Blockchain Law

Review of Blockchain and the law by Primavera De Filippi & Aaron Wright

Lex cryptographica -> what is cryptographica at the rule of code that is on a blockchain. It is readable and open source?

General remarks

1. Impact of technology well positioned

2. Its technological nature misunderstood

3. Clear filtering criteria for smart contract that will work

4. Many real life examples that could work

5. Credible outlook for coming 10 years

6. Imposes fear on the reader?

Page 35 Open source software.... overall usefulness

What would be the minimal viable number of developers you need to make it reliable? Because "Many eyes make bugs shallow" and the closed source alternative delivers "security by obscurity"; so the latter is worthless in terms of added value to blockchain. So it's not the blockchain that has disputable usefulness, but the decisions people make behind the of an application.

Page 38 Governments no longer need ... benefit of the public.

Oh my god: BLOCKCHAIN IS NOT STORAGE. We can't believe to have to read a sentence like this in an expert book on blockchains... It is bad for:

A. There is no source data on blockchains, only proofs of data, that might point back to source data

B. People might get concerned about the privacy compliance of blockchains, and for what reason? Only because of misinformation.

C. It suggest that government records on a public blockchain are effortless approachable / downloadable, but of course after tracing back the origins via its hash, you still have to be identified, then authenticated and authorised to see this data, which only has been proved on the blockchain.

We unfortunately see this fundamental misunderstanding throughout the book and we are doubting the state of consciousness some of the renown blockchain specialists have been when they read these passages.

Page 39 Pseudonymity,... tax evasion.

Criminals that use pseudonymous blockchains / crypto currencies are stupid criminals? They should use anonymous cryptos, which is of course a different cup of tea.

We miss the following type statistics in this part of the book:

1. What percentage of money involved in drugs is the cash US dollar?

2. How is tax evasion supported by the federation of international banks and to what extent

3. How do these figures relate to drugs - and tax evasion numbers using crypto currencies for transactions and store of value?

This passage in the book sounds biased to please those currently in power.

Page 46 The immense ... characteristics. plus Page 48 Protocols like Bitcoin ... Figure 2.2). This is fundamentally incorrect. Strictly speaking blockchains do not need the internet nor its TCP/IP protocol. It comes in handy and it reinforces its current success, fair enough, but it is not "necessary" nor does it "rely on" the TCP/IP protocol. Currently the bitcoin uses TCP/IP a lot, true, but it's the people behind the nodes themselves who decide how they accept a raw transaction.

Page 75 Once the wheels of... execution. Maybe it is interesting to explain why we do not add that halt-code from the start?

Page 76 In the decentralized marketplaces... it's price. No, it will not consist of more than the link to it. This is a common misconception spread by the book:

There is no* content on a public blockchain, only proofs that point back to data somewhere else.

'* OK, there is hardly any content on public blockchains. Only:

A few numbers, to support / proof the UTXO of the associated currency,

signatures (but you could argue these are pointers too)

Smart contract code