Sofia Lopes Barata, Paulo Rupino da Cunha, Aguilar, José Ricardo
A contract that regulates the online sales of a fictitious wine shop. Physical form (legal contract) and its translation into digital format (smart contract) in Solidity.<br>This document is part of the paper:<br><br>Barata, S., & Cunha, P. R. (2019). Legal and Smart! An Exploratory Case Study on Understandability of Smart Contracts. In Conferência da Associação Portuguesa de Sistemas de Informação (CAPSI). Lisboa, Portugal.
The main objective of this study was to identify the potential difficulties that the verification of cryptocurrencies presents to SARS and determining whether these problems will also be encountered by tax authorities in Brazil, Russia, India and China (members of the BRICS group of countries). The study examined how the BRICS’ countries were addressing cryptocurrency data challenges and determining whether South Africa could learn from the solutions implemented by these countries. The information gathering powers of SARS were also examined in order to determine whether those powers are on par with those of the BRICS’ countries. The findings suggest that it is vital that tax authorities link the taxpayer’s real identity to the taxpayer’s digital identity in order to trace the taxpayer’s tax profile and verify compliance with tax legislation. The findings also suggest that certain BRICS countries did not experience significant verification difficulties. China has, however, banned the use of cryptocurrencies. Russia is in the process of passing tax legislation pertaining to cryptocurrencies and therefore, the Russian tax authorities have not yet undertaken to verify cryptocurrency transactions. India has addressed the verification challenges presented by cryptocurrencies by introducing legislation that compels clients of cryptocurrency exchanges to register with the exchange before transacting. Brazil is in the process of passing legislation which will require cryptocurrency exchanges to supply the Brazilian tax authorities with taxpayers’ identities, transaction amounts and transaction history on a monthly basis. Private altcoins, face-to-face transactions, cryptocurrency mixers and online peer-to-peer markets (which require no registration) present the largest verification challenges due to the difficulty in tracking these transactions. It was also found that the information gathering powers of SARS are on par with those of the BRICS’ countries and therefore, SARS is also able to request information from cryptocurrency exchanges as a means of collecting data for verification purposes. The study concluded with recommendations for SARS to consider in addressing the verification challenges posed by cryptocurrency transactions.
We live in a digital world where technological innovations have dramatically changed our lives. Each day, new potentially disruptive offerings and ideas appear. On a tectonic scale, some of these innovations are minor tremors that will quickly subside and be forgotten, while others are major earthquakes that will reshape our economic landscape completely. Wi-Fi and smartphones are among the examples of huge seismic changes in the recent past. Together with the Internet, search engines and interactive Web 2.0, they have changed the ways we buy, search, communicate, date, entertain ourselves, do business and much more. In ...
In our view the fundamental obstacle to open access (OA) is the lack of any incentive-based mechanism that unbundles authors’ accepted manuscripts (AMs) from articles (VoRs). The former can be seen as the public good that ought to be openly accessible, whereas the latter is owned by publishers and rightly paywall-restricted. We propose one such mechanism to overcome this obstacle: BitViews. BitViews is a blockchain-based application that aims to revolutionize the OA publishing ecosystem. Currently, the main academic currency of value is the citation. There have been attempts in the past to create a second currency whose measure is the online usage of research materials (e.g. PIRUS). However, these have failed due to two problems. Firstly, it has been impossible to find a single agency willing to co-ordinate and fund the validation and collation of global online usage data. Secondly, online usage metrics have lacked transparency in how they filter non-human online activity. BitViews is a novel solution which uses blockchain technology to bypass both problems: online AMS usage will be recorded on a public, distributed ledger, obviating the need for a central responsible agency, and the rules governing activity-filtering will be part of the open-source BitViews blockchain application, creating complete transparency. Once online AMS usage has measurable value, researchers will be incentivized to promote and disseminate AMs. This will fundamentally re-orient the academic publishing ecosystem. A key feature of BitViews is that its success (or failure) is wholly and exclusively in the hands of the worldwide community of university and research libraries, as we suggest that it ought to be financed by conditional crowdfunding, whereby the actual financial commitment of each contributing library depends on the total amount raised. If the financing target is not reached, then all contributions are returned in full and if the target is over-fulfilled, then the surplus is returned pro rata.
