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Contracting In The Age Of Smart Contracts, Farshad Ghodoosi

Washington Law Review

Smart contracts lie at the heart of blockchain technology. There are two principal problems, however, with existing smart contracts: first, the enforceability of smart contracts remains ambiguous. Second, smart contracts are limited in scope and capability barring more complex contracts from being executed via blockchain technology. Drawing from the existing literature on contracts and smart contracting, this Article suggests new approaches to address these two problems. First, it proposes a framework based on reliance-based contracting to analyze smart contracts. Second, the Article analyzes the seismic shifts in contractual disputes, and offers new insights into its features including decentralized decision-making, network-based …