Blockchain Papers

Farshad Ghodoosi

No abstract is available for this record.

Pablo Sanz Bayón

The aim of this work is to delve into some key legal issues surrounding Smart Contract applications. In the first and second parts, this paper defines the concept of Smart Contract and how it applies within the blockchain ecosystem. In the third part, this work exposes the functioning of this digital technology and the main advantage that it implies for solving the crucial issues of execution and breach of contracts. In the fourth section, this paper analyzes a set of problematic aspects that arise around Smart Contracts such as the scope and delimitation of them or the validity and certification of blockchain transactions. It also analyzes different issues related to the design of a legislative policy that addresses the design of a supranational and harmonized legal framework.

Rory Unsworth

No abstract is available for this record.

Tatiana Cutts

“Smart contracts” are a way of using computers to make contracts unbreakable. Contracting parties do not need to trust one another to perform or rely upon intermediaries to enforce performance. Performance is guaranteed. This is supposed to be a victory for the ordinary person – a clever socio–economic application of cryptography that strips power from companies and governments and gives it to consumers. But it turns out that less trust does not mean more freedom, or better bargains. The law of contract supports valuable relationships both by enforcing duties and by allowing parties to escape the consequences of ill–formed contracts and oppressive terms. Smart contracts remove these safeguards. Consumers may be bound, inexorably and without recourse, to contracts that are wholly devoid of virtue. The lesson of smart contracting is clear and urgent: when we design the future of commerce, we should direct our resources towards building, not emaciating, relationships of trust.

Michèle Finck

Whereas Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) prohibits solely automated data processing, the precise scope of this qualified prohibition as well as related requirements remain untested and unclear. Examining Article 22 GDPR from the perspective of smart contracts sheds light on the resulting uncertainties and inconsistencies. Smart contracts indeed appear to qualify as a form of solely automated data processing under Article 22(1) GDPR. This implies that they can only be used where they meet the requirements of Article 22(2) and implement the safeguards of Article 22(3) GDPR. Under Article 22(2) GDPR, solely automated data processing can only be used where it (i) is necessary for a contract between the data subject and controller, (ii) authorized by EU or Member State law, or (iii) based on the data subject’s explicit consent. At first sight, these requirements can be met in the smart contract context just as in others. Yet, the research unveils that even where a smart contract is related to a legal contract, that contract may not be between the data subject and controller. Furthermore, consent may have limited value in this context as under EU data protection law, the data subject must be able to revoke consent, which is difficult where the data processing cannot be halted at the request of the data subject. Where the requirements of Article 22(2) GDPR are met, Article 22(3) requires that data controllers implement safeguarding measures including a right to human intervention by the controller. There are ongoing uncertainties and controversies regarding the scope of this obligation that also permeate the smart contract context. Yet, solutions are already being developed to create forms of smart contracts that may be responsive to these legal obligations, confirming the GDPR’s innovation-shaping function. 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Angelo Borselli

Abstract Smart contracts are innovative contracts that differ from traditional ones in that they are self-executing, as they entail the possibility of representing contract terms in programming code that gets automatically executed on a blockchain or other distributed ledgers. Following the latest developments in blockchain technology, smart contracts have been the focus of growing attention and are currently among the major innovations that are taking place in financial services. This paper investigates the scope for their application in insurance both in the near and longer term, exploring the legal challenges that they pose. The analysis shows that in the near term smart contracts will be mainly exploited to automate underwriting, claims handling and payouts. It considers how the automation of these processes will operate at law and emphasises the impact that smart contracts can have especially on the reduction of transaction costs and on the very essence of the insurance contract—the insurer’s promise to pay. Building on current technological developments, the paper then turns to role that smart contracts can play in insurance in the longer term, advancing the prospect of the automation of the entire insurance contract. In particular, it argues that the interaction between smart contracts and artificial intelligence and machine learning can challenge traditional frameworks of thought such as incomplete contracting and, in the farther-distant future, will culminate in contracts that will both self-interpret and self-enforce their terms—what can be called the true smart contracts. The analysis identifies and addresses the main legal issues that can arise in this context, exploring how to strike a balance between the goal of fostering innovation and the need to ensure policyholder and investor protection.

Morgan N. Temte

The blockchain cannot be described just as a revolution.It is a tsunami-like phenomenon, slowly advancing and gradually envel oping everything along its way by the force of its progression. 1* J.D. Candidate, University of Wyoming College of Law, Class of 2020.I would like to thank the hard-

Adarsh Vijayakumaran

No abstract is available for this record.

