scholarly journals The Legal Design of the Smart Contract: The Legal Nature and Scope of Application

Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 51-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. S. Grin ◽  
E. S. Grin ◽  
A. V. Solovyov
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Computer Code ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Scope Of Application

Within the framework of this article, the authors carry out the study of the design of the smart contract in the context of jurisprudence and technical sciences. The paper analyzes the legal nature of the smart contract and the issues concerning the scope of application (in relation to distributed ledger technology).The authors conclude that the category of “smart contract” can be defined in technical and legal aspects. In foreign literature, there are two categories: a legal smart contract and a smart contract code (or smart contract). The smart contract as a technical phenomenon represents a computer code that allows automated fulfillment of obligations. From legal point of view, the approaches to the definition of the smart contract depend primarily on the fact that the authors rely on the possibility of using smart contracts only within the framework of distributed ledger technology or other information technologies. At the same time, the majority of authors share the view that the smart contract exists exclusively in relation to the technology of distributed ledgers, namely, the blockchain. The article proposes to define the smart contract as a standard (special) contractual design — a contract concluded by electronic or other technical means, under the terms of which performance of the obligation is carried out without directed explicit additional expression of will (under Part 2 of Article 309 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).The article states that the smart contract cannot be qualified as an independent way of ensuring the performance of obligations. Such qualification is possible only if the functional approach to understanding security is applied. The paper examines the main fields of application of smart contracts and possible risks of their application (in terms of statement of terms of agreements in relation to a programming language; in respect of necessity of compliance with such fundamental principles of civil law as legality, fairness, protection of the weak; the need for communication with public authorities and notaries, as well as risks of using smart contracts in relations involving the participation of consumers). A separate set of questions concerns the protection of the rights infringed due to the use of smart contracts.

scholarly journals Consortium Blockchain Smart Contracts for Musical Rights Governance in a Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) Use Case

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Kapsoulis ◽  
Alexandros Psychas ◽  
Georgios Palaiokrassas ◽  
Achilleas Marinakis ◽  
Antonios Litke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Music Industry ◽  
Use Case ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Collective Management ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
End To End ◽  
Permissioned Blockchains

Private and permissioned blockchains are conceptualized and mostly assembled for fulfilling corporations’ demands and needs in the context of their own premises. This paper presents a complete and sophisticated end-to-end permissioned blockchain application for governance and management of musical rights endorsed by smart contract development. In a music industry use case, this disclosed solution monitors and regulates conflicting musical rights of diverse entities under a popular permissioned distributed ledger technology network. The proposed implementation couples various and distinct business domains across the music industry organizations and non-profit blockchain associations.

scholarly journals A Decentralized, Secure, Peer-to-Peer Multi-Voting System on Ethereum Blockchain

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1354-1359
Author(s):  
Ashmita Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Electoral System ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Time Loss ◽  
Consensus Protocol ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Voting System

Abstract: A decentralised, Secure, Peer-to-Peer Multi-Voting System on Ethereum Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) that permits virtual votes to be transacted in a peer-to-peer decentralized network. Those transactions are validated and registered through every node of the network, so creating a transparent and immutable series of registered events whose truthfulness is supplied through a consensus protocol. Smart contract automates the execution of agreement that runs routinely as soon as the conditions are satisfied. Smart contract would not need any third parties consequently prevents time loss. By Eliminating the requirement for third parties, consequently, allows numerous processes to be extra efficient and economical. The system is secure, reliable, and anonymous. Smart contract is enforced for the Ethereum network using the Ethereum wallets and also the Solidity language. Users are capable of submit their votes immediately from their Ethereum wallets, and those transaction requests is handled with the consensus of each single Ethereum node. This creates a transparent environment for evoting. A lot of concerning efficiency of the peer-to-peer decentralized electoral system on Ethereum network along with application and the outcomes of implementation are provided in this paper. Keywords: Blockchain, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), Consensus Protocol, Smart Contracts, Ethereum, Solidity

scholarly journals Defining the information flows for DLT of a transport company in the mining industry according to the criteria for sustainable development

2021 ◽  
Vol 280 ◽  
pp. 08003
Author(s):  
Teodora Hristova ◽  
Dimitar Anastasov ◽  
Zdravets Evtimov
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Fault Tolerant ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Mining Company ◽  
Asynchronous Control ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology

The application of information technologies leads to the improvement of the companies’ production parameters in each sector according to the criteria for sustainable development. Naturally, in order to achieve efficiency, they must be tailored to the specifics of the industry, in this case the mining industry. The article proposes a methodology for the introduction of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for the transport information flow at a mining company. Based on the chosen organizational structure, the participating actors and the data they share, the information channels are determined. According to the necessary rights of the participants to modify the transactions and the number of channels of the transport information flow, a consensus mechanism Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant and the so-called smart contract have been chosen. Different DLT platforms are analyzed. Hyperledger Fabric was selected as an appropriate platform in order to ensure the continuity of the system, the asynchronous control of the various channels and the ability to include different actors.

scholarly journals Application of Distributed Ledger Technology for Settlements by Letters of Credit

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 64-72
Author(s):  
L. G. Efimova
Keyword(s):  
Financial Intermediaries ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Letter Of Credit ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
New Form ◽  
Letters Of Credit

The paper carries out a legal analysis of three models of settlements by letters of credit with the use of distributed ledger technology. First, this refers to the model of settlements that uses blockchain as a way of transferring documents under the letter of credit. Second, the author investigates the model of settlements where two smart contracts are used. In the author’s view, such smart contracts should be seen as a way of executing the contracts that, in practice, form the settlement procedure with the use of letters of credit. Third, the most interesting is the settlement model where the payer and the recipient of funds (payee) enter into one smart contract that provides non-cash settlements between them with the use of the P2P service. There is no financial intermediary that organizes non-cash settlements in this settlement model. This difference makes it possible to conclude that settlements similar to settlements with the use of letters by credit via blockchain technology and carried out on the principle of P2P, should be considered as a new form of non-cash settlements. The peculiarity of this form of non-cash settlements is the opportunity given to direct participants of the settlement to fulfil their monetary obligations without using cash and without any assistance of financial intermediaries.

