Blockchain Papers

Froilan Delute Mobo

The integration of smart contracts in energy markets marks a transformative shift toward decentralization, automation, and enhanced transactional efficiency. As blockchain-based technologies are increasingly used to facilitate peer-to-peer energy trading, grid management, and decentralized energy exchanges, questions of legal enforceability, liability, and dispute resolution remain critical. This chapter aims to examine the foundational legal and regulatory considerations that govern smart contracts within the context of energy markets. It will explore how traditional legal principles interact with emerging technologies, including the enforceability of self-executing code under contract law, jurisdictional challenges, and the applicability of consumer protection and liability statutes. Case studies from pioneering jurisdictions such as the European Union, the United States, and select Asia-Pacific countries will be analyzed to provide comparative insights.

Zhenkun Weng

Permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) is increasingly being proposed for regulated banking, yet its feasibility hinges on whether distributed recordkeeping can meet compliance requirements for auditability, operational resilience, and accountability. This article evaluates permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) through three compliance-intensive use cases-interbank settlement, shared know your customer (KYC) utilities, and credit information sharing-and situates the discussion in the Chinese banking context using sector indicators of declining return on assets and rising non-performing loan ratios. It specifies the compliance dependencies that each workflow must satisfy, including legally meaningful settlement finality, audit-quality authorization trails, privacy-preserving identity and data governance, and supervision-compatible access and governance arrangements. This article offers a focused conceptual synthesis of peer-reviewed research across banking, audit, information systems, and financial regulation, using Chinese sector indicators as contextual motivation rather than causal evidence. The contribution is a use-case grounded translation of permissioned-DLT design choices into assessable compliance dependencies for banks, auditors, and supervisors, clarifying why blockchain adoption in banking should be treated as a redesign of evidence and governance rather than as a plug-and-play IT upgrade.

Nabeel Mahdi Althabhawi, Ra’ed Fawzi Aburoub, Rizal Rahman, Faris Kamil Hasan Mihna · 5 authors

Smart contracts raise persistent challenges regarding compliance with traditional contract formalities, including writing, signature, notarization, and in certain transactions, registration. These issues are particularly significant in high-value and public-facing transactions such as real estate, where formalities determine legal validity, evidentiary sufficiency and publicity effects. While existing scholarly work has examined these challenges from either doctrinal or technological perspectives, limited attention has been given to how the functional roles of formalities interact with blockchain architecture, practitioner perceptions and institutional legal frameworks. This study addresses this gap through a mixed-methods approach combining doctrinal legal analysis with qualitative socio-legal research based on 27 semi-structured interviews with legal professionals including attorneys, judges, and academic scholars. The analysis is grounded in a civil law framework, with particular reference to the Jordanian legal system, while references to the European Union’s eIDAS Regulation are used illustratively to demonstrate regulatory approaches to digital authentication. The findings demonstrate that blockchain-based systems can effectively support the evidentiary and attribution functions of contractual formalities through cryptographic verification, consensus mechanisms, and automated execution. However, they do not independently satisfy formalities that perform cautionary, constitutive, protective or public order function, namely notarization and registration, which remain dependent on institutional validation and legal recognition. The analysis further shows that practitioner concerns reflect not only doctrinal constraints but also institutional roles and varying levels of technical familiarity. To address these limitations, the study proposes a function-based analytical framework for evaluating smart contract formalities and identifies two complementary pathways for legal adaptation: (i) institutional integration, including registry-linkage systems and hybrid contracts; and (ii) technological adaptation, including digital authentication frameworks and legal oracles that connect on-chain execution to off-chain legal conditions. The study concludes that smart contract formalities’ challenges arise not solely from technological limitations, but from the interaction between legal doctrine, institutional structures, and system design. It advances a functional framework for aligning automation with the evidentiary, protective, and publicity functions of contractual formalities.

Aradhya Rai, Uday Bhanu Shukla, Md. Aatir Usmani, Zobya Arzoo

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) represent a fundamental shift in collective action and business management, transitioning from traditional "top-down" hierarchies to blockchain-based distribution of power. This research explores how DAOs utilize smart contracts to establish autonomous, decentralized organizations governed by code rather than central leadership. By leveraging token-based voting and automated execution, DAOs address critical "pain points" in corporate governance, specifically transparency and the Principal-Agent Problem.Through a comparative analysis of traditional corporations and decentralized models like Maker DAO and Uni swap, the study highlights the benefits of public auditability and aligned financial incentives. However, the transition to this "future of management" faces significant hurdles, including regulatory uncertainty, security vulnerabilities in code, and voter apathy. This paper concludes that while DAOs offer a democratic, flat alternative to the modern firm, their ultimate success depends on evolving legal frameworks and robust technical security.