Mateja Đurović, Franciszek Lech

The development of new technologies has different effects on the existing law. Smart contracts are one of the forms of the new technologies that questions the application of the traditional contract law on commercial transactions using smart contracts. In that context, the enforceability of contractual transactions concluded in the form of smart contracts represent one of the major legal questions. Moreover, the question is whether the existing English contract law needs to be modified in order to secure the enforceability of smart contracts. These issues will be, accordingly examined in this paper with the aim to understand better the relationship of the traditional contract law, on the one side, and, smart contracts, on the other side.

Jens Frankenreiter

This essay investigates the potential of smart contracts to replace the legal system as an infrastructure for transactions. It argues that (contract) law remains relevant for most transactions even if they are entirely structured by way of smart contract. The reason for this is that the power of smart contracts to create and enforce obligations against attempts by the legal system to thwart their execution is limited. These limitations are most relevant for obligations to perform certain actions outside the blockchain, but also apply to other obligations contingent on facts outside the records stored on the blockchain.

Primavera De Filippi, Aaron Wright

No abstract is available for this record.

Cathrin Hein, Wanja Wellbrock, Christoph Hein

No abstract is available for this record.

Louis-Daniel Muka Tshibende

Abstract: Considering that the internationality of a contract as well as its national character opens up opportunities for the contracting parties, particularly in the domains of dispute settlement mechanisms and applicable Law that they can eventually opt for, the present contribution analyses legal issues resulting from the fact that parties are nevertheless submitted to an obligation to comply with mandatory provisions and public policy rules depending on the location of some key elements of their agreement. This applies, even though it is about smart contracts and blockchain technologies. This article focuses on property and security rights issues (: defective title, informational defects and viruses … ) in the context of the Civil Law tradition. Résumé: Considérant que le caractère international d’un contrat, aussi bien que son caractère national, ouvrent des opportunités pour les parties contractantes, particulièrement dans les domaines de mécanismes de résolution des litiges et de loi applicable qu’elles peuvent éventuellement choisir, la présente contribution analyse les questions juridiques résultant du fait que des parties sont néanmoins tenues de respecter des dispositions obligatoires et de règles de politique d’intérêt général dépendant du lieu de certains éléments-clés de leur contrat. Ceci s’applique même s’il s’agit de contrats intelligents et de technologies de la blockchain. Le présent article se concentre sur des questions de droits de propriété et de sécurité (: défectuosité, défauts informationnels et virus … ) dans le contexte du droit civil traditionnel.

Lei Chen, Jia Wang

Abstract: This article explores whether the legal landscape will be fundamentally changed in view of the emergence of smart contracts in China. Beyond the phenomenon of bitcoin supported by blockchain technology, we examine the development of smart contracts on blockchain with a close scrutiny of their merits and limits, and the intrinsic legal uncertainties in their application. The main argument is that while the gaps between the regulatory framework and the business practice can be identified, for most parts, the current legal framework can accommodate or mitigate the legal risks brought about by smart contracts. Résumé: Cet article pose la question si le paysage juridique sera fondamentalement changé par l’émergence des contrats intelligents en Chine. À part du phénomène du Bitcoin qui s’appuie sur la technologie Blockchain, nous examinons le développement des contrats intelligents en Blockchain avec une étude approfondie de leurs mérites et limites ainsi que les incertitudes légales qui sont intrinsèques à leur application. L’argument principal est que, bien qu’on puisse identifier des différences entre le cadre réglementaire et la pratique d’affaires, le cadre juridique contemporain peut, pour la plupart, accommoder ou mitiger les risques légaux causés par les contrats intelligents.

Ute Bertram

No abstract is available for this record.

Oscar Borgogno

Abstract: The success of smart contracts based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) springs from their potential to secure contract performance when traditional legal enforcement remedies are not practical or too costly. EU policymakers and regulators have struggled for years to facilitate the enforcement of consumer rights while reducing transaction costs for businesses. The article argues that smart contracts can be a viable tool to address such a challenge. By virtue of their self-executing and tamper-proof character, smart contracts are suited to substantially reduce transaction costs in B2C relationships. So far, several legal scholars have raised concerns regarding both smart contracts inability to reflect relational aspects of contract governance and the augmented complexity generated by the translation of an agreement into computer code. Building upon the extant literature on the topic, the article explains why these problems can be overcome when it comes to consumer rights that are standardized and easily verifiable. Thus, smart contracts will likely prove suitable for specific industries, such as the transport sector. The article concludes that policy makers and regulators shall take the lead by testing, with a sector-specific approach, smart contracts ability to improve the consumer protection toolbox.

