Smart Contracts: Legal Considerations

Jack Gilcrest Arthur Carvalho

College of Engineering and Computing Farmer School of Business
Miami University Miami University
Oxford, Ohio, USA Oxford, Ohio, USA
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—In this paper, we analyze the value of smart con- and blockchains. Moreover, there are shortcomings in the
tracts and blockchains as an alternative to traditional contractual technology that must be addressed before smart contracts can
obligations. In particular, we start by exploring some of the be fully embraced and adopted.
advantages of these technologies, specifically the immutability
of blockchains and automated contract remittance. We also In this paper, we explore how smart contracts can disrupt
discuss two critical shortcomings of decentralized smart con- and replace traditional contractual agreements. We start by
tracts, namely regulatory uncertainty and a lack of confidential providing a basic understanding of what smart contracts and
execution. With these issues in mind, we next explore how blockchains are and how they achieve decentralization. Next,
American legislators have begun to address smart contracts
we evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of smart con-
and blockchains. Though quite limited, there have been a few
provisions clarifying the status of these technologies. We break tracts as an alternative to traditional contracts. Thereafter, we
down some of the language expressed in these bills so as to analyze the language and precedents set by multiple state
understand the current legal status of smart contracts and congressional provisions in the United States of America. This
blockchains. Given this foundation, we consider the next steps analysis is used to further propose potential developments
that should be taken as smart contracts mature. This pertains
required to see smart contracts become a standard aspect of
to both the continued improvement of the underlying technology
as well as the progress taken by regulators. Finally, assuming a contract law. Finally, assuming regulatory and technological
futuristic scenario where there are no technological or regulatory issues are addressed, we theorize examples of a future that has
barriers to smart contract adoption, we discuss how the process of moved from current contractual practices to smart contracts.
contract remittance can be expedited in a world fully committed
to the use of smart contracts.
Index Terms—Smart Contracts, Blockchain, Contract Law, II. S MART C ONTRACTS
Remittance, Contract Dispute Resolution
The idea of smart contracts was first proposed by Nick
Szabo [2]. In short, a smart contract can be seen as a self-
I. I NTRODUCTION executable computer program that is able to carry out the
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency [1] has experienced a meteoric terms of a contract or a business agreement between two
rise since its conception in 2009. As an online payment system, or more parties. As automated algorithms, smart contracts
the transactions involving bitcoins are stored in a public, execute when certain conditions are met. Suppose a smart
distributed, decentralized, and shared ledger that requires no contract C has the input conditions x, y, z, and produces an
intermediaries such as a central bank. That distributed ledger, output operation Q. The underlying parties can trust that, for
now called Blockchain, is immutable and auditable due to the example, the smart contract follows the logic in Figure 1 every
use of cryptographic techniques, thus providing an uncensored time contract C is executed.
source of truth. Given this definition, blockchains can be seen Depending on the complexity of the input and output condi-
as special types of distributed database systems, i.e., a data- tions, verifying x, y, and z may itself require calling a separate
analytics technology. Blockchains are special because they smart contract. Likewise, operation Q can be as simple as
have distributed control, meaning that no single entity has the returning a Boolean value (TRUE or FALSE) or as complex
power to roll back or alter history, whereas traditional dis- as starting the execution of a logic tree in a separate smart
tributed databases are centrally controlled by an organization contract. A smart contract might have an arbitrary amount of
that can change access rules or modify records. operational conditions, or may not even require any further
Blockchains have made possible event-driven, self- condition besides its own initialization.
executing code statements called smart contracts. They allow From a theoretical computer science perspective, modern
for the encoding of rules and situations that are agreed upon smart contracts, such as implemented by the public blockchain
by the various trading parties. These contracts autonomously platform Ethereum [3], are Turing complete, meaning that they
execute pre-specified tasks, such as settling a contract, by can simulate any possible Turing machine. In practical terms,
examining changing environmental conditions in conjunction this means that modern smart contracts are able to successfully
with the contract’s embedded rules. Currently, there is im- execute any arbitrary algorithm, from the simplistic procedure
mense regulatory uncertainty over the status of smart contracts in Figure 1 to much more complex operations.
 More recently, the term “Blockchain 2.0” has been used to
define a much broader scope of financial applications [5], e.g.,
transactions involving derivatives, digital asset ownership, etc.
