's commentaries. Rejecting the simple binary of right or wrong, Veena Das dismantles the AE editors’ language of “moments” of realization. Instead, she sees anthropological knowledge as a long, dialectical process: the anthropologist slowly finding their way between, on the one hand, the dominant theories and theorists of their time, and on the other, their interlocutors, the “figures of thought” influencing them in the field. She describes a sense of incompleteness or poor fit with existing theories, one that slowly accumulates and eventually compels the anthropologist to see something in a new way, or notice what they haven't been seeing. “By taking a long-term perspective on the vulnerability of knowledge, which reveals itself over time,” Das aims to “draw attention, instead, to the connections between the knowledge of the alien and our own everyday modes of knowing. We miss these connections if we stay with the stark oppositions of truth and falsity, mistakes and correction.” Like Das, Carole McGranahan sees anthropological theory as formed not only in the relationship between fieldworkers and theorists, but also by the theorists in the field. Reflecting on her own training, she writes, “The ethnography often, though not always, came to me pretheorized. People shared stories with me alongside observations, musings, and explanations. Analysis was by no means only the scholar's domain. It belonged to narrator and audience alike.” Gil Hizi thinks through a series of unexpected moments during his PhD research and describes his mistakes as the “naivete of early graduate studies.” In studying practices of among young Hizi learned that after the is no with a but to the that come from interlocutors, in are studying While he at first that they would take no interest in the of an in his Hizi finds the Hizi from these unexpected moments with mistaken come and he through them to his with his realization of his mistakes from to decades He describes feeling early in his during his first with a he he was wrong until interviews when of the difference between the and the [of became account is through with embodied affect. when one to talk with in the of a field at a to being and even more and when he how to his field notes and back to the US without He up with a that … seems of you are wrong, after the when in the field you knew something was but didn't how to with it. writes about finding on an at a in one of which is about the impossible of a The of this with about medical issues, such as the of back into old anthropological about the to and is certain that the only to that the is from the on an from This to the of her and, like Das, her by asserting the of and the of knowledge. writes a account that a different to the of the anthropologist as about being as an and from and working to open up to the makes a that leads her to being Afterward, she her in terms of a intersection of gender, and also with In an dark and that many of us will she that she is not to for being she can't over what she did wrong. She to how it so that she can make in the one be wrong without being at and In her we the of stories about being wrong that don't stories that people don't feel powerful to or that don't to our authority, that are or or the of trauma among who work in of political and violence. In research with in US knew this work might trauma and health was in not other, more and ways to both for individual such as and for the discipline as a which could do more to PhD students and a new of who are ethnography, for as work. forum are a of names and finding their in the field. Their on both recent mistakes and made over not only tell individual but also describe both subtle and dramatic of what ethnographic fieldwork and ethical research the of writing, and and the of old theoretical even as we to think in new reflect of things we have wrong as as the realization of in as Das it. are stories and perhaps the most that all these is their on and to our research and participants’ for to participants’ to who offered after the own The the anthropological in terms of and the willingness to be Thus, an “I was wrong” realization is the of a commitment to It anthropology as a discipline that is and to

Andrija Juvančić

S ubrzanim razvojem tehnologije i informatike u 21. stoljeću dolaze velike promjene u načinu ljudskog življenja i djelovanja. Svakodnevni život postaje sve brži i dinamičniji zbog razvoja računala i interneta, a ljudi objeručke prihvaćaju nove tehnologije i pokušavaju ih maksimalno implementirati u svakodnevni život. Decentralizirane autonomne organizacije (dalje DAO) su računalni programi bazirani na blockchainu koji omogućuju sudionicima da kroz predlaganje i glasanje o odlukama koje dođu na dnevni red odlučuju o načinu korištenja resursa organizacije (upravljanje community walletom) te samim time upravljaju s budućnosti organizacije. Koliko koji član ima prava glasa u DAO-u ovisi o količini upravljačkih (governance) tokena koje posjeduje. Ovaj način određivanja količine prava glasa donekle podsjeća na ustroj u dioničkom društvu, no zbog nedostatne pravne regulacije DAO-a i nedostatka mogučnosti inkorporacije kao društva kapitala zakonodavac u Hrvatskoj i svijetu ima tendenciju DAOe smatrati ortaštvom u slučaju spora. Podvođenje DAO-a pod definiciju ortaštva može biti naročito opasno za članove jer ne uživaju zaštitu zida pravne osobnosti . U svom radu obradio sam pravni status DAO-a, osnivanje DAO-a i sudjelovanje članova u DAO-ima, a ponajprije su objašnjeni termini kao što su decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain i pametni ugovori.

Jasper L. Cummings

The author argues that commentary on the Second Circuit's 1989 Lessinger decision involving section 357(c) has not clearly identified the tax logic issues that are at stake in the case. He agrees that the controlling shareholder's obligation is not section 351 "property" and should not be accorded basis in the shareholder's hands. Instead, the obligation should be treated as a purchase money obligation that affords basis in the shareholder's stock unless it is properly viewed as contingent. In any event, proper structuring of section 351 exchanges of property subject to debt in excess of the property's basis for stock in order to reflect an actual retention of liability on that debt by the shareholder should prevent shareholder gain recognition under section 357(c).

Zeenat Beebeejaun, Alessio Faccia

Abstract The intrinsic complex nature of Contracts in the Energy sector leads to frequent international disputes. The complexity is generated by (i) the involvement of multiple stakeholders with potentially conflicting interests (Multinational Companies, State-Owned Companies, Host States and their citizens); (ii) transnational jurisdictions divergence (local laws, investor’s country laws, international practices and regulations); and (iii) changes in the laws and regulations over time (long-term nature of Energy contracts). Therefore, not surprisingly, traditional litigation in the Energy sector is often replaced with Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) through the recurrent application of Arbitration clauses. This article aims to improve dispute management in the Energy sector by encouraging best ADR practices. Modelling and Conceptual research approaches are adopted to encourage the introduction of the smart contract. The analyses triggered the drafting of a model for contractual automation. Recurring top clauses are mapped and associated with Equity solutions. Moreover, a comprehensive, efficient and feasible ‘Electronic ADR’ framework is shaped to prevent (or automatically settle) disputes in the Energy sector.

Christof Koolen

No abstract is available for this record.

Mark D. Packard

No abstract is available for this record.