Blockchain Papers

I. DORONIN

The article explores the problem of the legal regulations of cryptocurrencies, considering socio-economic factors and changes in the modern globalized world.

O. RADUTNYI

The article deals with the certain aspects of the criminal law measures appliedto legal entities, the phenomenon of electronic legal entities (Decentralized Autonomous Organization or Decentralized Autonomous Corporation), the possibility of applying criminal law measures to electronic legal entities.

Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller

No abstract is available for this record.

Daniel Hellwig, Goran Karlic, Arnd Huchzermeier

This chapter looks beyond the novelty of self-executing ‘smart contracts’ in blockchain networks and explores developments against the background fact that commercial parties have, for centuries, used documentary credit to simulate autonomous performance. Blockchain-based smart contracts and documentary credit share three core functionalities which are essential to any effective autonomous performance, analogue or digital—they both (i) act through internalized media of exchange; (ii) operate as closed systems; and (iii) provide means of securing sufficient resources to guarantee contractual performance. Using these three functionalities as a framework, this chapter conducts a comparative analysis of mechanisms for effecting autonomous contractual performance in a commercial setting. From this comparison, a few hypotheses are drawn regarding the potential areas where smart contract technology is more likely to find fruitful application. In particular, the chapter considers potential limitations to applying smart contracts to scenarios beyond digital asset transfers, how dispute resolution mechanisms should be designed to complement (rather impair) the autonomous nature of contractual performance under smart contracts, and potential capital cost implications which might arise in some cases when parties seek to replace human intermediaries with smart contracts.

Mark Giancaspro

No abstract is available for this record.

Peter Eze, Tochukwu Eziokwu, Chinedu Okpara

An emergent use of the blockchain technology is to enable the transfer of digital assets between two parties. An extension to this is the Smart Property in which physical assets could be transferred too. Another extension is the exchange of services of all kinds in form of digitally executed contracts. In this paper, the problems with existing attempts to implement an all-inclusive smart contract platform were identified and a new framework proposed. In this framework, the technical and legal terms of any contract could be executed digitally if prepared with appropriate legal prose and required parameters for each of the terms of the contract. The cores of the framework are the technical, business and legal models, which are connected to each other. The technical model adapts block chain technology while ensuring granularity in implementing the terms of the contract as presented by the legal model using legal prose and necessary parameters. Using the proposed framework, some questions that have persisted with current implementation of Smart contracts that involves the blockchain were answered. The framework improves the efficiency and practicability of using smart contract for physical assets and non-financial services with emphasis. The contribution is mainly on ensuring an adoptable and practicable smart contract platform.

J. David Cummins, Aaron Wright, Ayyoub Ajmi, Jeannette Eicks

No abstract is available for this record.

Aleksei Gudkov

One of the key problems of blockchain technology is lack of control of users, organized societies, and state authorities over the transactions and asset on the decentralized network. The distributed ledger and blockchain are interesting as an example of new technology, which is the rule not only for users but also for governments. Technology-driven rules can be viewed as a technological law for blockchain users and legislative authorities. No legal regulation can change the anonymity or immutability of blockchain. Only another technology could turn the situation around. This is a lesson for every lawyer to learn not only the law but the scope of technology. The purpose of the article is an analysis of modern determinants of control distribution over assets, transactions, and decentralized organizations on blockchain distributed network. The article shows how control appears in a variety of different situations on blockchain network. Examples range from the individual and organizational control to control over the networking system discussing the possibilities of the participants to exercise control. On the base of the legal cases, the ability of controlling shareholder, directors, managers, governments, stakeholders and users of crypto-communities to control the organization, transactions and assets are discussed.

Andrey Fedorovski, Rostislav Berlinskii, Vladislav Ashikhmin

The presentation is dedicated to problems and approaches in the legal regulation of the use of one of the cryptocurrencies -Bitcoin. Currently Bitcoin causes bigger interest among the world society, which is connected, in particular, with the highly increased exchange rate of this cryptocurrency. A number of countries have already formed a well-defined position and created a legal basis for development or for a complete or partial restriction of this cryptocurrency. But at the moment the most part of the world countries do not have a legal and regulatory framework of Bitcoin. In this presentation there is an analysis identifying pros and cons of this cryptocurrency and also the consequences of its further integration into the biggest world countries. Besides, our group has considered the experience of the number of countries in which the legal regulation of this cryptocurrency is established. The research offers a way for the further legal regulation of Bitcoin in Russia.