This is where smart contracts come into action, namely to
expand the trading from digital currencies to a large variety
of digitized products. As previously mentioned, Ethereum [3]
is now the most popular smart-contract-enabled blockchain
platform, and the second cryptocurrency in market cap2 ,
immediately after Bitcoin. Ethereum’s release effectively sees
Szabo’s vision of self-executing, legally enforceable contracts
becoming reality.

A. Smart Contracts and Blockchains

A smart contract executed in a centralized environment
places too much power in the hands of the infrastructure
owner, who in turn may, for example, try to change or even
delete a smart contract. Blockchain, on the other hand, can
Fig. 1. Execution logic of a smart contract C. provide sufficient decentralization. A block is a data structure
that stores transactions executed on a network. Starting with
the genesis block, a new block is expected to be added to the
It is interesting to note how smart contracts depart from chain following a predetermined interval. Each block includes
traditional contracts when it comes to responses to contract a reference to the block added before it, thus creating a chain
violations. Specifically, traditional contracts rely upon: 1) a of blocks. This append-only structure functions as a distributed
judicial system that decides upon the punishment a party ledger. To see why, consider the process of executing a
deserves for breaching a contract; and 2) enforcement agencies transaction in Bitcoin’s blockchain:
to ensure that a punishment is followed. This reactive process 1) A computer (node) broadcasts its transactions to as many
can be fully automated using smart contracts since, as soon peers as possible.
as a breach is automatically detected, actions can then be 2) The peers collect new transactions into blocks.
automatically taken. Consider for example the case when a 3) Each peer tries to solve a “computational puzzle” for its
bank and a company agree upon a loan covenant, where the block.
conditional term is encoded into a smart contract. The smart 4) The first peer who solves the puzzle broadcasts its block
contract can then monitor the conditions and activities of the with the “solution” to all other network members.
company against the requirements previously agreed upon by 5) Nodes accept the reported block only if all transactions
the parties. Once a violation of the covenant is detected, the in it are valid and not already spent.
smart contract can then immediately trigger actions, e.g., it 6) Nodes express their acceptance of a block by linking
can increase the underlying interest rate or issue a warning. that block to previously reported blocks.
In the 1990s, without the recent advances in information and For such a decentralized environment to work, nodes must
communication technologies, smart contracts were little more have incentives to behave appropriately, e.g., to solve the com-
than a novel, but impractical idea. This has drastically changed putational puzzle and validate new blocks. Bitcoin achieves
after the rise of blockchains. The first blockchain was proposed this by rewarding the first node that solves the computational
by Satoshi Nakamoto as part of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency puzzle. This means that nodes are essentially exchanging com-
[1]. Citing an inability to transact with other parties over the putational power and electricity for bitcoins. If a node tries to
internet without help from intermediaries, Nakamoto proposed submit a block containing invalid transactions, each other node
the concept of a distributed and immutable ledger, which is will likely invalidate the reported block and, consequently, the
now broadly referred to as blockchain. Among other features, reporting node gets no reward. Thus, if a malicious attacker
Bitcoin relies on cryptographic signatures to provide control wishes to act against the interest of the Bitcoin network, it
of ownership, and it financially motivates the members of a must commit enough resources to the validation process to
peer-to-peer network to validate new transactions. Since its control at least 51% of all validating power.
conception, Bitcoin has experienced a tremendous success Once nodes add a suggested block to their local copies
in terms of market capitalization1 , and it has also attracted of the chain, the longer chain becomes the true state of the
considerable research interest (e.g., see [4]). network, and the process of adding another block begins. Thus,
Bitcoin is now considered the first version of blockchain [5], consensus is achieved in a distributed fashion. Assuming that
which is purely focused on the trading of cryptocurrencies. a single node is not able to consolidate validation power, the
1 At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s market cap is over $110,000,000,000 2 At the time of writing, Ethereum’s market cap is over $20,000,000,000
according to CoinMarketCap (http://coinmarketcap.com). according to CoinMarketCap (http://coinmarketcap.com).
