Kraus, Daniel/Obrist, Thierry/Hari, Olivier, Blockchains, Smart Contracts, Decentralised Autonomous Organisation and the Law

• Author: Gerald Spindler
• Position: University of Göttingen
• Pages: 272-273

2019

Book Review: Blockchains, Smart Contracts, Decentralised Autonomous Organisation and the Law

272

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Kraus, Daniel/Obrist, Thierry/Hari, Olivier,

Blockchains, Smart Contracts, Decentralised

Autonomous Organisation and the Law

Elgar Publishing:Cheltenham 2019, ISBN 978 1 78811 512 4

by Gerald Spindler, University of Göttingen.

© 2019 Gerald Spindler

Everybody may disseminate this ar ticle by electronic means and make it available for download under the terms and

conditions of the Digital P eer Publishing Licence (DPPL). A copy of the license text may be obtain ed at http://nbn-resolving.

de/urn:nbn:de:0009-dppl-v3-en8.

Recommended citation: Ger ald Spindler, Book Review: Kraus, Dani el/Obrist, Thierry/Hari, Olivier, Blockchains, Smart

Contracts, Decen tralised Autonomous Organisation and the Law, 10 (2019) JIPIT EC 272 para 1

1 The book addresses some of the recent buzz words

centered around the Distributed Ledger Technology

(DLT), also known as “Blockchain”. The contributions

mainly refer to one of the business areas where

DLT has become the Messiah, namely the nancial

industry, as DLT has the potential to carve out the

traditional middleman in banking transactions. Other

relevant issues are treated as well, such as conict of

law (Florence Guillaume), intellectual property law

(Daniel Kraus and Charlotte Boulay), data protection

(Adrien Alberini und Vincent Pfammater), and even

tax treatment of cryptocurrencies and criminal law

aspects (Nadja Capus and Maelle Le Boudec).

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The rst chapter outlines the foundations of

Blockchain, including perspectives and challenges

(Vincent Mignon), giving a thorough overview of

the problems at stake. The next chapter then deals

with the necessary technical bases of DLT (Pascal

Witzig and Victoryia Salomon) and what is essential

for understanding all problems of the DLT. However,

the chapter unfortunately does not go into ne

detail, which is probably due to the fact that all of

the contributors are lawyers and the book does not

feature any authors specializing in informatics.

3

The next chapter is dedicated to private international

law, which is essential for decentralised DLT as

it could be used globally (Florence Guillaume).

Guillaume rightfully points out that there is no

unique scheme applicable to smart contracts;

thus, under private international law the usual

criteria apply, such as location of transaction etc.

However, for DLT it is hard to assess a location of the

transaction, as for the right in rem the DLT reects

everywhere on any node the transaction. The author

also discusses different approaches to cope with the

immaterial “location” of the transaction, but infers –

rightfully – that only the lex fori can apply at the end

(79) if no choice of law was concluded.

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Another chapter deals with issues of standardization,

in particular with ISO TC 307 – a topic that is quite

important yet frequently ignored by lawyers. The

author (Panagiotis Delamatis) describes in detail

the expected gains from standardization and its

impact on the development of DLT. However, the

contribution fails to highlight the legal consequences

of more standardization.

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“Smart contracts” are also one of the buzz words

frequently used in legal articles; however, it is

quite misleading as smart contracts simply encode

an existing contract and render it automatically

feasible. Hence, Blaise Carron and Valentin Barron

address a multitude of potential problems arising

out the use of smart contracts, be it the translation

of legal interpretation into code or the lling of

gaps in the smart contract. The authors conclude

that contract law and legal code will potentially

be replaced by codes of computers; somehow, that

still seems to be an overstatement as even complex

Book Review