scholarly journals Blockchain and the Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dariusz Szostek
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
It Managers

This book analyses the new blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in term of its impact on law, contracts and the digital economy. It discusses global legislation in the blockchain and its implications. The analysis of contracts includes the Bitcoin system and the Bitcoin Blockchain. The book is written in an international and European perspective. It is characterised by a practical approach and addressed to lawyers who want to deepen their knowledge about legal aspects of new technologies such as the blockchain and other modern IT tools, but also to entrepreneurs, IT specialists, developers and IT managers in the implementation of DLT and block technologies The book covers the following topicsChapter I Blockchains and DLT in the digital economy Chapter II Blockchains, DLT – basic terms Chapter III Blockchains in finance Chapter IV Durable media with blockchain technology Chapter V "Smart Contracts" Chapter VI The future of blockchain solutions in legal regulations (an initiated discussion). Prof. UO dr hab. Dariusz Szostek is Director of the Centre for Legal Problems of Technic and New Technologies at the Faculty of Law University of Opole.

scholarly journals Problems of Smart Contracts Application in Transactions in Virtual Property

Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 108-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. E. Bogdanova
Keyword(s):  
Computer Code ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Domain Names ◽  
Virtual Property ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Moment

The author examines the features of the use of smart contracts in transactions in virtual property, taking into account the fact that the smart contract is a way of fulfilling those obligations in which the transfer of property provision takes place in the virtual world with the help of appropriate technical means. It should be recognized that the list of virtual property is open, at the moment it includes, for example, cryptocurrency, domain names, «game property», virtual tokens.The question of the legal nature of objects related to virtual property is relevant: are they a new independent type of property requiring special legal regimes, or are they a form of known property rights? The paper also notes that smart contracts differ in both vulnerabilities in computer code and insufficiently effective legal regulation. Smart contract, in the opinion of the author, is a kind of written (electronic) form of a contract, the peculiarity of which is that the will of the subject is expressed by means of special technical means in the form of program code. In this case, the will to conclude the contract simultaneously means the will to its execution upon the occurrence of certain conditions of the contract circumstances.In conclusion, the author shows that the automation of performance of obligations in particular and the digitization of contract law in general should not create obstacles to the implementation of the fundamental principles of good faith and contractual justice, to assess the proportionality of the distribution of rights and obligations of the parties, the equivalence of their property.

Keynote

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-3
Author(s):  
Ingo Weber
Keyword(s):  
Cost Estimation ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
Main Topic ◽  
System Throughput ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Application Developers

Blockchain is a novel distributed ledger technology. Through its features and smart contract capabilities, a wide range of application areas opened up for blockchain-based innovation [5]. In order to analyse how concrete blockchain systems as well as blockchain applications are used, data must be extracted from these systems. Due to various complexities inherent in blockchain, the question how to interpret such data is non-trivial. Such interpretation should often be shared among parties, e.g., if they collaborate via a blockchain. To this end, we devised an approach codify the interpretation of blockchain data, to extract data from blockchains accordingly, and to output it in suitable formats [1, 2]. This work will be the main topic of the keynote. In addition, application developers and users of blockchain applications may want to estimate the cost of using or operating a blockchain application. In the keynote, I will also discuss our cost estimation method [3, 4]. This method was designed for the Ethereum blockchain platform, where cost also relates to transaction complexity, and therefore also to system throughput.

scholarly journals A Proximal Algorithm for Fork-Choice in Distributed Ledger Technology for Context-Based Clustering on Edge Computing

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Rahim Rahmani ◽  
Ramin Firouzi ◽  
Sachiko Lim ◽  
Mahbub Alam
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Cluster Head ◽  
Edge Computing ◽  
Computing Technology ◽  
Proximal Algorithm ◽  
Data Intensive ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Smart Contract ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Iot Devices

The major challenges of operating data-intensive of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) are (1) to reach consensus on the main chain as a set of validators cast public votes to decide on which blocks to finalize and (2) scalability on how to increase the number of chains which will be running in parallel. In this paper, we introduce a new proximal algorithm that scales DLT in a large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) devices network. We discuss how the algorithm benefits the integrating DLT in IoT by using edge computing technology, taking the scalability and heterogeneous capability of IoT devices into consideration. IoT devices are clustered dynamically into groups based on proximity context information. A cluster head is used to bridge the IoT devices with the DLT network where a smart contract is deployed. In this way, the security of the IoT is improved and the scalability and latency are solved. We elaborate on our mechanism and discuss issues that should be considered and implemented when using the proposed algorithm, we even show how it behaves with varying parameters like latency or when clustering.

scholarly journals Regulating Blockchain, DLT and Smart Contracts: a technology regulator’s perspective

ERA Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-220
Author(s):  
Joshua Ellul ◽  
Jonathan Galea ◽  
Max Ganado ◽  
Stephen Mccarthy ◽  
Gordon J. Pace
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Framework ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks

Abstract Blockchain, Smart Contracts and other forms of Distributed Ledger Technology provide means to ensure that processes are verifiable, transparent, and tamper-proof. Yet the very same enabling features that bring decentralisation also pose challenges to providing protection for the various users and stakeholders. Most jurisdictions which have implemented regulatory frameworks in this area have focused on regulating the financial aspects of cryptocurrency-based operations. However, they have not addressed technology assurance requirements. In this paper we present a world-first technology regulatory framework.

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