이 논문은 인공지능(AI) 기술의 발전과 함께 등장한 인공지능 예술(AI Art)의 저작권 문제와 NFT(Non-Fungible Token : 대체불가능한 토큰)를 활용한 디지털 자산의 소유권 문제를 종합적으로 검토한다.<br/> AI가 독립적으로 생성한 예술작품에 대한 저작권 귀속 문제는 현재 국제적으로 가장 활발히 논의되는 법적 쟁점 중 하나이다. 미국은 인간의 창작성 요건을 강조하여 AI 단독 생성물에 대한 저작권을 부정하고 있으며, 영국, 중국 등 일부 국가는 컴퓨터 생성 저작물 개념을 통해 일정한 보호를 인정하고 있다.<br/> 한편 NFT 기술은 블록체인 기반의 소유권 인증을 가능하게 하지만, NFT 구매자가 원본 저작권을 자동으로 취득하는 것은 아니며, 스마트 계약을 통해 부여되는 라이선스 범위가 실질적인 권리 내용을 결정한다. 이 과정에서 AI가 생성한 저작물이 NFT로 민팅될 경우 저작권 침해, 권리 귀속, 라이선스 범위 설정 등 복잡한 법적 문제가 발생한다. 이러한 문제들은 미국, EU, 일본 등 주요국의 법제에서 상이한 접근 방식을 취하고 있으며, 공정이용(Fair Use)과 데이터 마이닝(Text and Data Mining) 규정의 적용 여부도 논의되고 있다.<br/> 본 논문은 이와 같은 국제적 논의 동향을 비교법적으로 분석하고, AI 아트와 NFT 결합으로 인한 새로운 법적 도전과제에 대응하기 위한 법제도의 개선방안을 제시한다.
The article examines the integration of blockchain technology and smart contracts into the sphere of civil law relations, focusing on legal consequences and emerging problems related to their application. As these technologies continue to transform various sectors, including finance, supply chain management, and the real estate market, the need for appropriate legal regulation is becoming increasingly urgent. The purpose of this article is to comprehensively analyze the use of blockchain and smart contracts in civil law relations and to study legal issues, current judicial practice, and various regulatory approaches in different jurisdictions. The research is based on an interdisciplinary approach that combines elements of legal analysis, comparative law, as well as the study of modern digital technologies. By examining the intersection of these advanced technologies with established legal principles, the author aims to illuminate the evolving landscape of digital agreements and their consequences for civil law in the 21st century. Assessing the importance of international cooperation for the formation of cross-border legal standards, as well as the prospects and challenges of further development, this study allows for an understanding of the emerging legal landscape of blockchain technologies in the civil law sphere.
Smart contract vulnerabilities pose persistent threats to decentralized applications, causing substantial financial losses across the Web 3.0 ecosystem. Although recent deep learning-based detectors improve scalability, they face two key limitations: (i) limited semantic fidelity because bytecode- or sequence-level representations fail to capture contextual dependencies; and (ii) inadequate vulnerability localization, as most approaches are confined to contract-level classification, limiting their audit utility. To address these challenges, we present ContractScanner for joint vulnerability detection and fine-grained localization directly from the source code. First, we propose an anchor-aware semantic slicing method to filter contracts into vulnerability-relevant regions by matching structural anchor patterns and preserving contextual dependencies. Second, we transform these slices into heterogeneous program graphs that encode control, data, and syntactic flows.We then apply a dual-stage reasoning pipeline. A Graph Isomorphism Network (GIN) extracts global structural features for contract-level classification, while a Graph Autoencoder (GAE) reconstructs fine-grained topological patterns to localize vulnerability-critical code regions. Third, to address data scarcity, we introduce anchor-guided G-Mixup, which generates augmented training samples by interpolating feature embeddings of contract slices with similar vulnerability semantics. We evaluate ContractScanner on two real-world benchmarks spanning five major vulnerability types—reentrancy, integer overflow/underflow, timestamp dependency, and callstack depth exhaustion. Our method achieves an average F1-score of 94.74%, significantly outperforming symbolic analyzers, classical learning models, and prior graph-based methods.