Technology is entering every part of our daily life leading to integration with all aspects of modern society. Social sciences research is not an exception of this role. The fourth revolution is intertwined in the process we do research. In this thesis, two models are designed based on blockchain and smart contract technology to solve the current problems in the existing traditional models. Those traditional models proved to have certain problems including being inflexible and having so many parties involved the network. The new model provided by this thesis is built upon blockchain and smart contract technology. Therefore, those networks have the benefits of being more flexible and having less parties involved in the network. the first case is a crowdfunding network, we have examined a traditional crowdfunding and developed a similar one based on blockchain and smart contracts technology to overcome the drawbacks of the existing network. the second case is a marriage contract network where we built a network similar to the traditional one but has the ability to remove the burden of wasting time and effort. Finally, both cases are compared based on the change in structure and functions of each party in the network. We have seen some changes in terms of structure between the two networks, however, the main change came in the functions of each party and the removal on unnecessary ones in the network which is expected to reduce the transaction cost.
Plattformen wie YouTube, Facebook, Twitter oder Amazon sind die neuen sozialen Magneten - Clanbildner einer sich anbahnenden globalen digitalen Stammesgesellschaft. Während die herkömmlichen sozialen Bindungskräfte von Familien, Institutionen, Parteien, Verbänden und Staaten zunehmend schwinden, entstehen um digitale Plattformen wimmelnde Kollektive, die sich wie Schwärme oder Horden ausnehmen. Ihre Benutzer sind "Follower", digitale Gefolgschaft hält die neuen Clans zusammen. Der Philosoph Christoph Türcke zeigt in einer brisanten Analyse, wohin die Dynamik der Digitalisierung führt. Sein neues Buch ist ein Augenöffner.
Blockchain and smart contracts are forming new systems to record and manage businesses with less need for intermediaries. The new systems are expected to offer high level of governance with lower cost as compared to the traditional technologies. While there is a continuous effort to apply this innovative technology in several businesses, Islamic finance in general—and Islamic social finance in particular—are facing few challenges that could be solved by such innovations. Islamic social finance institutions such as waqf are facing some challenges in enhancing its governance structure to ensure Shariah compliance as well as economic efficiency. This chapter explains how blockchain and smart contract technologies can help these institutions for better governance, lower transaction cost, more transparency, and higher trust, hence enhancing the business flexibility and market accessibility. It also presents some related cases that are currently under development as an evidence for the practicality of these technologies in the Islamic social finance arena.
While global sourcing arrangements are highly complex and usually represent large value to the partners, little is known of the use of e-contracts or smart contracts and contract management systems to enhance the contract management process. In this paper we assess the potential of emerging technologies for global sourcing. We review current sourcing contract issues and evaluate three technologies that have been applied to enhance contracting processes. These are (1) semantic standardisation, (2) cognitive technologies and (3) smart contracts and blockchain. We discuss that each of these seem to have their merit for contract management and potentially can contribute to contract management in more complex and dynamic sourcing arrangements. The combination and configuration in which these three technologies will provide value to sourcing should be on the agenda for future research in sourcing contract management.
