Wednesday, July 27, 2016

More Developments in Blockchain Technology and the Law


Blockchain technology or as it is also known as, “distributed ledger”, is the subject of a great deal of thinking and development this year.  We wrote about it earlier in the year and now we share some recent work being done at MIT Media Lab’s lawchain.org project.




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Mr. Dazza Greenwood has posted a fantastic article, “Law Itself is the Killer Blockchain App” that contains the following very significant paragraph:

“Blockchain technology can provide the basis of a complete legal stack that connects everything from individual authorizations and approvals to enforceable contracts and licenses right up to the applicable statutes and regulations defining and government aspects of each transaction and instrument. The distributed architecture of open blockchains provide a direct way to publicly verify data has not been altered since it was inscribed in a block and added to the chain. This public verifiability has already been recognized as sufficient for meeting the needs of self-authentication under the rules of evidence in the state of Vermont. It could also be used for self-authenticating statutes and regulations by any — or every — jurisdiction.”

The entire article is a “wow” revelation and I recommend that you take the time to read it.

Going back to “lawchain.org”, they have posted a presentation that was done at the Legal Hackers Summit 2016 conference.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to understand some of Mr. Greenwood’s presentation.  I hope that he can do something similar in a near-future forum that can be better viewed and understood.

And last, the comment section in Mr. Greenwood’s article includes a link to https://blocksign.com that is providing an online “blockchain service for legally signing any document, contract, or agreement”.  Very interesting, and certainly it looks like it is worthwhile trying.

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