L Elina Sidorenko

The research focuses on the assessment of the criminal turnover of crypto currency as the most sought-after product of the distributed ledger technology (blockchain). The subject of the research is crimes in which the virtual currency is either a means or an object of criminal assault. The research objectives were the search for criminological regularities in the commission of crypto crimes and the assessment of advantages and risks of the virtual currency turnover. The methods of comparative, criminological and statistical analysis made it possible to analyze the above risks through the prism of economic and constructive features of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and identify the most common ways of committing crimes, while the classification of methods of criminal use of the blockchain supported by examples of judicial practices defined prospective areas of the preventive activity. Based on the research findings it was concluded that the cooperation between countries in monitoring crypto crimes and development of a legislative basis for their prevention needs to be expanded. Основное внимание в работе сосредоточено на оценке криминального оборота криптовалюты как наиболее востребованного продукта технологии распределенного реестра (блокчейна). Предмет исследования составили преступления, в которых виртуальная валюта является либо средством, либо предметом преступного посягательства. В качестве целей исследования были обозначены поиск криминологических закономерностей совершения криптопреступлений и оценка преимуществ и рисков оборота виртуальной валюты. Использование методов компаративного, криминологического и статистического анализа позволило рассмотреть эти риски сквозь призму экономических и конструктивных особенностей технологии распределенного реестра и выявить наиболее распространенные способы совершения преступлений, а приведенная в работе классификация способов криминального использования блокчейна, подкрепленная примерами судебной практики, - обозначить перспективные направления профилактической деятельности. На основе проведенного исследования сделан вывод о необходимости расширения сотрудничества государств в направлении изучения криптопреступлений и выработке законодательной основы их предупреждения.

N. O. Doroshenko, Yu. A. Buriak

The article deals with contemporary tendencies of the banking policy of the world. For this purpose, the key issues have been worked out: analysis of the evolution of formation, specification of the essence and main characteristics of the blockchain technology, profiling of the mechanism of the work of the block chain technology, disclosure of the main purpose and the features of the use of smart contracts in the block chain environment, formulation of the advantages and disadvantages that arise in the process of working with smart contracts, analysis of perspective directions of application of smart contracts in the banking system. The study underlines that under current conditions of broad consumption, crypto-currency payments found general application. Such payments are relatively simple: there are wallets, you can transfer money from one wallet to another or several at once. The network is built on principles that allow you to do it without a single center, but the tasks are carried out in a traditional way. Thus, it is an ordinary payment system consisting of people, money and money transfer. Under the influence of the continuous development of technologies, a payment network that allows you to write programs that not only worked with wallets was created, but they themselves would take money out of wallets and decide who and how much to send. Important conditions for smart contracts are transparency, security and universality for all users.

Павел Дробышев

No abstract is available for this record.

Сидоренко Элина Леонидовна

The research focuses on the assessment of the criminal turnover of crypto currency as the most sought-after product of the distributed ledger technology (blockchain). The subject of the research is crimes in which the virtual currency is either a means or an object of criminal assault. The research objectives were the search for criminological regularities in the commission of crypto crimes and the assessment of advantages and risks of the virtual currency turnover. The methods of comparative, criminological and statistical analysis made it possible to analyze the above risks through the prism of economic and constructive features of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and identify the most common ways of committing crimes, while the classification of methods of criminal use of the blockchain supported by examples of judicial practices defined prospective areas of the preventive activity. Based on the research findings it was concluded that the cooperation between countries in monitoring crypto crimes and development of a legislative basis for their prevention needs to be expanded.

Alexander Savelyev

No abstract is available for this record.

Lee Bacon, George Bazinas

No abstract is available for this record.

Karen Yeung

No abstract is available for this record.

