Blokzincir teknolojisi ve blokzincir üzerinden kurulan akıllı sözleşmeler, aracıları ortadan kaldırarak şeffaf, güvenilir, hızlı ve daha düşük masraflı şekilde işlem yapılmasını sağladığından milletlerarası ticaretin farklı birçok sektöründe sıkça kullanılmaya başlanmıştır. Milletlerarası ticaret açısından daha çok kimlik tespitini kolaylaştıran özel izinli blokzincir platformları tercih edilse de kullanıcıların anonim işlem yapabildikleri ve kimlik tespitlerinin neredeyse mümkün olmayabileceği açık izinsiz blokzincirlerde de milletlerarası nitelikli ticari veya ticari olmayan sözleşme kurulması mümkündür. Dolayısıyla, olası bir uyuşmazlıkta blokzincir üzerinden kurulan milletlerarası nitelikli akıllı sözleşmelere uygulanacak hukukun tespiti, özellikle açık izinsiz blokzincir platformları üzerinden kurulan akıllı sözleşmeler bakımından oldukça önem arz etmektedir. Bu tezde, 5718 sayılı Milletlerarası Özel Hukuk ve Usul Hukuku Hakkında Kanun'da düzenlenen bağlama noktalarının açık izinsiz blokzincir platformlarında kurulan akıllı sözleşmelere uygulanıp uygulanamayacağı sorusuna cevap aranmıştır. Konu ele alınırken özellikle milletlerarası ticari sözleşmeler bakımından değerlendirme yapılmış; kanunda özel olarak düzenlenen sözleşmelere ilişkin bağlama noktaları ise farklılaştıkları noktalarda ele alınmıştır. Bunu yaparken, karşılaştırmalı hukuktan da faydalanarak çözüm ve önermelerde bulunulmuştur. Anahtar kelimeler: Blokzincir, akıllı sözleşmeler, milletlerarası özel hukuk, kanunlar ihtilafı kuralları, bağlama noktası, uygulanacak hukuk
Die folgenden drei Zitate aus dem Jahr 2021 beschreiben die vielfältigen und kontroversen Erwartungen betr. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) recht illustrativ.
Der deutsche Soziologe Niklas Luhmann (1968) brachte in seinem Buch »Vertrauen – Ein Mechanismus zur Reduktion sozialer Komplexität« die grundsätzliche Problematik von risikobehafteten Entscheidungen von uns Menschen im sozioökonomischen System hervorragend auf den Punkt.
Blockchains and smart contracts are novel concepts that provide unique challenges to legal systems. This research outlines the extent to which these new and innovative technologies create potentially unhinging effects for the laws of contract in Europe. It does so by taking three steps. First of all, in light of the transboundary nature of the technology, this research looks at French law, German law, English law, and Dutch law to analyse the impact on the different systems of contract law. Whilste doing so it looks at formation of contracts, interpretation of contracts, and vitiation of contracts. Secondly, it analyses the impact of the technology on the European rules on unfair terms in consumer contracts. This research argues that the existing rules on unfair terms in consumer contracts should be applied to smart legal agreements in business-to-consumer relations. Lastly it analyses the existing European private international rules on the basis of which jurisdiction and applicable law is determined. In this respect the research concludes that the vast majority of these European rules are ‘smart contract’-proof.
1 Decentralized Finance from the Perspective of Czech Financial Regulation and MiCA Proposal Abstract Decentralized Finance constitutes a new system for allocating resources by using irreplicable digital data that can be processed within a predefined framework of automatic operations based on blockchain technology. Its development has brought not only new economic opportunities but also a number of risks and legal issues. Since Decentralized Finance is in its early stages, relevant legal questions relating to its positioning within the existing and forthcoming legal frameworks are still not firmly established yet. This thesis aims to answer those relating to the applicability of selected Czech financial regulations and the European Commission's Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Markets in Crypto-assets, as well as validate the hypothesis that the wide scope of the MiCA Proposal could influence the ecosystem of Decentralized Finance. First, the important technical foundations of Decentralized Finance and their specifics were outlined, and relevant financial applications were established for further assessment. Subsequently, the applications were compared with the scope of the chosen Czech financial regulation, namely the Act on Payment System, the Act on Currency...
With the increasing adoption of the Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain, it is timely to study the economy created by such blockchain. In this chapter, we will survey recent progress on the trading and wealth evolution in a cryptocurrency where the new coins are issued according to the PoS protocol. We first consider the wealth evolution in the PoS protocol assuming no trading, and focus on the problem of decentralisation. Next we consider each miner's trading incentive and strategy through the lens of optimal control, where the miner needs to trade off PoS mining and trading. Finally, we study the collective behavior of the miners in a PoS trading environment by a mean field model. We use both stochastic and analytic tools in our study. A list of open problems are also presented.