Michel Cannarsa

Abstract: The computer language (computer code) on the basis of which smart contracts are written is different from the natural (Human) language. Computer language is a ‘dry’ language, whereas natural language is ‘wet’. In other words, it means that computer language is deterministic (just one meaning and one result are conceivable), when natural language is open to more and potential different meanings. Natural language requires therefore in itself interpretation, at least more than computer language. Computer language in theory doesn’t require and possibly doesn’t leave room for interpretation. If this assumption is accurate, what are the consequences of it (on the intention of the parties, on contract drafting, on courts’ intervention…)? Building on that assumption, this article explores, from a comparative perspective, the impact of the blockchain-based smart contract technology, especially regarding contract drafting techniques. Contract drafting style in common law (long contracts, based on a ‘if …, then ….’ approach, quite similar to the coding approach) is in part based on the idea of preventing courts’ interpretation and intervention. In civil law countries instead, contracts are generally shorter, for several reasons but partly because drafters tend to rely on more general legal concepts, external to the contract, and know that courts will play an important role, through interpretation, in disclosing the ‘true meaning’ of a contract. Coding contracts and relying on computer-code language can hence have a significant impact on the civil law approach and bring the two legal systems closer as far as contract drafting and contract interpretation are concerned.

André Janssen, Mateja Djurovic

Abstract: This contribution examines the formation of (blockchain-based) smart contracts. The term smart contract is used to refer to software programmes which are often, but not necessarily, built on blockchain technology as a set of promises, specified in digital form, including protocols within which the parties perform on these promises. It is regularly said that smart contracts are neither legal contracts in the traditional sense nor they are smart and that the term is therefore a misnomer. The crucial question this article is trying to answer is whether the traditional common law concept of contract formation is seriously challenged by the rise of smart contracts. As such, are smart contracts marking the end of contract formation as we know it or is it just much ado about nothing? Résumé: Cette contribution examine la formation de contrats intelligents (basés sur la blockchain). Le terme de contrat intelligent est utilisé pour faire référence aux programmes de software qui sont souvent, mais pas nécessairement, conçus sur la technologie de la blockchain comme un ensemble de promesses, spécifiées sous forme digitale, comprenant des protocoles au sein desquels les parties accomplissent ces promesses.On a souvent dit que les contrats intelligents ne sont ni des contrats juridiques au sens traditionnel ni intelligents et que le terme est donc inapproprié. La question cruciale à laquelle le présent article tente de répondre est de savoir si le concept traditionnel dans la common law de la formation du contrat est sérieusement mis au défi par l’arrivée des contrats intelligents. Comme tels, les contrats intelligents marquent-ils la fin de la formation des contrats telle que nous la connaissons ou ne s’agit-il finalement que de ‘beaucoup de bruit pour rien’?

Riccardo de Caria

Abstract: This article investigates the legal dimension of smart contracts. In particular, it reviews their existing definitions in some of the main laws enacted and scholarly articles published to date, proposes its own version, to then move on to consider to what extent new legal categories are warranted to deal with this apparently totally new way of making legally binding agreements. It concludes by providing some final remarks with regard to relevant legal categories and attempts to advance a number of solutions to the legal questions raised by the application of smart contracts. Résume: Le présent article étudie la dimension juridique de contrats intelligents. En particulier, il passe en revue leurs définitions qui se trouvent dans certaines des lois essentielles promulguées et dans des articles académiques publiés jusqu’à présent, il propose sa version propre, et considère ensuite dans quelle mesure de nouvelles catégories juridiques sont justifiées pour traiter cette manière apparemment tout à fait nouvelle de passer des accords juridiquement obligatoires. Il conclut par quelques remarques finales concernant des catégories juridiques importantes et tente d’apporter certaines solutions aux questions juridiques soulevées par l’application de contrats intelligents.