ledger then becomes decentralized and secure, thus satisfying an insurance policy, represented as a smart contract, can au-
the necessary conditions for a smart contract to function well. tomatically trigger insurance payouts based on predetermined
Blockchains can also store smart contracts. Once a contract parameters, e.g., a flight delay or the proximity of a Category
has been published to the network, it will then perform 5 hurricane to the policy owner’s house. The bottom line here
exactly as specified without any maintenance or auxiliary is that the immutability of the environment smart contracts
input. This means that there is no possibility that a smart are executed in can revolutionize the way parties settle legal
contract’s operation produces unexpected results or that it can agreements. Nonetheless, as we discuss throughout this paper,
be violated. while the technology is quickly maturing, there are numerous
regulatory uncertainties to be addressed before one can realize
B. The Case For Smart Contracts on Blockchains the full potential of smart contracts on blockchains.
The fact that a blockchain is a distributed, immutable ledger
means that it allows for an easy auditing of all the transactions
taking place on a (business) network. We next illustrate why C. The Case Against Smart Contracts on Blockchains
the decentralization brought by blockchains provides the ideal
infrastructure for smart contracts. For the sake of illustration, Governments around the world and, in particular, in the
consider a hypothetical contract where Alice agrees to pay Bob United States of America, have begun considering and leg-
$10 to wash her car. After signing the contract, Bob washes islating smart contracts. However, as a new and continually
Alice’s car and later claims that he has never received the evolving technology that poses serious implications on current
amount of money agreed upon for the rendered service. Alice legal systems, there are many legal issues related to decentral-
could then claim one of the following: 1) that she did pay ized smart contracts that merit both improvement and clarity.
in cash, but Bob did not issue a receipt; or 2) that she has
already mailed a check to Bob, but Bob has never cashed the For example, consider the statement “good faith effort”,
check. Dispute resolution can end up as “he said, she said”, an implied contractual term. During the hearing of Troutt
with potentially no way to prove whether or not Alice actually v. City of Lawrence in 2008, that statement was defined as
paid Bob or that Bob ever received the payment. “what a reasonable person would determine is a diligent and
Now, consider the case where Alice and Bob use a smart honest effort under the same set of facts or circumstances.”
contract on a blockchain network to record and process their Even still, “what a reasonable person would determine” is a
car-washing transaction. In particular, both Alice and Bob subjective statement, leaving the door open for a dispute on
digitally sign a contract stating that Alice will pay $10 after whether or not a person is or was reasonable. The point of
her car is washed, and that contract is safely stored on a the above example is that virtually no action is completely
blockchain. Moreover, both parties agree on using a device objective. Evaluating the context by which an action was
that detects the status of the car, e.g., dirty or clean, and taken is, arguably, a core principle of the existence of a
the smart contract periodically requests data from that device. judicial system. For example, civil judges and a jury of peers
Recall how a smart contract is an event-driven execution of exist because many laws and rules do not account for every
an action. Alice and Bob have entered into a contract that possible situation. That said, if a smart contract is just a
will automatically move $10 from Alice’s account to Bob’s preprogrammed set of rules, how can we expect it to capture
account when the status of Alice’s car changes from dirty all possible situations so as be able to universally remove the
to washed. Once that condition is met, Alice automatically need for lawyers, legal hearings, or formal dispute resolution?
pays Bob $10 without either having to do any extra manual We argue that while smart contracts might generally be more
work. If the contract is not fulfilled because, say, Alice did effective and efficient than traditional contracts, they are not
not have enough funds to cover her costs, then Bob can take omnipotent, and are unlikely to ever be able to automatically
Alice to court and prove in a definitive manner that at no time resolve every dispute or conflict.
did he ever receive a payment from Alice. Thereafter, it is Further, in their current state, most smart contracts are not
rather straightforward to perform auditing procedures aiming entirely confidential, i.e., the trait that empowers blockchains is
at showing whether or not Alice ever sent $10 to Bob by also one of its biggest detriments when it comes to regulation.
checking the blockchain’s transaction history. This shows how For example, there is already uncertainty as to whether or not
smart contracts have the potential to prevent and/or quickly blockchains violate the Global Data Protections Requirement
resolve contractual disputes. (GDPR) of the European Union. This happens because an
The above hypothetical scenario relies on the existence of immutable ledger is incompatible with the right to be forgot-
an IoT device that measures the cleanliness status of a car, ten. This is unacceptable both for EU regulation and for the
which might not exist today. However, there are some ground- purposes of many commercial contracts in the United States
breaking business ideas that rely on smart contracts and are of America. By tracking the input and output of a smart
already in use. For example, the company Etherisc3 provides contract, one can also argue that patterns can be identified
parametric insurance based on smart contracts. Specifically, and information can be inferred. If any party in an agreement
is uncomfortable with the lack of confidentiality, then public
3 https://etherisc.com/ smart contracts are insufficient to replace traditional contracts.