Dinesh Singh sagar, Dr. Arun Kumar Singh

Smart contracts, self-executing agreements programmed on blockchain networks, represent a technological innovation with profound implications for contract law. India's existing legal framework, the Indian Contract Act of 1872 and the Information Technology Act of 2000, was not designed to accommodate such digital instruments. This chapter examines the legal recognition and enforceability of smart contracts within this dual framework, identifies significant challenges, and explores emerging prospects for regulatory adaptation. The analysis reveals that while India possesses foundational provisions recognizing electronic contracts and digital signatures, the explicit statutory recognition of smart contracts remains absent. Key challenges include the absence of legal personhood for autonomous smart contracts, liability attribution problems, evidentiary uncertainties and jurisdictional ambiguities. This chapter argues that targeted legislative amendments integrating blockchain technology provisions, coupled with judicial interpretation of existing provisions, could facilitate smart contract recognition while preserving consumer protection standards. This balanced approach offers India an opportunity to position itself as a global leader in fintech innovation, without compromising legal certainty.

Fabrizio Sudiero

One of the most discussed topics in corporate law is the “real” effectiveness of shareholders’ agreements, i.e. the validity of those clauses that prevent the non-fulfilment of the agreements and that therefore ensure fulfilment of shareholders’ agreements as an alternative to compensatory remedies. In fact, as well known, especially with regard to voting trusts, their legitimacy has always been based on their merely personal and obligatory effectiveness, considering null and void those agreements that include the mentioned “real” mechanisms. In this context, technology and, in particular, the entry of blockchain and smart contracts introduces new possible frontiers that this article, taking as an example the Italian legislation (which provides for a specific regulation of smart contracts), intends to explore by also proposing an interpretative solution and a possible embryonic prototype.

Ermanno Francesco Sannini, Lucia Simeone, Corrado Aaron Visaggio, Andrea Di Sorbo

In Ethereum's immutable environment, high-quality documentation is essential for users and auditors to fully understand smart contract behavior and build trust. However, an empirical, manually conducted, and comprehensive investigation that analyzes and identifies undocumented implementation details, implicit assumptions, and comment-code inconsistencies in operational smart contracts is still missing. To address this gap, this paper examines the commenting practices occurring in the source code of smart contracts through a systematic manual review of 100 up-to-date Solidity smart contract projects mined from Etherscan, divided into high-usage and low-usage groups based on the number of transactions they received. By combining quantitative analysis, validated with Fisher's exact test, and a multidimensional qualitative checklist, we identify a systemic deficiency in documentation, especially concerning smart contract-specific facets, such as critical security patterns and gas optimization strategies. Our findings show that documentation quality is generally insufficient regardless of a contract's popularity. Smart contract developers tend to prioritize functionality over verifiability, highlighting an urgent need for domain-specific documentation standards and best practices that better support the entire development lifecycle of blockchain applications.

Aurang Zaib Ashraf Shami, Furqan Raza, Usman Asghar

The emergence of blockchain-based smart contracts represents a paradigm shift in contractual relationships, offering automated, tamper-proof and self-executing agreements that promise to reduce transaction costs and enhance efficiency. Yet, their legal enforceability under traditional contract law frameworks continues to raise complex questions regarding formation, validity, performance and dispute resolution. This research article conducts a comparative doctrinal analysis of the contract law regimes in Pakistan, the United Kingdom and Singapore to assess the extent to which blockchain smart contracts are recognised, validated and judicially enforceable. The study examines key statutes (Pakistan’s Electronic Transactions Ordinance 2002, the UK’s Electronic Communications Act 2000 and common-law principles and Singapore’s Electronic Transactions Act with its blockchain-friendly amendments), judicial precedents, regulatory policies and ongoing legislative developments. Findings reveal that Singapore has established the most progressive and enabling environment, the UK provides flexible common-law recognition with incremental clarifications, while Pakistan’s framework offers only rudimentary electronic-contract validity and lacks specific provisions for decentralised automation and immutability. The paper identifies legislative gaps, highlights best-practice lessons and proposes targeted reforms for Pakistan to align with international standards. Ultimately, this comparative examination underscores the urgent need for legal harmonisation to unlock the full potential of blockchain technology in cross-border commerce while safeguarding consumer protection and judicial oversight.