Abstract The Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts (UPICC) mark their 30th anniversary as a cornerstone of international business law and, arguably, are one of the most significant components of modern lex mercatoria. This article aims to explore the future of the UPICC in the context of rapidly evolving technologies, particularly blockchain and its applications, such as smart contracts and digital assets. With the publication of the Unidroit Principles of Digital Assets and Private Law, emphasizing the importance of this new field in the unification of international commercial law, these two Unidroit instruments and their related legal frameworks must be analysed within a shared context. The author recognizes that the UPICC face notable challenges in addressing the distinct characteristics of smart contracts and digital assets, particularly in relation to their specific provisions. Additional challenges include the rise of blockchain ‘arbitrations’ with automatic enforcement of awards and the circumvention of national or international laws and rules, the abundance of mandatory rules governing digital assets, and the possible rise of AI-driven smart contracting. Nevertheless, the article concludes that the UPICC’s inherent flexibility enables it to adapt and position itself as a cornerstone of modern lex mercatoria within the crypto ecosystem, contributing significantly to the evolution of the so-called lex cryptographia.
Chanuka Wijayakoon, Hai Dong, H. M. N. Dilum Bandara, Zahir Tari · 5 authors
Smart contracts can implement and automate parts of legal contracts, but ensuring their legal compliance remains challenging. Existing approaches such as formal specification, verification, and model-based development require expertise in both legal and software development domains, as well as extensive manual effort. Given the recent advances of Large Language Models (LLMs) in code generation, we investigate their ability to generate legally compliant smart contracts directly from natural language legal contracts, addressing these challenges. We propose a novel suite of metrics to quantify legal compliance based on modeling both legal and smart contracts as processes and comparing their behaviors. We select four LLMs, generate 20 smart contracts based on five legal contracts, and analyze their legal compliance. We find that while all LLMs generate syntactically correct code, there is significant variance in their legal compliance with larger models generally showing higher levels of compliance. We also evaluate the proposed metrics against properties of software metrics, showing they provide fine-grained distinctions, enable nuanced comparisons, and are applicable across domains for code from any source, LLM or developer. Our results suggest that LLMs can assist in generating starter code for legally compliant smart contracts with strict reviews, and the proposed metrics provide a foundation for automated and self-improving development workflows.
The article examines the main regulatory provisions governing digital legal relations, including the norms of civil legislation and legislation on digital assets. Particular attention is paid to the definition of the features of digital rights that distinguish them from other objects of turnover, as well as to the analysis of the conditions for the emergence, exercise and transfer of such rights in the framework of distributed registers. The legal peculi-arities of smart contracts as software constructions replacing traditional forms of contractual interaction and ensuring the fulfillment of obligations without the participation of the parties after the activation of the algorithm are considered. Legal risks arising in the absence of normative regulation of smart contracts are substantiated, including the impossibility of judicial correction of performance, loss of access to digital assets and uncertainty of identification of subjects. Measures to improve legislation are proposed, including the regulatory consolida-tion of the concept of a smart contract, the establishment of a presumption of ownership of a digital right for a person with access to a key, as well as the recognition of the legal significance of blockchain records in judicial protection. Сonclusion is made about the the necessity of systemic adaptation of civil legislation to new forms of digital interaction and technological autonomy of turnover.
The 1980 Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) is currently the law of ninety-seven countries around the world. Part II (Formation of the Contracts) deals with the conclusion of the contract by way of the meeting of minds through offer and acceptance. CISG has been able to adapt to modern electronic means of communication such as email, despite the fact that the means of communication mentioned in the CISG are the ancient telegram and telex.When dealing with the electronic contract of sale, we are referring to those in which the offer and acceptance are made by electronic means, as derived from the rules of the offer and the acceptance under the CISG.In short, we are thinking about computers—today also mobile phones—connected to a network (internet). From this perspective, every purchase and sale contract under the CISG is capable of being concluded by electronic means following the classic and universal parameter (we find it in all legal systems in the world) of consent through the two declarations of will that give life to the contract, the offer and the acceptance. The offer and acceptance as a mechanism well present in the life of the contract and not only in its formation since other issues such as its modification or termination are observed under those parameters.The Vienna Convention has demonstrated its flexibility by adapting and applying without problems to electronic contracting. Technologies are evolving rapidly and we no longer question the validity of contracts concluded through electronic means but new and interesting perspectives emerge, as well as various legal problems that can be associated with the era of the digital economy, from the use of platforms as an intermediary in the contracting of goods or services—or simply as a meeting place or recreational or social exchange—when not as part of the commercial contracts themselves, the use of computer programs in the formation and performance of the contract, legal transactions on data, or the use of artificial intelligence in contracting.From a legal perspective, the question is whether the CISG, which is a traditional instrument of contract law, is sufficient to respond to the problems posed by the digital economy, specifically in the rise of the so-called SmartCcontracts, and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the formation of the contract.