Diese Maturaarbeit untersucht die technologischen Grundlagen und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten von Kryptowährungen. Sie bietet eine tiefgehende Analyse der Technologie hinter Bitcoin und Ethereum, einschliesslich Kryptografie (Elliptic Curve Cryptography, SHA-256), Smart Contracts und Konsensmechanismen (Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake). Ein zentraler praktischer Teil der Arbeit ist die Programmierung einer eigenen Kryptowährung (YNL) als ERC-20 Token mittels Solidity. Dieser Token wurde erfolgreich auf der Polygon Sidechain veröffentlicht und auf der dezentralen Handelsplattform Uniswap in einem Liquiditätspool bereitgestellt. Abschliessend wird die zukünftige Rolle von Kryptowährungen in der Gesellschaft kritisch beleuchtet.
Ulysse Pavloff, Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou, Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni
Ethereum has undergone a recent change called the Merge, which made Ethereum a Proof-of-Stake blockchain shifting closer to BFT consensus. Ethereum, which wished to keep the best of the two protocols designs (BFT and Nakomoto-style), now has an involved consensus protocol as its core. The result is a blockchain being possibly produced in a tree-like form while participants try to finalize blocks. Several attacks jeopardizing liveness have been found in this new setting. The Ethereum community has responded by creating a patch. We discovered a new attack on the patched protocol. To support our analysis, we propose a new formalization of the properties of liveness and availability of the Ethereum blockchain, and we provide a pseudo-code. We believe this formalization to be helpful for other analyses as well. Our results yield that the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake has probabilistic liveness, influenced by the parameter describing the time frame allowed for validators to change their mind about the current main chain.
The decentralized issuance of financial instruments is presently problematic under EU law. This situation will change with the entry into force of the Regulation on a pilot regime for market infrastructures based on distributed ledger technology. The Regulation provides for a regulatory sandbox - the pilot regime - that market operators can use to test distributed ledger technologies in the financial market industry in a way compatible with EU law. While this will improve legal certainty and increase protection for consumers, it will also introduce a completely new paradigm in financial market legislation: the decentralization of financial instruments. Moreover, the Regulation imposes considerable obligations on market operators, while also granting to the European Securities and Markets Authority and national competent authorities a relevant but difficult role in overseeing and monitoring the pilot regime's development. This Insight aims to provide an overview of the novel features introduced by the Regulation and reflect on whether the legislation will favour or frustrate innovation at EU level.
Article „Gehe nicht über Los und ziehe trotzdem 4000 Euro ein“: Vermögensabschöpfung bei Bitcoin als Spiel ohne Regeln? was published on September 1, 2022 in the journal Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft (volume 134, issue 3).
There are different approaches worldwide on how to regulate cryptocurrency: legalization, partial ban, or absolute ban. China has chosen the third option. Since 2013 the PRC has been introducing restrictive measures targeting ICO, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency activities. In 2022 it finalized the formation of a legal framework for cryptocurrency regulation by publishing "Judicial Interpretation on Illegal Fundraising Criminal Cases." The main reasons for the prohibitive Chinese approach are combating money laundering, ICO related scams, and illegal financing, i.e., public interest prevails over private interests. An analysis of the judicial practice of Chinese courts demonstrates that despite a rising number of cryptocurrency related civil disputes, plaintiffs are deprived of judicial protection because investing in digital financial assets is illegal and the rights of investors are not legitimate. The paper argues that a cryptocurrency ban makes it impossible to satisfy claims concerning illegal fundraising activities, while encouraging investors not to have any relations with illegal agents, brokers or exchanges.
On 10 June 2021, the Electronic Securities Act came into force in Germany, with which a great leap towards the modernization and dematerialization of German securities law was made. For the first time in Germany, the issue of securities in electronic form is possible without the need for a tangible securities certificate. With the emergence of two new types of (electronic) securities, new features were added to German (securities) law, which raise substantial questions, for instance, about the legal nature, issuance, and transference of electronic securities. By enabling electronic securities registers, the act also invites new actors into the ecosystem of the German financial market and modifies the role of already existing actors. As these registers can be based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), Germany has opened up to innovative technologies. Germany’s embrace of modern technology brings its securities law to the cutting edge (forefront) of the discipline and may create new opportunities for market participants but also pose new challenges for them as well as the regulator and supervisory authorities. The article addresses some of these issues and provides an overview of the legal framework for electronic securities. distributed ledger technology, electronic securities, Electronic Securities Act (Germany)
Die Digitalisierung des Geldes durch die Einführung des elektronischen Zahlungsverkehrs in diesem Jahrhundert bildet die Grundlage des heutigen unkörperlichen Geldverkehrs. Das Aufkommen neuer rein digitaler Zahlungsarten wie Kryptowährungen setzen diesen Trend der Entmaterialisierung des Geldverkehrs fort. Insofern ist auch das Recht der Zwangsvollstreckung der Frage ausgesetzt, inwieweit die Vollstreckung in solche Werte zur Befriedigung des Gläubigers möglich ist. Dieser Frage geht die vorliegende Dissertation auf Basis des deutschen Vollstreckungsrecht am Beispiel der Kryptowährung Bitcoins nach.