Erwin Sotiri

This article proposes the creation of a new Luxembourg company form, the Société Anonyme Tokenisée (SAT), which would natively use distributed ledger technology (DLT) for all shares and governance functions. The SAT would be a fully compliant legal entity under EU law, issue tokenised securities recognised as financial instruments, and enable smart contract-based governance. The proposal is based on Luxembourg’s progressive blockchain legislation and the need for corporate law to keep pace with technological innovation.

Seyed Mahdi Razavi, Mohammad Esmaeil Daemi

With the advancement of various technologies, the latest generation of contracts called smart contracts has emerged. The language of these contracts is computer code, and since they are concluded on the blockchain, their contractual provisions are self-executing and irreversible. In these contracts, as in traditional contracts, there is a possibility that due to reasons such as defects, ambiguity, brevity or silence in the provisions of the contract or the inconsistency of the effects of the contract with the intention of the parties, the contract may need interpretation to resolve the disputes that have arisen. Smart contracts can be interpreted based on the way they are concluded with two approaches: textualism or contextualism. To interpret the “wet smart contract” with textualism approach, first, the pre-contract concluded in human language must be referred to within its framework, and not beyond, and it must be examined in accordance with the general rules of contract interpretation, and then the conformity or inconsistency of the effects of the smart contract codes with the intention of the parties should be analyzed. If "smart contract is dry," the contract codes can only be translated with the help of blockchain programmers and interpreted by an interpreter. By examining these codes and analyzing the specified instructions, it can be determined what instructions the parties intended to give to the computer, and the reason for the discrepancy between the effect of the contract and the intention of the parties can be identified and the resulting disputes can be resolved.

Leonidas Sotiropoulos

The integration of smart contracts, blockchain, and AI is revolutionizing insurance by boosting efficiency, transparency, and automation, but also introduces legal and regulatory challenges under English common law and the EU AI Act. This chapter explores how smart contracts can be effectively adopted in insurance while addressing trust, transparency, and compliance, focusing on their legal enforceability, use in parametric and marine insurance, and the EU AI Act's stringent demands for fairness, accountability, and transparency in AI-driven processes. It contrasts the UK's flexible, principles-based approach—rooted in good faith and fairness—with the EU's rigid, risk-based framework, assessing their impact on innovation, consumer protection, and cross-border operations. By analyzing algorithmic bias, explainability, liability, and fraud detection, the study provides a holistic legal and regulatory analysis and proposes a balanced framework to harmonize innovation with legal compliance, ensuring a fair, transparent, and resilient insurance market in the digital age.

Filippo Zatti

This chapter explores the core challenge that blockchain-based decentralization presents to traditional legal frameworks. Legal systems rely on the identification of subjects – whether natural persons, legal entities, or State authorities – to whom rights, obligations, and consequences can be assigned. This principle of attribution is foundational to nearly every facet of law, including criminal responsibility, contractual obligations, property rights, and regulatory enforcement. However, blockchain technology and autonomous decentralized systems fundamentally undermine this assumption by operating without identifiable centres of accountable authority. Decentralized Autonomous Organisations and Decentralized Finance protocols function autonomously, transcending territorial boundaries and human intermediaries, yet they typically fall under State jurisdictional structures. The argument is made that the fundamental operations of law – determining applicable rules, adjudicating disputes, and enforcing judgments – are predicated on the existence of ‘centres of attribution.’ This situation creates a fundamental tension between the aspirations of decentralization and the operational requirements of law, raising the question of whether the challenges posed by Blockchain can be reconciled with the essential principles of legal order. Keywords: blockchain technology, decentralization, smart contracts, legal accountability, jurisdiction, lex cryptographia, DAO, constitutional law, regulatory frameworks, legal personality.

Salvatore Furnari

This chapter analyses how the tokenization of decisional power – enabled by blockchainbased governance tokens – offers new governance models while simultaneously revealing structural, technological, and legal limits. After illustrating how electronic voting and tokenbased identification address challenges such as deepfakes, the chapter examines the functioning of DAOs, their governance procedures, and the informal community dynamics that shape decision-making. It then discusses the conceptual difficulties surrounding ‘decentralization,’ reviews existing metrics, and proposes alternative normative criteria, including minimum independent decision centres and the ‘mutualistic symbiosis’ between protocol, users, and developers. The final section evaluates legal obstacles under Italian law, showing the limited feasibility of tokenizing corporate participations and the centralizing effects introduced by the Fintech Decree. The chapter concludes that regulators must develop a coherent legal definition of decentralization and simplify regulatory frameworks for tokenized equity instruments. Keywords: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), tokenized governance, decentralization metrics, Blockchain-based voting, CorpTech regulation, Fintech Decree (Italy).