Smart contracts are programs that work on blockchain technology and are designed to automatically perform certain operations. Today, smart contracts, especially Ethereum-based ones, are widely used in various fields such as finance, healthcare, supply chain and property management. Unlike traditional contracts, these contracts offer the advantage of executing transactions securely and transparently without the need for any intermediaries. However, due to their security vulnerabilities, they carry the risk of being exploited by malicious attackers. This work proposes a fuzzing-based approach to detect vulnerabilities in smart contracts. The proposed method aims to identify unknown or overlooked potential security vulnerabilities by enabling automatic testing of smart contracts. Within the scope of the study, different fuzzing-based analysis techniques were compared, the advantages and disadvantages of these methods were evaluated. The findings reveal that fuzzing-based testing techniques can be an effective tool in improving the security of smart contracts.
This chapter explores the evolution and legal implications of DAOs, starting with the pioneering case of The DAO in 2016. It delves into the legal challenges posed by The DAO, such as its ambiguous legal status, liability issues from code failures, jurisdictional questions, and the classification of its tokens as securities. The discussion then transitions to the broader context of how the concept of a company is evolving in the 21st century economy, highlighting the emergence of new digital social organizations using technology to protect stakeholders, yet failing to provide legal protection for DAO members who face liability risks. The chapter also examines both legislative and practical responses to these challenges, which had already been revealed in The DAO case, including the enactment of specific DAO laws and the adoption of legal wrappers. Finally, the chapter concludes with a call to integrate DAOs into the Swiss legal framework, reflecting Switzerland's progressive stance on blockchain technology.
Sarthak Gangurde, Ashwini Jadhav, Vijay Gatkal, Mansi More
The rapid advancements in genomics have raised concerns about the privacy of sensitive genetic data. This paper presents Zk-Gene, a Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) framework designed for the secure verification of genetic markers. Zk-Gene ensures that genetic data can be verified without exposing sensitive information, maintaining user privacy while allowing for critical health assessments. We describe the architecture of Zk-Gene, the cryptographic techniques employed, the construction of ZKP circuits for genetic markers, and demonstrate its applicability to genetic testing scenarios. This framework provides an innovative method for safeguarding genetic privacy while enabling essential genetic verifications.
This study presents a comparative analysis of trademark protection in the metaverse and the registration of virtual goods and non‐fungible tokens (NFTs) across three distinct legal systems: those of the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. Drawing on recent case law and evolving administrative guidelines, this study examines how traditional trademark doctrines—such as the likelihood‐of‐confusion standard in the U.S. under the Lanham Act, source-identifying function under the UK Trade Marks Act 1994, and proactive legislative reforms implemented by the Korean Intellectual Property Office—are being adapted to address the challenges posed by digital and virtual environments. Specifically, this study analyzes landmark cases such as Hermès International v. Rothschild and Yuga Labs, Inc. v. Ripps , which illustrate the extension of trademark protection to NFTs and other digital assets, as well as the interplay between trademark rights and freedom of expression. It also evaluates recent updates to international classification frameworks—including the 2024 Nice Classification and the Madrid Protocol—and discusses their implications for ensuring uniformity and effective enforcement of trademarks in a borderless digital market. The findings reveal that while each jurisdiction applies its own legal traditions to metaverse trademark disputes, all share a common policy objective: to prevent consumer confusion and safeguard brand integrity in an increasingly digital economy. Ultimately, the study advocates for proactive registration of trademarks as virtual goods and NFTs to streamline enforcement and enhance legal certainty, thereby fostering innovation and facilitating global trade in virtual environments.