Rupsha Bagchi

The Internet of Things is a proliferating industry, which is transforming many homes and businesses, making them smart. However, the rapid growth of these devices and the interactions between these devices, introduces many challenges including that of a secure management system for the identities and interactions of the devices. While the centralized model has worked well for many years, there is a risk of the servers becoming bottlenecks and a single point of failure, thereby making them vulnerable to Denial-of-Service attacks. As a backbone of these interactions, Blockchain is capable of creating a highly secure, independent and distributed platform. Blockchain is a peer to peer, distributed ledger system that stores all the transactions taking place within the network. The main purpose of the servers that form a part of the distributed system is to provide a consensus, using various consensus algorithms, on the state of the blockchain at any given time and to store a copy of all the transactions taking place. This thesis explores the Blockchain technology in general and investigates its potential with regard to access management of constrained devices. A proof of concept system has been designed and implemented that demonstrates a simplified access management system using Ethereum Blockchain. This was done to check whether the concept can be applied at a global level. Although the latency of the network depends on the computing power of the resources participating in the Blockchain, an evaluation of the proof of concept system has been made, keeping in mind the smallest device that can be involved in the consensus process. Docker containers have been used to simulate a cluster of the nodes participating in the Blockchain, in order to examine the implemented system. An outline of the various advantages and the limitations of Blockchains in general, as well as the developed proof of concept system, has also been provided.

О.Е. Радутний, А. Э. Радутный, O. E. Radutniy

The article deals with the certain aspects of the criminal law measures appliedto legal entities, the phenomenon of electronic legal entities (Decentralized Autonomous Organization or Decentralized Autonomous Corporation), the possibility of applying criminal law measures to electronic legal entities.

Anastasia Olegovna Barinova, Sergey Zapechnikov

Currently, business processes become more and more complicated. Data used in these processes circulates mainly through the digital communications. Due to these conditions some kind of electronic contracts for business deals becomes necessary. Smart contracts should describe a set of conditions, implemented through some events in the real world and digital systems. The most important requirement for this technology is privacy ensuring. In this work we have explored existing projects of privacy-preserving smart contracts, defined comparison criteria, compared projects and made a conclusion about options required for smart contract frameworks.

Chris Reed, Uma M Sathyanarayan, Shuhui Ruan, Justine K. Collins

Blockchain technology allows the creation of distributed ledgers. These distribute control among the players rather than requiring a centralized database, and so can reduce costs and speed-up transactions. However, when it is used for assets which exist outside the blockchain itself, an unmodified adoption of the technology would bypass legal and regulatory requirements which, for these kinds of assets, cannot be bypassed without fundamental change to the law. Building those requirements into any blockchain-based system introduces features which are not necessary for performing its core functions, and we call these ‘legal impurities’. The most important legal impurities required are those relating to identification of the parties, and introducing the ability of a trusted third party to make modifications to the ledger. Not only does introducing these legal impurities make fundamental changes to the concept behind blockchain, but it is also essential that they are implemented in ways which do not threaten the integrity of the blockchain as evidence. This article has been produced by members of the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre, a collaboration between the Cloud Legal Project, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London and the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. The authors are grateful to members of the MCCRC team and to attendees at the fourth Annual MCCRC Symposium (Windsor, September 2017) for helpful comments and to Microsoft for the generous financial support that has made this project possible. Responsibility for views expressed, however, remain with the authors.

Maher Alharby, Aad van Moorsel

An appealing feature of blockchain technology is smart contracts. A smart contract is executable code that runs on top of the blockchain to facilitate, execute and enforce an agreement between untrusted parties without the involvement of a trusted third party. In this paper, we conduct a systematic mapping study to collect all research that is relevant to smart contracts from a technical perspective. The aim of doing so is to identify current research topics and open challenges for future studies in smart contract research. We extract 24 papers from different scientific databases. The results show that about two thirds of the papers focus on identifying and tackling smart contract issues. Four key issues are identified, namely, codifying, security, privacy and performance issues. The rest of the papers focuses on smart contract applications or other smart contract related topics. Research gaps that need to be addressed in future studies are provided. http://aircconline.com/ijcsit/V9N5/9517ijcsit11.pdf

Kristian Lauslahti, Juri Mattila, Timo Seppälä

No abstract is available for this record.

Angwei Law

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2017.

Reggie O'Shields, Mahdi Naser, H. Sadeghi

No abstract is available for this record.