Smart contracts are one of the most significant innovations in blockchain technology, enabling secure, transparent, and automated financial transactions without the need for intermediaries such as banks or clearinghouses. By embedding business rules into programmable code, smart contracts automatically execute agreements when predefined conditions are met, ensuring trust, immutability, and efficiency. Their adoption has expanded across banking, payments, trade finance, insurance, digital asset management, securities trading, and peer-to-peer lending. Smart contracts reduce manual intervention, lower transaction costs, accelerate settlement processes, and enhance transparency through decentralized validation mechanisms. This study examines the evolution of blockchain and smart contracts, reviews existing literature on contract automation and decentralized finance, and proposes a blockchain-based framework for financial transaction execution and settlement. Performance analysis demonstrates improvements in transaction speed, security, transparency, and cost efficiency compared to traditional financial systems. Despite challenges related to scalability, interoperability, privacy, and regulatory compliance, smart contracts show strong potential to transform financial ecosystems. Future advancements in blockchain scalability, secure programming, and regulatory standardization are expected to further strengthen their role in decentralized financial services and automated digital economies.
Smart contracts are the key component in Ethereum. They hold the logic to be executed on the network, keep track of their own state, and can interact with other smart contracts as well. However, they have some limitations, such as limited computation per transaction and expensive storage costs. They also cannot initiate new transactions – they depend on external accounts to trigger them. And since they run on the Ethereum network, they cannot directly interact with anything outside it. In this chapter, we will
The synergy between computer programs and contract law has generated considerable attention among legal scholars. Smart contracts were first theoretically described in 1996 but they came to life in 2009, with the development of cryptocurrencies. Relying on the papers published in the European Journal of Private Law, the author presents the problems and dilemmas arising from contract digitalization. Irrespective of whether smart contracts are perceived as a revolutionary change in contract law or just as a new mode of concluding and executing a contract, the automatic performance of a contractual obligation and the immutability of smart contracts profoundly affect the existing contractual practices. Traditional concepts such as contract formation, interpretation and inability to perform have acquired new meanings and functions. Online protection of contracting parties, consumers and the public order requires a regulatory reform but it is also essential to adapt technology to the intrinsic nature of legal transactions in order to meet juristic requirements. A smart contract is comparable to a vending machine: it is immutable and blockchain-based. The paper focuses on the most important types of smart contracts, their characteristics and application. Smart contracts lack artificial intelligence and their legal effects have been challenged. However, smart contracts have a great potential in terms of facilitating legal transactions and reducing the risk of contractual breach.
The dissertation examined the effect of cryptocurrencies on the portfolio risk-adjusted returns of traditional and alternative investments using daily arithmetic returns from August 2015 to October 2018 of traditional assets (South African stocks, bonds, currencies), alternative assets (commodities, South African real estate) and cryptocurrencies (Cryptocurrency index (CRIX) and ten other individual cryptocurrencies). This is worth investigating as cryptocurrencies have been performing well while the listed equities in South Africa and most alternative investments have been underperforming (Srilakshmi &amp; Karpagam, 2017). The mean-variance analysis, the Sharpe ratio, the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) and the mean-variance spanning techniques were employed to analyse the data. The spanning test carried out was the multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression Wald test. The research findings showed that the inclusion of cryptocurrencies in a portfolio of investments improves the efficient frontier of the portfolio of investments and the portfolio of investments risk-adjusted returns. Moreover, the findings suggested that cryptocurrencies are good portfolio diversification assets. However, investments in cryptocurrencies should be made with caution as the risks of investments are high in relation to traditional and alternative investments. The findings of this study advocate for individual and institutional investors to include cryptocurrencies within their South African portfolio of traditional and alternative investments.
Smart contracts are a new form of contracts that handle transactions of economical value between users on a network, without the need for a middle man. This is possible as the integrity of the transactions are ensured using Blockchain technology. However, safe transactions are not always a guarantee as secure smart contracts can be difficult to write. Security vulnerabilities in smart contracts can be exploited and result in great financial losses for contract users. In this report we examine how interference can be counteracted in transactions involving smart contracts. This is to ensure that assets of economical value do not run the risk of disappearing and that the flow of information between smart contracts remains truthful. The term "interference" is coined precisely in relation to smart contracts. Moreover, two different solutions for two interference problems are examined, which mainly involve locking the access to certain functions for specific contracts so that no modification of the state of one contract can take place until a transaction is finished. The methods for counteracting interference in the transactions work, but the solutions are adapted to the specific pr blems and do not serve as a "general" solution to the problem of interference.
