emerging technologies – Official Blog of UNIO

Catarina Ferreira (Master’s student in European Union Law at the School of Law of the University of Minho)

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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.

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by Manuel Resende Monteiro Protásio (LL.M Law & Technology, Tilburg University)

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Whenever a different situation or circumstance emerges in society, we, as a group of individuals, instinctively react by trying to comprehend it. The first individual and social construction that we build to understand reality in a consensual way is language itself.

Although our thoughts and concerns on how we perceive society may differ, as language, legal concepts try to establish a consensus between Law and almost every aspect of human life. If we add a new element to our human interactions, like technology, one should ask the question if this new element in our reality requires new language to understand it, or new legal concepts to regulate it.

The need to conceptualize the way we interact with our environment is inherent to our nature. In fact, Language and Law are the most established and sophisticated social constructions that people designed to control their interpersonal relations as well as the environment around them. Both are models of interpretation of our reality and tools that we created to control what we perceive. If we consider the impact of emerging and disruptive technologies in our society, we must assume that the need for a new conceptual approach to regulate technologies is undeniable.

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