The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT), a government-backed initiative, has published the Digital Dispute Resolution Rules (the Digital DR Rules) in a bid to enable the rapid resolution of blockchain and crypto legal disputes by offering a procedural framework and a choice of either arbitration or expert determination.
Specifically, the rules were published on April 22 and the move comes amid the growing need for dispute resolution for digital disputes. This is because the use of novel digital technologies has rapidly grown over the last decade or so, with many experts and market participants seeing blockchain as a key technology to enable self-executing, digitally-connected contracts designed to increase security, reduce cost and improve efficiency.
Some have even suggested that blockchain enables its users to eliminate disputes, but in most cases disputes can nevertheless arise, so dispute resolution is still necessary.
While self-executing smart contracts and blockchain applications have the potential to increase the efficiency of dispute resolution significantly, disputes that require inputs or outputs external to the relevant online network will not disappear completely even as strides are taken.
In fact, the irreversible nature of blockchain and many smart contracts makes it crucial that any self-enforcing aspects of the parties’ agreement are enshrined within a valid legal framework and that all parties from at the outset the applicable dispute resolution mechanism should one be required.
How Can Smart Contracts Be Created?
Smart contracts have countless potential applications across various industries – and they can be created on certain platforms and eco-systems. ZAP is one such platform which can be used to create and host smart contracts of varying complexity, and there are several other platforms out there as well.