Smart contracts, self-executing programs on blockchain platforms, are transforming how contractual obligations are expressed and enforced. Their adoption presents complex legal challenges, particularly in ascertaining the true will of contracting parties. This paper explores doctrinal and practical difficulties in determining intent within smart contracts, examining the transformation of the autonomy of will, the legal nature of smart contracts, the expression and proof of consent, and judicial and regulatory developments. Special emphasis is placed on Uzbekistan, where legal infrastructure remains underdeveloped. Through comparative analysis and authoritative academic sources, the article proposes solutions such as hybrid contractual models, legal recognition of smart contracts as electronic transactions, and standardized frameworks to ensure fairness and enforceability.
Abstract Non‐fungible tokens have caused a complete revolution in the digital space regarding how one thinks of unique assets such as pieces of art, music, and digital collectables, and how one trades them. Originating from blockchain technology, NFTs first came into existence in the year 2014 on a platform known as “Counterparty.” Since then, they have grown as an influential part of the digital economy. NFT is nonfungible, each token is unique and cannot be replaced‐which results in unprecedented possibilities and issues in the digital world. However, with the increasing demand for NFTs, several legal issues have emerged particularly in India, where the laws are still underdeveloped. As NFTs are representations of copyrighted works primary issues arising from NFTs are also related to Copyright. Ambiguities with NFTs are misapprehension over ownership, the challenge of managing and licensing NFTs using smart contracts, and the risk of unauthorized minting of copyrighted materials. This paper addresses these critical issues evaluates the current legal status of NFTs in India and explores their intersection with copyright laws. The focus is particularly on buyers' rights, including ownership complexities, the management of rights through licensing and assignments, and the issues around copyright infringement. The research highlights the urgent need for a legal framework for NFTs, delves into the intricacies of NFT ownership, transfers, and licensing, examines the challenges of unauthorized minting and the enforcement of buyers' rights and offers possible solutions.
Background: The rise of blockchain technology has led to the development of smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. While they promise enhanced efficiency, security, and automation, the legal implications of smart contracts on conventional contract law remain largely underexplored. The advent of these digital contracts challenges traditional legal frameworks and calls for a reassessment of existing contract law principles. Objective: This study aims to analyze the implications of smart contracts for conventional contract law, focusing on the legal, ethical, and practical challenges they present. The research seeks to evaluate how smart contracts align with or diverge from traditional contract principles such as offer, acceptance, and enforceability. Method: A qualitative research approach was employed, utilizing a comprehensive literature review and case law analysis to explore the intersection of smart contracts and conventional contract law. Interviews with legal experts and blockchain developers were also conducted to gather insights on real-world applications. Results: The findings reveal that while smart contracts offer substantial benefits in terms of automation and security, they also raise issues related to ambiguity, legal recognition, and the need for updated regulations. The study identifies a gap in existing legal frameworks regarding the enforceability of smart contracts. Conclusion: Smart contracts have significant potential to revolutionize contract law, but their integration into conventional legal systems requires substantial legal reform and adaptation. Further research is needed to establish clear regulatory standards.
Finding innovation in blockchain technology, the Online Art Gallery to changes the digital art marketplace to create a safe and transparent environment for artists and buyers. With this system, artists can sign up to upload, Manage and sell their artworks. Buyers can look for, purchase, and own with verified authenticity. Some of the most important features are the digital certificates generation, ownership verification as well as safe transactions. Blockchain-based, it offers greater security with watermarking, preventing screenshots, and decentralized storage through IPFS to prevent unauthorized use of the digital artworks. The process of buying artworks becomes relatively easy for the buyer, having an immutable transaction record on the blockchain that preserves ownership rights and establishes a basis of trust. The application also offers a user-friendly interface that connects artists to international crowds and simplifies the management and sale digital art to artists. The paper focuses on showing the enhancement of security, transparency, and efficiency in the marketplace by using blockchain technology for digital art, with value to both creators and collectors.