 III. C URRENT R EGULATORY L ANDSCAPE Vermont H.868 12 V.S.A. 19136 declares important provi-
After briefly introducing smart contracts and blockchains sions for the legal authenticity of blockchains, e.g., “a fact
in the previous section, we now shift our focus to current or record verified through a valid application of blockchain
legislative endeavors, focusing primarily on the United States technology is authentic.” It further states that if a record on
of America. Recent years have seen a number of state bills pro- a blockchain is disputed, the disputer has the burden of pro-
viding definitions for smart contracts and blockchain, as well ducing evidence to disprove the blockchain. More progressive
as some loose rules on the government role and interactions than the other mentioned bills, Vermont’s bill expresses that
within these mediums. We next illustrate some of the proposed the identity and ownership of assets recorded on a blockchain
bills in order to understand the ramifications on current and are legally valid. The bill, unfortunately, does not explicitly
future adoption of smart contracts. deal with smart contracts.
Arizona HB 24174 introduces basic provisions that declare Generally speaking, the above bills seem to suggest that a
the authenticity of fundamental aspects of blockchains and smart contract is a valid legal contract when it includes an
smart contracts. First, cryptographic signatures are considered agreement between multiple parties, consideration of value
sufficient to act as binding electronic signatures: “a signature exchange, valid consent by all parties, and does not seek
that is secured through blockchain technology is considered to to accomplish an illegal goal. While these bills provide an
be in an electronic form and to be an electronic signature”. essential foundation for the regulatory landscape to grow from,
The scope of electronic records is then amended to include the current legislation concerning decentralized smart contracts
blockchains: “a record or contract that is secured through is still far from ideal. The same is true regarding some features
blockchain technology is considered to be in an electronic of that technology, as we discuss next.
form and to be an electronic record.” Finally, the use of smart IV. N ECESSARY S MART C ONTRACT D EVELOPMENTS
contracts to enforce an agreement between parties is expressly
permitted: “smart contracts may exist in commerce. a contract Let’s return to the Alice-Bob car washing scenario. We now
relating to a transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity know that Alice and Bob can enter a legally binding smart
or enforceability solely because that contract contains a smart contract. By doing so, their contract becomes entirely public
contract term.” This latter point effectively endorses the use (assuming the underlying blockchain is public). Moreover,
of smart contracts from a legal standpoint. Alice and Bob need to make sure that the blockchain network
Nevada SB 3985 provides many of the same definitions hosting their contract is authentic, and that electronically
provided in Arizona’s HB 2417. It starts by describing itself transferring assets is legally valid in their jurisdictions. Thus,
as “an act relating to electronic transactions; recognizing and each of these issues must be resolved before Alice and Bob see
authorizing the use of blockchain technology; prohibiting a smart contracts as an advantageous alternative to traditional
local government from taxing or imposing restrictions upon contractual agreements. Focusing on data confidentiality, we
the use of a blockchain; and providing other matters prop- now explore two different solutions to solve this issue.
erly relating thereto.” It is particularly interesting that this Private blockchains, often referred to as permissioned
bill explicitly prohibits a local government from taxing or blockchains, are the first solution to the data confidentiality
imposing any certificate, license, or permit on any person or issue. They are distributed ledgers where users need per-
entity using a blockchain or a smart contract. Furthermore, mission not only to join the network, but also to access
electronic contract and record definitions are amended to different transactions stored in the blockchain. Permissioned
include smart contracts and blockchains. Generally speaking, blockchains sacrifice anonymity in favor of being able to
the bill states that electronic records cannot be invalidated restrict the involved parties to only those strictly necessary.
because they are stored on a blockchain, and that smart By restricting who can validate transactions in the network, it
contracts can be sufficient for many contractual agreements: is far easier for either a single entity or a group of validators
“a smart contract, record or signature may not be denied to gain majority validating power to force consensus and, thus,
legal effect or enforceability solely because a blockchain was effectively decide which transactions are valid or not. Thus,
used to create, store or verify the smart contract, record or in this endeavor, it is paramount that the blockchain is able
signature.” This last point, together with the following one, to achieve a safe distribution of validating power between
legally validates the use of smart contracts on blockchains: “in parties with unaligned interests. But at the same, members
a proceeding, evidence of a smart contract, record or signature of a permissioned blockchain are known to each other, which
must not be excluded solely because a blockchain was used to might help preventing malicious behavior.
