Suchergebnisse

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is currently the largest cloud computing service provider and appears to have established an effective dominance, which together with its main market participant Microsoft Azure, amounts to more than half of the global market. With the introduction of additional services, namely blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) including Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) and its centralised quantum ledger database (QLDB), AWS aims at integrating different distributed ledger technology (DLT) -based network infrastructures into its platform. Here, AWS utilises predominantly open source technologies such as Corda, Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. BaaS is expected to experience accelerated growth, in particular in the light of the current crisis and governmental policies stimulating businesses to be run online.

Thousands of years ago, written contracts first appeared in Mesopotamia, with small cuneiform triangles hammered into clay tablets. These contracts were fairly sophisticated, memorializing basic credit agreements, partnership arrangements, as well as labor, sales, and rental agreements.1 Since these first recorded contracts, the tools used to create written contracts have undergone considerable change. We no longer enter into agreements memorialized in clay; paper and more recently electronic agreements serve as the primary medium for the expression of commercial arrangements. Many argue that blockchains could foster an evolution in how legal agreements are created and executed, supporting a new generation of electronic contracts. Blockchain networks and computer programs called "smart contracts" could enable parties to memorialize all or parts of legal agreements. By using this technology, contracting parties would gain the ability to create arrangements that are hard to modify, dynamic, and potentially less ambiguous than traditional legal contracts. This report assumes such a future comes to pass and examines how blockchain technology fits within the current common law and U.S. electronic contracting statutes, analyzing whether smart contracts can be used to create enforceable legal agreements. As outlined below, we explain why current U.S. law largely accommodates the use of smart contracts to create binding and enforceable agreements. We conclude the report by analyzing whether additional state and federal legislation is necessary to support this new emerging technology, finding that current iterations of state law, designed to accommodate blockchain technology, may not be necessary, with limited exceptions. The report unfolds in three parts. Part I provides a brief overview of blockchain technology and smart contracts, with an assumption that the reader has limited familiarity with the underlying technology. Part II explores whether legal agreements relying on blockchain technology will be deemed enforceable. Finally, Part III evaluates whether additional legislation is necessary to accommodate electronic contracting involving blockchain-based smart contracts.

Any practising lawyer and student working with international commercial contracts faces standardised contracts and international arbitration as mechanisms for dispute settlement. Transnational rules may be applicable, but national law is still important. Based on extensive practical experience, this book analyses international contract practice and its interaction with the various applicable sources: which role is played by the contractual regulation, which by national law, which by transnational sources, what is the interaction among these factors, and how does this all apply to contracts that refer disputes to international arbitration?