The ontological issues such as the concept, features, and attributes of smart contracts written in code and running on the blockchain have been the focus of research in the academic community.In this paper, we first construct a smart contract illegal behavior determination model based on the C4.5 decision tree algorithm, which realizes accurate prediction and determination of illegal behaviors existing in smart contract transactions by extracting multiple attribute features of smart contract transaction data.Then, the correlation between smart contract features and contract risk is analyzed by Pearson coefficient, and the risk assessment evaluation system of smart contract performance is constructed by using hierarchical analysis.Finally, the fulfillment path of smart contract is proposed by synthesizing all the analysis results.Among the 24 randomly selected samples, the total prediction probability of the illegal behavior determination model based on the C4.5 decision tree algorithm reaches 95.83%, which is able to effectively identify the illegal behavior of smart contracts.The Pearson chi-square value between smart contract features and contract risk is 224.6317, and the Sig.(two-tailed) value is 0.000, indicating that there is a significant correlation between the two.By constructing a smart contract risk assessment index system, this paper designs a dynamic monitoring model of smart contract fulfillment risk level, and proposes a smart contract fulfillment path from the aspects of reasonable allocation of legal responsibility and legal regulation of contract fulfillment.
Mrs. V. Deepapriya, C. Sathana, J. Rishwana Begam, V Rohini · 6 authors
Ensuring robust image security in cloud environments is a critical challenge due to risks such as unauthorized access, data tampering, and privacy breaches. This study introduces a Blockchain-based Secure Image Encryption (BC-SIE) method using Chebyshev Polynomial Fostered Hierarchical Auto-Associative Polynomial Convolutional Neural Network (CPHAPCNN) to enhance security, integrity, and high-fidelity image reconstruction. During encryption, the input image is divided into two unpredictable cryptographic shares, represented by black dot patterns, rendering them meaningless individually and preventing unauthorized access. These shares are then secured on a blockchain using an optimized BLAKE2b hashing algorithm, providing efficient and collision-resistant storage. Furthermore, the Chebyshev polynomial-based encryption strengthens security by introducing pixel scrambling, which makes the method resistant to cryptographic attacks. For decryption, the shares are recombined to reconstruct the image, but this introduces noise, impacting image quality. To mitigate this, a Hierarchical Auto-Associative Polynomial Convolutional Neural Network (HAPCNN) is utilized to reduce noise and preserve image details, ensuring near-lossless recovery. The performance of the BC-SIE-CPHAPCNN framework is evaluated using various metrics, including processing time, correlation coefficient, entropy, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR: 28.44 dB), and mean square error (MSE). The results demonstrate superior encryption security and image reconstruction accuracy, with an updated computed SSIM accuracy of 91.75%. Additionally, the Delegated Proof of Stake (DT-DPoS) blockchain consensus mechanism enhances both security and scalability. Experimental evaluations confirm that this approach outperforms existing methods, making it ideal for cloud storage, medical imaging, and secure surveillance systems.
The integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) in legal contract execution has revolutionized traditional contract enforcement mechanisms. Smart contracts, self-executing contracts with terms encoded into blockchain networks, have emerged as a transformative tool in business transactions, reducing the reliance on intermediaries and enhancing contract security. AI further enhances these contracts by providing predictive analytics, natural language processing (NLP) for contract interpretation, and automated dispute resolution mechanisms. However, despite their potential, the legal recognition and enforcement of smart contracts pose significant challenges. Jurisdictional issues, regulatory compliance, contract validity, and the limitations of blockchain immutability necessitate an in-depth analysis of the legal landscape governing smart contracts. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the legal and regulatory frameworks surrounding AI-driven smart contracts, identifying their advantages, limitations, and future prospects. The study examines case laws, real-time implementations, and the role of AI in streamlining dispute resolution. The findings reveal that while blockchain enhances contract security and AI assists in interpretation, the lack of uniform legal frameworks remains a major hurdle. Through comparative analysis of existing regulatory approaches and real-world applications, this paper outlines potential solutions for effective enforcement and dispute resolution in AI-enhanced smart contracts.