J.G. Allen

Abstract This article explores ‘smart contracts’ from first principles: What they are, whether they are properly called ‘contracts’, and what issues they raise for national contract law. A ‘smart’ contract purports to record contractual promises in language which is both intelligible to human beings and (ultimately) executable by machines. The formalisation of contracting language that this entails is, I argue, the most important aspect for lawyers—just as important as the automation of contractual performance. Rather than taking a doctrinal approach focused on the presence of traditional indicia of contract formation, I examine the nature of contracts as legal entities created by words and documents. In most cases, smart contracts will be ‘wrapped in paper’ and nested in a national legal system. Borrowing from the idiom of computer science, I introduce the term ‘contract stack’ to highlight the complex nature of contracts as legal entities incorporating different ‘layers’, including speech acts by the parties in both natural and formal languages as well as mandatory legal rules. It is the interactions within this contract stack that will be most important to the development of contract law doctrines appropriate to smart contracts. To illustrate my points, I explore a few issues that smart contracts might raise for English contract law. I touch on the questions of illegality, jurisdiction, and evidence, but my focus in this paper is on exploring issues in contract law proper. This contribution should be helpful not only to lawyers attempting to understand smart contracts, but to those involved in coding smart contracts—and writing the languages used to code them.

Shinto Teramoto

Suppose that a supplier of goods or services and a consumer enter into a contract for goods or services. If the terms and conditions of the contract are prefixed by the supplier unilaterally and the choice of the consumer is just to accept or decline, it is very easy to implement an automatic contracting process for them. Everyday, we experience such simple and automated contracting processes when we ride on the subway and buses using IC cards. / However, in many cases, the terms that each of the parties to a contract deems acceptable in advance are very abstract and have some flexibility. Such anticipated terms may include the conditions most preferred by a party to those least preferred. There is no guarantee that the resulting contract will satisfy both parties. The terms and conditions of the contract to be executed are likely to have multiple alternatives. The finally decided terms just represent one of many possible alternatives. It would be difficult for such terms to completely satisfy both parties. In order to make smart contracts widely implemented in our society, a system that automatically matches the terms and conditions of both parties to a contract (hereinafter, referred to as a smart contract platform) must be able to establish a contract with fair and reasonable terms and conditions that can satisfy both parties in such complex situation. The currently spreading use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) using deep learning is likely to make such a smart contract platform realistic. / However, suppose that both parties to a contract could have gone through a human to human negotiation, and that the final terms are not preferable or disadvantageous to one of the parties. Possibly, such disadvantaged parties would try to persuade themselves that such undesirable or disadvantageous results were caused by their or their agent’s incompetence. However, if such undesirable or disadvantageous terms are caused automatically by a smart contract platform, the disadvantaged party may feel great frustration because they can hardly find a reason to blame themselves. Also, it is possible for a smart contract platform to manipulate the terms of a contract by utilizing the very wide scope of acceptable terms prefixed by the consumer, thereby, giving an advantage to the supplier. Such manipulation will be deemed unfair, even though it does not necessarily constitute fraud. Moreover, if a smart contract platform is provided exclusively by one or a very limited number of companies, the platform may be programmed to be advantageous or disadvantageous to specific or specific categories of suppliers. For example, a smart contract platform used to enable electricity supply companies and consumers who want to quickly charge their electric vehicles (EVs) to contract automatically may be programmed to increase the probability that established and conventional electricity supply companies can contract with consumers within the scope of the terms prefixed by the consumers. It is also probable that a smart contract platform will apply different terms and conditions, such as by giving priority to contracts with consumers of certain electricity supply companies, and give advantages to some of them, and cause disadvantages to others. The implementation of smart legal tools in the society is likely to require us to design legal tools such as the obligatory disclosure of an automatic contracting process, auditing or monitoring by a third party, and competition among multiple smart contract platform providers, to ensure a fair smart contracting process, and also to prevent misappropriation of smart contract platforms for unfair purposes. However, designing such legal tools is likely to cause another problem. A law must be enforced based on the evidence required by the law itself. If a smart contract platform is organized and operated by a fixed algorithm that does not change and update itself automatically, it would be plausible to prove that the platform was programmed by ab human to cause unfair results. However, suppose that an A.I. implemented in a smart contract platform keeps learning and constantly and incrementally updates itself. It is improbable that lawyers could prove that a smart contract platform producing unfair results was really programmed by a human to cause such results. To tackle such problems would also be the duty of lawyers.

