Can Blockchain Solve the Hold-up Problem in Contracts?

Can Blockchain Solve the Hold-up Problem in Contracts? PDF Author: Richard Holden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100902017X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
A vexing problem in contract law is modification. Two parties sign a contract but before they fully perform, they modify the contract. Should courts enforce the modified agreement? A private remedy is for the parties to write a contract that is robust to hold-up or that makes the facts relevant to modification verifiable. Provisions accomplishing these ends are renegotiation-design and revelation mechanisms. But implementing them requires commitment power. Conventional contract technologies to ensure commitment – liquidated damages – are disfavored by courts and themselves subject to renegotiation. Smart contracts written on blockchain ledgers offer a solution. We explain the basic economics and legal relevance of these technologies, and we argue that they can implement liquidated damages without courts. We address the hurdles courts may impose to use of smart contracts on blockchain and show that sophisticated parties' ex ante commitment to them may lead courts to allow their use as pre-commitment devices.

Can Blockchain Solve the Hold-up Problem in Contracts?

Can Blockchain Solve the Hold-up Problem in Contracts? PDF Author: Richard Holden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100902017X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 94

Get Book Here

Book Description
A vexing problem in contract law is modification. Two parties sign a contract but before they fully perform, they modify the contract. Should courts enforce the modified agreement? A private remedy is for the parties to write a contract that is robust to hold-up or that makes the facts relevant to modification verifiable. Provisions accomplishing these ends are renegotiation-design and revelation mechanisms. But implementing them requires commitment power. Conventional contract technologies to ensure commitment – liquidated damages – are disfavored by courts and themselves subject to renegotiation. Smart contracts written on blockchain ledgers offer a solution. We explain the basic economics and legal relevance of these technologies, and we argue that they can implement liquidated damages without courts. We address the hurdles courts may impose to use of smart contracts on blockchain and show that sophisticated parties' ex ante commitment to them may lead courts to allow their use as pre-commitment devices.

The Fine Print in Smart Contracts

The Fine Print in Smart Contracts PDF Author: Joshua S. Gans
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blockchains (Databases)
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
One of the purported benefits of blockchain technologies is the ability to house what have been termed "smart' contracts. Such contracts are potentially self-executing depending on the state of information recorded on a blockchain ledger. This paper examines the capabilities of smart contracts from an economic perspective. It is demonstrated that by improving observability and reducing the costs of verification of contract obligation performance, the space of feasible contracts can be enlarged. Moreover, by providing commitments to various monetary payments, a blockchain can potentially create a foundation to house certain mechanisms that have been shown to overcome difficulties of contractual incompleteness. This is demonstrated using a simple international trade environment. Thus, even though smart contracts must respect the incentives of decision-makers in their obligations, they have the potential to use easily verifiable elements to create incentives to reduce hold-up and other contractual difficulties.

Legal Tech, Smart Contracts and Blockchain

Legal Tech, Smart Contracts and Blockchain PDF Author: Marcelo Corrales
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811360863
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
There is a broad consensus amongst law firms and in-house legal departments that next generation “Legal Tech” – particularly in the form of Blockchain-based technologies and Smart Contracts – will have a profound impact on the future operations of all legal service providers. Legal Tech startups are already revolutionizing the legal industry by increasing the speed and efficiency of traditional legal services or replacing them altogether with new technologies. This on-going process of disruption within the legal profession offers significant opportunities for all business. However, it also poses a number of challenges for practitioners, trade associations, technology vendors, and regulators who often struggle to keep up with the technologies, resulting in a widening regulatory “gap.” Many uncertainties remain regarding the scope, direction, and effects of these new technologies and their integration with existing practices and legacy systems. Adding to the challenges is the growing need for easy-to-use contracting solutions, on the one hand, and for protecting the users of such solutions, on the other. To respond to the challenges and to provide better legal communications, systems, and services Legal Tech scholars and practitioners have found allies in the emerging field of Legal Design. This collection brings together leading scholars and practitioners working on these issues from diverse jurisdictions. The aim is to introduce Blockchain and Smart Contract technologies, and to examine their on-going impact on the legal profession, business and regulators.

Cross-Industry Use of Blockchain Technology and Opportunities for the Future

Cross-Industry Use of Blockchain Technology and Opportunities for the Future PDF Author: Williams, Idongesit
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1799836347
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Blockchain is a technology that transcends cryptocurrencies. There are other services in different sectors of the economy that can benefit from the trust and security that blockchains offer. For example, financial institutions are using blockchains for international money transfer, and in logistics, it has been used for supply chain management and tracking of goods. As more global companies and governments are experimenting and deploying blockchain solutions, it is necessary to compile knowledge on the best practices, strategies, and failures in order to create a better awareness of how blockchain could either support or add value to other services. Cross-Industry Use of Blockchain Technology and Opportunities for the Future provides emerging research highlighting the possibilities inherent in blockchain for different sectors of the economy and the added value blockchain can provide for the future of these different sectors. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as data privacy, information sharing, and digital identity, this book is ideally designed for IT specialists, consultants, design engineers, cryptographers, service designers, researchers, academics, government officials, and industry professionals.