It is quite challenging to properly address the issues of digital assets and online identities by conventional estate rules in the era of digital technologies. Rising social media platforms, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other virtual assets have made digital legacy complex. Current research highlights the constraints of existing estate laws for the administration of digital assets after death and the legal obstacles resulting from digital platform contractual limitations. The key challenges identified are assets classification, protection of privacy rights, and enforcement of policies on a wider scale. By comparing the global legal approaches and evolving trends in digital inheritance, a comprehensive framework including digital assets into estate planning has been proposed. A balanced legal framework ensuring fair distribution, protecting heirs' rights and building trust in the digital economy is the solution.
The article is devoted to the study of the features of smart contracts, which are a type of electronic contracts. Smart contracts, which are also called “smart contracts” (origin of the word “smart contract”), correspond to modern trends in digitalization and provide an effective mechanism for the implementation of business, financial and economic relations in a virtual environment. The following methods were used in the study: general logical, method of analysis and synthesis, formal-legal, comparative-legal, systemic. When comparing the so-called “technological” and legal approaches to understanding the concept of “smart contract”, the views of different groups of foreign and domestic scientists and researchers on the interpretation of this concept were analyzed. The principle of operation of a smart contract is considered on a specific example, while the way in which a smart contract operates in certain specific conditions is studied in detail and possible reasons for its failure to perform are analyzed. When analyzing the operation of smart contracts, their practical, technical, legislative problems and features were identified. Thus, the feature of immutability of a smart contract is its advantage because it excludes the intervention of the human factor. But the immutability of a smart contract is also its disadvantage because it makes it impossible to conclude additional agreements to a smart contract when certain circumstances change. Taking into account the study of the properties of a smart contract and an example of its operation, it can be stated that a smart contract can function only in a certain environment provided that the executable program code has direct and unlimited access to the objects of the smart contract. This creates integration problems of a smart contract with the objects of its operation. Thus, if the subject of a smart contract is real estate and in this regard the specified electronic contract requires notarial electronic certification and corresponding registration in the digital environment, then today in Ukraine there is an integration problem of electronic notarial certification of such contracts due to the absence and legislative uncertainty of the mechanism of electronic notarial certification and registration. Also relevant is the problem of smart contracts regarding payments under them in cryptocurrency, which also requires a legislative solution, since the legal status of cryptocurrency in Ukraine has not yet been established. Solving these problems in the future will allow for the wider use of smart contracts by their Ukrainian counterparties.
The forensic evidence in the legal sector is now much more challenging to authenticate its integrity and authenticity. In fact, evidence management is easily tampered with, not authorized, and inconsistent because of the traditional systems that lack data integrity. This paper presents an end-to this challenge through the invention of using blockchain technology in evidence preservation and authentication. This paper presents a proposed system for providing an immutable and transparent chain of custody for forensic evidence using distributed ledger technologies and smart contracts. The methodology gives in detail a review of blockchain's ability to protect evidence from unauthorized access by other people as well as the ability of distributed ledgers to permit organizations to interoperate on the process of handling evidence. The results show that blockchain does not merely provide tamper-proof evidence custody but also provides an apparent and secure form of transferring custody, making judicial systems more reliable. Some of the challenges include scalability, security breaches, and regulatory compliance; nonetheless, blockchain is the revolutionary solution for enhancing forensic record storage and court documentation. This study throws the spotlight on blockchain's capability in revolutionizing the protection and authentication of evidence for criminal investigations in the future.
Introduzione: I processi di digitalizzazione nelle attività creative permettono di ottenere nuovi contenuti attraverso l'uso di dati e algoritmi di machine learning, creando relazioni inedite. In questo contesto, il diritto d’autore deve proteggere gli autori senza ostacolare l'uso dei dati virtuali, necessari per risultati originali. Metodologia: La ricerca esplora l'impatto dei non-fungible token (NFT), tecnologia emergente che ha rivoluzionato il settore artistico, sollevando problematiche legate al diritto d’autore e alla speculazione. Risultati: L'uso di tecnologie digitali ha aumentato l'indipendenza degli autori dai tradizionali intermediari, con i social network come vetrine virtuali. Nonostante le incertezze giuridiche, le prospettive sono positive grazie a strumenti come smart contract e blockchain. Conclusioni: Nonostante le problematiche legate agli NFT e alle incertezze normative, l'innovazione tecnologica, come l'automazione tramite blockchain, offre opportunità per un futuro promettente per la protezione dei diritti d’autore.