Authors unavailable

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors impacting the student satisfaction with the public and private universities of Malaysia and Pakistan, which are countries representing South/South-East Asia in cross-culture perspective.The study has applied a quantitative survey design guided by five hypotheses.A questionnaire was distributed among the students of private and public universities.A conceptual framework has been developed based on the modification of Student Satisfaction Index (SSI) model to measure the satisfaction of students from different aspects, such as university image, university location, quality of academic staff, university facilities, student expectation, overall student satisfaction.The research method used was a survey-based questionnaire that consisted of a total of 396 responses from the university students.The data were analyzed with SPSS and SmartPLS 3; the results indicate that when the comparison was made separately between private and public universities of Malaysia and Pakistan.The comparative statistical score was obtained using independent sample t-Test, the university facilities of Malaysian universities resulted higher than universities in Pakistan.Therefore, the independent sample ttest results conclude that the university facilities have a significant evidence (p=0.00) to support our research findings that university facilities do affect the student satisfaction more in Malaysia (mean=4.1788)than Pakistan (mean =3.7212) and the research hypothesis is significant that there is a significant difference in student satisfaction towards university facilities in Malaysia and Pakistan.Similarly, the quality of academic staff (p=0.035) has a significant effect on student satisfaction in Malaysia (mean=3.8283) and Pakistan (mean=3.6641).Furthermore, this leads the student expectation and overall student satisfaction level of Malaysia students are higher than students in Pakistan.However, student satisfaction level on university image and university location in Malaysia and Pakistan do not differ.The study is useful for university management to improve university students satisfaction.The future researchers are recommended further explore demographic and cultural variables impact on student satisfaction.

Florian Möslein

As a consequence of the blockchain revolution, a key challenge of our times is to identify the legal boundaries of smart contracts and thus to develop conflict rules for divergences between state law and technology-based code. Even if smart contracts are technologically self-executing, they are not necessarily legally enforceable. Rather, they must satisfy a variety of legal and contract law requirements. Two different levels of such rules can be differentiated, namely rules of recognition and substantive restrictions. At both levels, it emerges that either the lawmaker can intervene and introduce new, specific rules, or the judiciary can develop rules on the basis of existing and more general legal standards. For example, at the European level the Unfair Terms Directive and (in future) the Directive on Contracts for the Supply of Digital Content limit the potential scope of smart contracts. At national level, the rules on self-help constitute a crucial legal boundary. At least some applications of blockchain technology will be subject to these rules, strictly limiting their admissibility. Under German law, for instance, a waiver of the relevant provisions is largely excluded. In the case of cross-border situations, the comparative divergence of self-help rules will create legal uncertainty and may hinder the use of smart contracts.

Florian Idelberger

Blockchain technology and ‘smart contracts’ are widely debated in many industries, but especially among legal professionals and academics. Some practical legal questions can be answered relatively quickly or have to be postponed by ‘we do not know’ or ‘it depends’. More interesting than those considerations, however, is whether the emergence of smart contracts based on blockchain technology as a technological materialisation of connected contracts raises issues for the conceptualisation of transnational contract law and what a new conceptualisation, taking into account these issues, could look like. To this end, this contribution tries to acknowledge or incorporate existing work in the area of technology and law such as ontologies, legal reasoning and simple markup languages, but then goes beyond that and tries to explore a sociolegal concept of smart contracts that incorporates the sociological concept of networks by Latour and the system-theoretical approaches of Luhmann with the descriptions of ‘connected contracts’ by Teubner, ultimately incorporating them into the aforementioned ‘ technological materialisation’ of the network structure of law generally and connected contracts specifically. This then can serve as an important methodological tool for the future, to research and describe ‘smart contracts’ at a higher level of abstraction. INTRODUCTION Certain contractual agents, also called ‘smart contracts’, running on blockchain technology have gained increasing importance due to promising increased automation and assurance for digital contracting, aiming to bridge law and soft ware code. Thus, this contribution investigates these phenomena, recognising that these developments are potentially game-changing for commerce and further digitalisation of contract law. To this end, ‘smart contracts’ and the systems they are running on are analysed with regard to developments of ‘connected contracts’ and a network(ed) understanding of contract law already developed for newer contractual and company law constructs such as just-in-time production. In order not to limit the examination to ‘traditional’ manufacturing networks but to re-investigate the phenomenon of networks in law more generally, this is complemented by taking account of socio-legal descriptions of networks and law, as well as providing a brief account of current or past alternative approaches to bridge law and technology that are relevant for context and understanding.