create, store or verify the smart contract, record or signature.” The second solution to the confidentiality issue is the
The bill also outlines numerous instances where blockchains use of the concept from cryptography called zero-knowledge
are not sufficient methods for transmitting a notice, such as proofs [6]. Researched far before blockchains, zero-knowledge
“the recall of a product, or material failure of a product, that proofs allow for a party to prove a mathematical statement
risks endangering the health or safety of a person.” without revealing any extraneous information that leads to
that statement being true. In terms of smart contracts and
4 https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/53leg/1r/bills/hb2417p.pdf
5 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Session/79th2017/Bills/SB/SB398.pdf 6 https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/12/081/01913
blockchains, zero-knowledge proofs can ensure, among other between businesses can be both created and resolved vastly
things, that a certain contract or transaction is valid despite the reduces the need for arbitration and tailored contract design.
fact that information about the parties and other transaction In other words, the contract needs of many can be addressed by
details remain hidden. Some ideas related to zero-knowledge publicly accessible smart contract templates. Contract lawyers,
proofs are now implemented by cryptocurrencies such as now smart contract architects, might specialize themselves
Zerocoin [7]. One of the major issues with Zerocoin is the in creating contracts that cannot be easily defined through
sizable overhead resulting from the proofs when compared to, templates. Although speculative in nature, the above scenario
for example, Bitcoin. Another cryptocurrency, called Zerocash highlights the potential of smart contracts and blockchains to
[8], fixes the overhead issue by making zero-knowledge proofs greatly disrupt many traditional services.
more compact and efficient to verify. However, both Zerocoin
VI. C ONCLUSION
and Zerocash rely on public parameters to set up the cryptocur-
rency system. If one is able to figure out the random numbers Blockchain and smart contracts have the potential to disrupt
used to define these parameters, then the security of the whole several business domains, ranging from supply chain and
system is compromised, e.g., one can no longer detect double healthcare to finance and accounting. Similar to the status of
spending of coins. This means that one must trust the entity the internet about two to three decades ago, there is currently
behind the development and deployment of zero-knowledge- tremendous excitement over the potential of blockchains and
proof systems. Zero-knowledge proofs have a long way to go smart contracts. At the same time, there is also some anxiety
when it comes to reliable implementations, but they present surrounding the legal and regulatory aspects of those tech-
a compelling method to create the confidentiality needed for nologies since poor regulation can strangle innovation, how-
further adoption of blockchains and smart contracts. ever strong regulation can boost the adoption of a disruptive
technology. In this paper, we highlighted some of the pros and
V. I MPLICATIONS OF F ULLY D EVELOPED AND cons associated with blockchain and smart contracts, how they
R EGULATED S MART C ONTRACTS can disrupt some well-established services, and reviewed some
Thus far, we have discussed the current regulatory landscape of the legislation proposed in the United States of America.
and technological developments required to mainstream smart Generally speaking, we are currently witnessing, at least in
contracts and blockchains. We now shift focus to the future, the United States of America, the rise of regulatory systems
when the lack of transaction confidentiality and regulatory that see value in blockchains and smart contracts and that
uncertainty are no longer barriers to the adoption of smart understand that the right regulations lay the groundwork for
contracts. How would such a future impact some of the current innovation. Still, there is much work to be done to unleash
legal and financial services? the potential of those technologies. This is rather expected
In this futuristic scenario, smart contracts and blockchains since, for example, after nearly three decades, societies around
can be used to “tokenize” virtually any valuable asset since the globe are still struggling with legislating the internet (e.g.,
blockchain is now sufficient to establish ownership. Moreover, the Federal Communications Commission in the United States
it is likely that tokens will indisputably represent online has recently dismantled net neutrality rules). We nonetheless
identities, meaning that the ownership of assets and medical expect more meaningful legislation following groundbreaking
records, for example, can be referenced from an identity token. applications of blockchain and smart contracts.
Now, when Alice wants to pay for a service or purchase a R EFERENCES
widget from Bob, they can then rely on a smart contract that
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