Getting a global society to agree something has value and can be used as a currency without government support and without a physical form is one of the most significant accomplishments in monetary history. 1 This research critically analyses a significant yet, uncertain area of law in South Africa -the regulation of cryptocurrencies.Cryptocurrencies are digital representations of value supported by cryptography and function within a global computerised ledger system called the blockchain.Cryptocurrencies are multifaceted with its use extending beyond an alternative payment method.Cryptocurrencies are not issued nor controlled by a central regulatory authority, hence, they are not considered to be legal tender in South Africa.Currently, as at September 2019, cryptocurrencies are not directly regulated in South Africa.South African financial regulators, particularly the South African Reserve Bank and the South African National Treasury caution users about the risks associated with cryptocurrencies and vigorously indicate that citizens have no recourse to South African authorities.On the other 'Any or all activities related to the acquisition, trading or use of virtual currencies, 6 particularly [cryptocurrencies] are at the end-user's sole and independent risk and have no recourse to the bank.' 7 2 Financial technology is defined by Price Water House Cooper as a dynamic segment at the intersection of the financial services and technology sectors where technology focused start-ups and new market entrants innovate products and services currently provided by the traditional financial services industry.It is financial innovation intertwined with legal technology to change the way finance is conducted, often as a disruptive technology.Disruptive innovation refers to the creation of new markets and value networks that eventually disrupt the existing markets and value networks, displacing established market leaders and alliances.Many financial innovations are thought of as disruptive because they usher in new products, new ways of effecting transactions and intermediation, new institutions and organisational forms that may permanently change the landscape of finance.
In the field of cryptoeconomics the Ethereum (Ethereum Foundation) project gave opportunity to create “own” cryptocurrency – new token based on its smart-contract platform to everyone without lowlevel programming skills. Then it became obvious that tokens could be used for crowdfunding as the Ethereum did in 2014. Unregulated and easy to access such scheme became popular among related to the blockchain tech startups. It was named Initial Coin Offering (ICO/or ITO). Despite its name, which is similar to IPO, this scheme is usually used for venture funding of a new project instead of expanding already well-established working business. The authors use machine-learning algorithms to classify ICOs and estimate ROI based on public digital data and web-sources. The goal of the research is to develop sustainable and efficient model, which will predict target profit ROI (profit trends) of ICO startup. Data collection and analysis period: Feb-Mar 2018. The prediction model and the application (service) of ICO startups’ selection are developed as the result of the study. Results. There were over 3000 samples of ICO-startups in the research dataset. After cleaning and elimination of outliers, it contained only 518. The number of samples with positive ROI (which means that these ICOs were profitable) was 234. Cross validation metric was confirmed to be accurate. The model achieved 79 % accuracy (average value). To prove this score separated prediction was executed the metrics: for test dataset AUC is 0.78; for profitable samples Precision: 0.76; Recall: 0.9 for profitable; F1-score: 0.82. Discussions. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, various IT components of the service architecture (applications) were developed to monitor, analyze and predict the risks of ICO startups. An artificial neural network was developed to solve the problem of ROI classification and prediction. The average ROI among profitable ICOS was 47 %. Taking into consideration that the crypto market is highly volatile and that there is a possibility that such investments will not bring any profit, this model of monitoring, analysis and prediction can be very valuable for the purposes of critical selection (exclusion) of a number of ICO projects from potential investment. Conclusion. The developed components can be used as a basis of monitoring service of ICO startups. The risk-forecasting model can be improved, foremost, by using the most complete (and wider) set of data. In this case, individual data collection and processing tasks can be performed manually, which will require additional resources. It should be noted that other types of neural networks can be developed for both text analysis and trading data analysis. This may lead to the logic of using a combination of models, which will potentially help to provide the most accurate predictions.