Priya Bhati, Ph.D. Scholar at Indian Law Institute (New Delhi)
Gourav Kumar, Ph.D. Scholar at National Law University, Delhi
ABSTRACT
“There is no settled “law of blockchain” so we are interpreting existing legal and regulatory concepts in light of this new technology. As the scope and breadth of use cases increases, the legal certainty will also increase but this will take time. It is crucial for any project to embed legal and regulatory compliance into the design at the outset.”
-Stuart Davis, Partner, Latham & Watkins
The blockchain is an innovative form of public ledger. After the appropriate authentication by the designated network member, it is a series of blocks that saves the public database and records the transaction details. In other words, it is an innovative distributive ledger technology that was first introduced in 1991 to store and secure digital information. Afterward, it launched with the design and development of cryptocurrency as Bitcoin in 2009. One of its basic significances is that it runs on the principle of consensus thereby it is difficult to make changes in the data without the permission of all the parties. The paper seeks to examine the current and future applications of blockchain technology across a range of industries, including e-commerce, intellectual property rights, finance, banking, securities markets, and algorithmic governments. It is necessary to determine the extent of the technology's legal regulation as well as possible models for that regulation, particularly in light of comparative analysis. The scope of legal regulation of the technology as well as potential models of such regulation shall be ascertained, especially from a comparative perspective.
Keywords: Blockchain, legal regulation, intellectual property rights, e- commerce.
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