Tag: blockchain

Blockchain: a small introduction and a legal perspective

On By officialblogunioIn CommentsLeave a comment 
Catarina Ferreira (Master’s student in European Union Law at the School of Law of the University of Minho)
▪

1. The blockchain technology

Blockchain is commonly known as the underlying technology used in Bitcoin. This “new” and revolutionary technology, whose roots are ancient, has been introduced (as we know it) in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoins’ white paper. In the white paper, Nakamoto presented a decentralized payment model based on cryptography and using blockchain technology. This idea would allow a move forward from the traditional model, based on trust and relying on an impartial third, and achieving currency decentralization (being possible to perform direct transactions between two parts).

It cannot be denied that blockchain is a new paradigm, a new information technology with tiered technical levels and multiple applications for any form of asset[1], going beyond the financial sector. Nowadays, blockchain’s impacts are being compared to the ones that followed the development of the Internet. So, understanding what is blockchain and the ideology behind it, is a requirement for those who want to apply the law without damaging the technology.

Before clarifying what blockchain is, it should be noticed that since Bitcoin’s blockchain many others have arisen. Nonetheless, there are commonalities between all blockchains, and in this work, we’ll be discussing all those commonalities and not a specific blockchain. 

Continue reading “Blockchain: a small introduction and a legal perspective” →

Blockchain and art market

On By officialblogunioIn Essays1 Comment

Gallery exhibition opening

 by Geo Magri, Professor at the University of Torino

▪

In recent times, blockchain technology has begun to be used to ensure certainty in the circulation of works of art.  Through the blockchain it is possible to record the existence of any author’s rights concerning the work, or the transfer of ownership of an art object, in order to make its circulation safer. These are aspects that, for a global market like this one, are of central importance and that allow us to understand why the first projects were launched to create chains aimed at meeting the specific needs of this sector, overcoming the critical issues that the art market traditionally brings.

Already in the seventies an attempt was made to achieve a result like that which today guarantees the blockchain. At the time it was decided to use the analogic recording of works of art, through the deposit of a picture and the recording of data that allowed the reconstruction of transactions related to the work. The project was proposed by Bolaffi of Turin and was aimed at ensuring the origin and traceability of the works sold. The idea of the analogical register was not successful in the practice of the art market and this was not difficult to predict since it was an excessively large market for an efficient analogical register.
Continue reading “Blockchain and art market” →

Editorial of May 2019

On By officialblogunioIn EditorialsLeave a comment

blockchain-3774715_960_720

 by Célia Zolynski, Professor of Law at Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne
 and Alexandre Veronese, Professor of Law at University of Brasília

▪


Blockchain and security: an important debate for the legal community (especially from the civil law tradition)*

When we read and listen about the Blockchain technology, its main revolutionary character is the praised new manner by which the users would extract a new kind of trust from the operations endorsed. At some point, some writers even detail its technical design as being trustless. This technology – as some of their enthusiasts say – would therefore make it possible to replace, rather than displace, the trusted third party – an important technical feature that exists in most of the modern designs of private or public relationships – in various kinds of transactions and operations. The Blockchain enables this feature because it makes possible to guarantee the keeping of an unforgeable and updated register of digital records in real time. The technical functions of the Blockchain promise to secure many possible applications. An example is the use of the technology to ensure the integrity of a document or a digital archive over the time by anchoring it in the Blockchain. In addition, it is possible to create Blockchain systems to control or trace the circulation of digital archives and packages and even their usage. The Blockchain technology could therefore be able to guarantee the security of the storage files in the blocks using asymmetric encryption protocols in a peer-to-peer model. However, ten years after the launch of Bitcoin, in 2009, we are still largely in an exploratory phase of that technology. The blockchain and its applications remain immature: technically immature and, we should say, legally immature too. Several difficulties hinder the transition from the small-scale operations to bigger ones. One of the main concerns of the Blockchain technology is the safety of the designed applications. Such issue – the safety of the Blockchain – needs to be more debated than praised in order to avoid some misjudgments and overstatements. Just to begin, we are going to provide a provocative statement: Blockchain does not grant actual and complete security; from itself, the technology – and its prophets – indulge us with the illusion of safe and security. Why? We will divide the text in three parts, in order to pose problems to the Blockchain. First, we are going to describe that some technical issues that are entrenched in the design can be vulnerable to attacks and difficulties. Second, we are going to mention that – in legal terms – the Blockchain registers still will need a third party to be feasible as evidence in the courts. Lastly, we will remark that the so-called “smart contracts” are not contracts after all.
Continue reading “Editorial of May 2019” →