Smart Con­tracts and Po­ten­tial Prob­lems in Their Ap­plic­a­tion in Private Law

De­vel­op­ment sum­mary

Müker­r­em Onur Başar ex­am­ines the private-law prob­lems raised by smart con­tracts whose block­chain ar­chi­tec­ture auto­mates the per­form­ance of con­trac­tu­al ob­lig­a­tions. The ana­lys­is fo­cuses on the dif­fi­culties arising when parties and third parties cannot in­di­vidu­ally in­ter­vene in a con­tract once it has been loaded onto the block­chain.

The dis­cus­sion covers the legal char­ac­ter­isa­tion of smart con­tracts, com­pli­ance with per­son­al data pro­tec­tion rules, scru­tiny of stand­ard terms, con­trac­tu­al gaps and struc­tur­al obstacles to im­ple­ment­ing cer­tain con­trac­tu­al pro­vi­sions. It also con­siders hard­ship, dif­fi­culties in en­for­cing in­ter­im meas­ures and the de­term­in­a­tion of ap­plic­able law where a con­tract has a for­eign ele­ment and no ex­press choice of law has been made.