Bhavana Sharma, Sumit Agarwala, Saurabh Kumar Sharma, Pooja Prakash Srivastava · 5 authors

The exponential rise of blockchain technology is changing the way organizations operate, including in enforcement. Standard means of conflict resolution whether through courts or arbitration/mediation bodies, regularly face questions of cost, delay, jurisdiction and transparency. One of the innovations in an online and global market can be the blockchain-based decentralized judicial systems, as a result of such limitations. Family law disputes as a case study for the indepth analysis of DDR Blockchain-based Decentralized Dispute Resolution (DDR) systems, and how they could disrupt justice delivery processes in future. Both such models allow people to work out their differences without or so much help from a central authority. They accomplish this using decentralized governance, distributed ledgers, cryptographic security, and smart contracts. Disputes are settled using transparent rules, automated policing and community-based judgment. Critical topics are touched upon simultaneously: the legality of the system, pitfalls of bad governance, challenges to its scalability, voting biases in token systems and ethical dilemmas raised by machine decision-making. Decentralized methods of justice, the study suggests, are unlikely to replace courts as we know them in the near future. Rather, they're promising as secondary solutions - especially in the Web3 world, for digital assets, online commerce, and cross-border transactions. Blockchain dispute resolution can revolutionize the industry of justice in a digital era. It takes away intermediaries on the way to good legal systems through technology. This will enhance the legitimacy, effectiveness and accessibility of dispute resolution for all stakeholders.

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Michael Schillig

Abstract Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can replicate certain features of the modern business corporation—notably a crypto-asset “capital lock-in” and participatory governance based on token-holder “democracy.” The history of corporations can be traced back to Roman law and beyond. However, with increasing industrialization, the nineteenth century was to become the century of free and general incorporation, leaving behind the restrictive charter system. Rampant abuse and speculation as well as widespread fraud and corruption at the beginning did not prevent limited liability corporations from being hailed as “the greatest single discovery of modern times” only a generation later. This chapter seeks to ascertain whether and to what extent the history of corporate law can provide valuable lessons for the design and implementation of adequate legal frameworks for capturing the DAO phenomenon. It argues for an incremental approach that gradually seeks to accommodate the concept of DAOs within existing legal frameworks. This will more readily allow for fostering innovation whilst curbing the propensity for abuse.

Nina Reiser

Abstract The assignment of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to concrete legal company forms causes enormous difficulties around the world. That is why some states have recently taken corresponding legislative initiatives. Although existing, nonspecific legal forms of certain jurisdictions, such as the Cayman Islands’ foundation company, Guernsey’s Special Purpose Trust, or Switzerland’s association are commonly used by DAOs, they are not completely tailored to the features and needs of DAOs and their future development, providing the necessary legal certainty for DAOs and their participants. The DAO Model Law created a well-founded basis for the legal structure of DAO companies based on functional and legal equivalence. Depending on the peculiarities of the respective jurisdiction, selective adjustments and/or the implementation of specific company forms for DAOs are conceivable and necessary. Consequently, there is a need for further research in this area.

Bianca Kremer

Abstract Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a still-evolving organizational form. As such, they face unique challenges in dispute resolution. These challenges start with the definition of what constitutes a DAO dispute, compounded by the oftentimes pseudonymous identity of parties, the absence of traditional hierarchical structures, and opaque power dynamics. In addition, governance and operations are frequently—though not invariably—implemented using blockchain technology and smart contracts, adding further complexity. This chapter explores the intricacies of DAO disputes by attempting a definition and examining both internal conflicts and external challenges, outlining DAO-specific obstacles in dispute resolution and drawing from real world examples, including interviews with DAO practitioners. There is a clear need for DAOs to plan for disputes and establish clear rules and guidelines for dispute resolution (both on- and off-chain) from the outset.

Shawn Bayern

Abstract This chapter critiques decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)-specific organizational statutes and entity types in view of several propositions about the theory and structure of organizational law. First, it introduces and defends the proposition that organizational forms should, in the absence of an overriding reason, be neutral to private parties’ choices about technology. That said, while technological neutrality is a useful principle in evaluating organizational statutes, its application requires subtlety because one software technology may emulate another. Second, the chapter observes that existing general organizational forms are already capable of accommodating DAOs and other new technological structures for organizations. Using existing forms promotes harmony and simplicity in organizational law, a field that is already too fragmented and in which too many distinct types of entities already exist. The chapter also discusses the relationship between registered and unregistered organizational forms and how bespoke organizational statutes interact with the Corporate Transparency Act in the US.