As once said by former Deputy Director-General of the European Commission, Carles Esteva Mosso, a merger remedy is ‘an artificial intervention in the economy that could go wrong and does go wrong’ at times.1 Although a large part of the recent European competition law enforcement was focused on the tech industry, the authority has not used innovative technology in its merger interventions. But what if technology was the missing piece to improve merger remedies’ results in several sectors such as energy, telecom, and technology itself? In order to bridge this gap, this paper will explore the combination of two contrasting materials: blockchain and merger control. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a potential use case of blockchain in merger access remedies design and implementation.2 Ultimately, it intends to contribute to the computational antitrust research agenda, by virtue of exploring how blockchain technology can aid better enforcement and management of merger policy.3
Records of book-entry securities Abstract The topic of this thesis is the registration of book-entry securities, especially with re- gard to new technologies for keeping such records, such as distributed ledger technology (DLT). The first chapter briefly describes how this technology works and how it has helped to overcome the long intractable problem of decentralised databases, the so-called double- spending issue. The following chapter then deals with the characteristics of the products (fi- nancial and otherwise) embedded in DLT technology, collectively usually referred to as cryp- to-assets. These are generally divided into cryptocurrencies, property or investment tokens, which may correspond in their characteristics to certain types of securities, and utility tokens. In the third part of the thesis, the existing legal regulation of book-entry securities in Czech and European law is analysed in detail, and the regulations of private and public law are discussed with regard to possible interpretative ambiguities and potential disputes. The key point is the assessment of the legal consequences of issuing a book-entry security in vio- lation of the public law requirements for registration with a central depository and the ques- tion of the autonomy of the concept of a security in European financial market...
Dem Schädiger obliegt der Beweis, dass ihn an der Übertretung des Schutzgesetzes keine subjektive Sorgfaltswidrigkeit trifft, er das Schutzgesetz also unverschuldet übertreten hat. Der Schädiger hat dabei zu beweisen, dass ihm die objektive Übertretung der Schutznorm nicht als schutzbezogenes Verhaltensunrecht anzulasten ist. Schutzgesetze sind konkrete Verhaltensvorschriften, die einerseits durch die Gefahren, die vermieden werden sollen, und andererseits durch die Personen, die geschützt werden sollen, begrenzt sind. Das Schürfen von Kryptowährung (hier: Bitcoin-Mining) stellt zumindest im Beurteilungszeitraum der zweiten Jahreshälfte 2017 in Österreich kein verbotenes Glücksspiel dar. Ein Anlageberater, der damals Investitionen in Bitcoin-Mining Plattformen empfohlen hatte, konnte daher davon ausgehen, dass die Schaffung der Krypto-Assets somit nicht anders behandelt wurde als die Herstellung sonstiger Wirtschaftsgüter. Anhaltspunkte dafür, dass die Finanzbehörden das Mining als Glücksspiel einstufen könnte, gab es 2017 nicht. Redaktionelle Leitsätze
Zusammenfassung Smart Contracts als algorithmen-basierte Routinen eignen sich zur automatisierten Vertragsabwicklung. Hierzu ist es notwendig, dass sich die Vertragsgestaltung der besonderen Anforderungen bewusst wird, die ein Programmcode, der lediglich einfache Wenn-dann-Beziehungen abbilden kann, an sie stellt. Ein automatisches Ablaufen eines Smart Contracts kann nur dann zur Vertragserfüllung eingesetzt werden, wenn die komplexen juristischen Vereinbarungen zwischen den Parteien derart dekonstruiert werden, dass seine automatische Ausführung möglich ist. Für den Bauvertrag wurde die Zahlungsabwicklung als ein Komplex identifiziert, der es mittels Bautenstandsfeststellungen mithilfe der Methode BIM erlaubt, eine (teil-)automatisierte Vertragsabwicklung durchzuführen. Der Beitrag möchte das Bewusstsein für das Potenzial einer solchen Teilautomatisierung, aber auch für deren Grenzen schärfen. Die Vertragsgestaltung muss ermitteln, an welchen Stellen trotz Teilautomatisierung menschlicher Input notwendig bleibt. Darüber hinaus gilt es die zwingenden Regelungen des Datenschutzes zu beachten. Im Rahmen eines Ausblicks wird untersucht, inwiefern sich die für den Bauvertrag gefundenen Ergebnisse auf die Abwicklung anderer Vertragstypen übertragen lassen.
Smart Contracts bieten erhebliche Chancen für den auf Einfachheit, Schnelligkeit und Rechtssicherheit angewiesenen Rechtsverkehr zwischen Unternehmern (B2B). Die erhöhte Eigenverantwortlichkeit der Beteiligten rückt die Privatautonomie in den Vordergrund, lässt größeren Freiraum für selbstdurchsetzende Gestaltungen und spricht dafür, den infolge der Digitalisierung verbesserten Möglichkeiten der Informationsauswertung durch eine zurückhaltende AGB-Kontrolle Rechnung zu tragen. Vor diesem Hintergrund können sich Smart Contracts des unternehmerischen Rechtsverkehrs als Motor eines selbstgeschaffenen Rechts der digitalisierten Wirtschaft erweisen.