A Book About Blockchain

A Book About Blockchain PDF Author: Rajat Rajbhandari
Publisher: Business Expert Press
ISBN: 1953349390
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This book describes methods to transform existing business by using digitized trust that is industrialized at scale. Executives, consultants, and strategists are wondering how to participate in the blockchain economy. They are wondering whether new business models that will emerge because of this novel technology will disrupt theirs or whether they will ignore their businesses and create completely different models. In this book I answer all those questions. By the time you finish, you will understand what blockchain economy is, how to participate in it, and avoid being disrupted or, even worse, ignored. Drawing from my own experiences as research scientist and entrepreneur, the book describes methods to transform existing business by using digitized trust that is industrialized at scale.

Smart Contracts

Smart Contracts PDF Author: Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509937048
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This book brings together a series of contributions by leading scholars and practitioners to examine the main features of smart contracts, as well as the response of key stakeholders in technology, business, government and the law. It explores how this new technology interfaces with the goals and content of contract law, introducing and evaluating several mechanisms to improve the 'observability' and reduce the costs of verifying contractual obligations and performance. It also outlines various 'design patterns' that ensure that end users are protected from themselves, prevent cognitive accidents, and translate expectations and values into more user-oriented agreements. Furthermore, the chapters map the new risks associated with smart contracts, particularly for consumers, and consider how they might be alleviated. The book also discusses the challenge of integrating data protection and privacy concerns into the design of these agreements and the broad range of legal knowledge and skills required. The case for using smart contracts goes beyond 'contracts' narrowly defined, and they are increasingly used to disrupt traditional models of business organisation. The book discusses so-called decentralised autonomous organisations and decentralised finance as illustrations of this trend. This book is designed for those interested in looking to deepen their understanding of this game-changing new legal technology.

Smart Contracts

Smart Contracts PDF Author: Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 150993703X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book brings together a series of contributions by leading scholars and practitioners to examine the main features of smart contracts, as well as the response of key stakeholders in technology, business, government and the law. It explores how this new technology interfaces with the goals and content of contract law, introducing and evaluating several mechanisms to improve the 'observability' and reduce the costs of verifying contractual obligations and performance. It also outlines various 'design patterns' that ensure that end users are protected from themselves, prevent cognitive accidents, and translate expectations and values into more user-oriented agreements. Furthermore, the chapters map the new risks associated with smart contracts, particularly for consumers, and consider how they might be alleviated. The book also discusses the challenge of integrating data protection and privacy concerns into the design of these agreements and the broad range of legal knowledge and skills required. The case for using smart contracts goes beyond 'contracts' narrowly defined, and they are increasingly used to disrupt traditional models of business organisation. The book discusses so-called decentralised autonomous organisations and decentralised finance as illustrations of this trend. This book is designed for those interested in looking to deepen their understanding of this game-changing new legal technology.

The Cambridge Handbook of Smart Contracts, Blockchain Technology and Digital Platforms

The Cambridge Handbook of Smart Contracts, Blockchain Technology and Digital Platforms PDF Author: Larry A. DiMatteo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108492560
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
The product of a unique collaboration between academic scholars, legal practitioners, and technology experts, this Handbook is the first of its kind to analyze the ongoing evolution of smart contracts, based upon blockchain technology, from the perspective of existing legal frameworks - namely, contract law. The book's coverage ranges across many areas of smart contracts and electronic or digital platforms to illuminate the impact of new, and often disruptive, technologies on the law. With a mix of scholarly commentary and practical application, chapter authors provide expert insights on the core issues involving the use of smart contracts, concluding that smart contracts cannot supplant contract law and the courts, but leaving open the question of whether there is a need for specialized regulations to prevent abuse. This book should be read by anyone interested in the disruptive effect of new technologies on the law generally, and contract law in particular.

A Comprehensive Contracting Solution Using Blockchains

A Comprehensive Contracting Solution Using Blockchains PDF Author: Prateek Goorha
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
Purpose: This paper develops the idea of comprehensive contractual solutions using the blockchain as a foundation. A comprehensive contractual solution is a template for engaging in all manner of complex contractual relationships while remaining tethered to the same underlying technology.Approach: This paper introduces the idea of a platform contract as a practical method for contending with a range of incomplete contracts and mechanisms over a centralized platform network. It suggests why a platform contract, as a product of the network economy, represents essential inefficiencies; the paper addresses how these inefficiencies can be ameliorated by disintermediating platform networks using blockchains to develop comprehensive contractual solutions. Given the more limited nature of smart contracts, achieving this ideal on a blockchain has been a hard problem; the paper discusses proposed solutions that bode well for realizing this ambition.Value: This paper suggests a very significant opportunity represented by blockchains that is generally underemphasized: A comprehensive contractual solution provided over a secure blockchain application that has broad acceptance, such as Bitcoin, has the very real potential to enable consistent and reliable contractual transactions to occur globally. The paper, therefore, also discuss how governments can assume a valuable role in encouraging these solutions by developing smart institutional intermediaries.

Smart Contracts in Comparative Law

Smart Contracts in Comparative Law PDF Author: Andrea Stazi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788892140059
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description