Jason Grant Allen, Peter Hunn

Abstract This chapter explores how digital infrastructure—particularly distributed ledger technologies (DLT)—is reshaping the legal architecture of organizational forms. Using decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as a focal case, the chapter argues that legal and technical affordances must be treated as composable building blocks in the design of digital companies. Far from displacing law, DLT exposes its continued role in enabling, constraining, and legitimating organizational activity. Five legal affordances are identified—property, agency, fiduciary law, liability, and contract—as essential to institutional coherence, and the chapter examines how these interact with digital affordances in emerging organizational forms. Mapping a spectrum from traditional entities to “pure” DAOs, the chapter highlights the rise of techno-legal hybrids and proposes two future-facing models: an “internalization” model embedding legal structure in code, and an “externalization” model layering code onto legal shells. It concludes that digital companies are not just technical innovations but jurisprudential provocations—challenges to rethink law’s role in the design of institutional life.

NITHISH KUMAR B

The financial technology (FinTech) revolution, driven by Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), presents a watershed moment for global commerce and law. At its core, DLT, encompassing cryptocurrency, blockchain, and smart contracts, challenges the foundational principles of traditional finance and legal jurisprudence: intermediation, jurisdiction, and contract enforceability. This paper analyzes the critical legal dimensions emerging from this technological shift, moving beyond an initial period of regulatory uncertainty toward a new era of targeted legislation and landmark litigation. Specifically, it examines the fragmented global regulatory response to crypto-assets (e.g., the EU's MiCA and US legislative efforts), the legal complexity of classifying DLT assets, the disruptive potential and data privacy concerns of non-currency blockchain applications, and the profound jurisprudential conflict between the deterministic "code is law" ethos of smart contracts and the flexibility of common and civil law traditions. The paper concludes that DLT presents a significant legal opportunity to enhance transparency and efficiency, but only through the establishment of nuanced, principle-based regulatory frameworks that can reconcile decentralized technology with the imperative of financial stability, consumer protection, and equitable legal recourse.

Sagar Behere

Contemporary organizational ecosystems are critically vulnerable in third-party risk management frameworks due to centralized databases, fragmented documentation systems, and manual processes of assessment. Traditional approaches result in huge inefficiencies through redundant audits, version control complexities, and delayed responses for compliance along multi-jurisdictional vendor networks. The blockchain architecture introduces a fundamental architectural transformation through distributed ledger mechanisms, creating immutable audit trails, cryptographic verification protocols, and decentralized trust formation across organizations. The article reviews how blockchain works as an integrity infrastructure within regulatory technology ecosystems, allowing the automation of compliance through smart contracts, making transparent records available for authorized stakeholders, and removing single-point vulnerabilities from centralized control systems. The technical mechanisms for implementation include immutable vendor record systems, which integrate fragmented documentation into unified, tamper-proof ledgers; smart contract automation that allows deterministic outcomes in governance; and distributed assurance networks, which allow audit verification among multiple organizations. Regulatory dimensions are related to preserving privacy through hybrid on-chain and off-chain architectures, legal recognition challenges of smart contracts within jurisdictional frameworks, and ethics in governance requirements for human input within automated ecosystems of decisions. Implementation challenges involve the complexity of legacy system integration, the development of a structure for consortium governance, scalability constraints, and the scarcity of talent. Future trajectories include hybrid ecosystems, integrating blockchain's immutability with advanced analytics, tokenized reputation frameworks, and integrations with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital identity systems toward next-generation vendor risk governance.

Marko Marković, Stevan Gostojić

The introduction of information and communication technologies in the legal domain has enabled the automation of some activities in the legal profession. With the advent of blockchain and smart contracts, new tools have emerged for lawyers and their clients, enhancing transparency and increasing trust compared to traditional legal instruments. Once deployed, smart contracts should be able to respond to various events that can occur during the contract’s lifecycle. However, this kind of automation in smart contracts requires them to embed necessary legal knowledge and implement support for legal reasoning. In this paper, we propose a legal reasoning method for smart contracts that incorporates defeasible logic, a key requirement for automated reasoning in the legal domain. The entire reasoning process in our approach is performed on the blockchain infrastructure, making the drawing of conclusions fully transparent and accessible to all interested parties. To demonstrate our concept, we illustrate how certain rights prescribed under labour law can be embedded within a smart contract and deployed on the blockchain as a legal reasoning service. Then, we show how an employment contract can use the reasoning contract to automatically apply legal norms to infer conclusions and determine legal consequences in particular cases. We analyse the benefits and potential issues of this method and discuss directions for future work. Optimisation of the reasoning engine is one of the challenges we identified that needs to be tackled in future.

Ting Ting Mimi Jiang

No abstract is available for this record.