Smart Contract: from Identification to Certainty
Abstract
The purpose of the article is the best understanding of opportunities and obstacles to the implementation and improvement of the practice of network contracts (smart contracts). Methodology of the research is represented by a holistic set of principles and methods of scholar analysis inherent in modern legal science. As a fundamental dialectical method used with implementing general research (system-structural, formal logical, analytical and synthesis of individual parts, individual features of concepts, abstraction, generalization, etc.) and private scholar (technical and legal method, systematic, comparative, historical, grammatical, method of unity of theory and practice, etc.) methods. The study analyzes views of lawyers and other specialists of Russia and foreign countries, legislative innovations in the field of digital technologies, the practice of smart contracts based on blockchain, the main risks of implementing smart contracts in economic activities, followed by the allocation among them (legal, technological, operational, criminogenic) factors of their occurrence. As a result of the study, the authors note that in realities of contemporary life from the legal definition of a smart contract, its legal and technological characteristics, advantages and disadvantages, it is necessary to move to the implementation of startups in a wide range of life, and primarily in the field of business, state control and social relations. Academic support and information support of the obtained theoretical and practical results of such processes will contribute to the development of a wide range of industries, public administration and the introduction of digital technologies to improve the quality of life of society and the individual citizen. As proposals, approaches to the legal definition of a smart contract have been developed, and a set of tasks that need to be solved at the legislative and technological-legal level in order to effectively implement smart contracts in various spheres of public life has been scientifically substantiated.
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