Blockchain Technology in Smart Contracts: Is It a Constitutive Attribute or a Technological Neutrality?

Abstract

The study raises the problem of using the blockchain technology in smart contracts and discusses the prospects of using this technology in conclusion and execution of “smart contracts”. The need of analysis of this subject is determined by global changes in all areas of public life caused by the full-scaled introduction of digital technologies, including computer technology for the conclusion and execution of smart contracts. The article touches upon the issues of civil law regulation of smart contracts in the light of the introduction of Federal law No. 34-FZ, adopted by the State Duma on March 12, 2019 that amends to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, including the legal definition of “smart contract”. The benefits and disadvantages of the practical use of smart contracts and the existing problems of applying the norms of civil legislation to smart contracts are examined. The purpose of the study of these issues is to identify and consider the theoretical and practical problems of using the distributed data ledger blockchain technology in smart contracts. The decisive research method for achieving this result was a system analysis of the “smart contract” category. The methods also include general scientific dialectical method of cognition, private scientific methods (formal-legal, method of interpretation of legal norms, method of legal modeling) and empirical methods (comparison, description, interpretation). In the end, the author concludes that the definition of “smart contract” should be technologically neutral. There is strong advocacy for the view that distributed ledger data, including blockchain technology, should not be part of the definition of a smart contract, since in the future it might be possible to conclude “smart contracts” created on the basis of a more advanced technology than blockchain. The results of the study formulated by the author can serve as a basis for further research of transactions made by electronic or other technical means, and other problems of the theory of civil law.