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        <title>Frontiers in Blockchain | Smart Contracts section | New and Recent Articles</title>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/blockchain/sections/smart-contracts</link>
        <description>RSS Feed for Smart Contracts section in the Frontiers in Blockchain journal | New and Recent Articles</description>
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        <pubDate>2026-05-03T20:00:20.815+00:00</pubDate>
        <ttl>60</ttl>
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        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1762861</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1762861</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Bridging the governance gap in agricultural blockchain-based smart contracts: a bibliometric-driven architectural framework]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-22T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Systematic Review</category>
        <author>Huda M. Elmatsani</author><author>Arief Sartono</author><author>S. Joni Munarso</author><author>Sari Intan Kailaku</author><author>Yogi Purna Rahardjo</author><author>Noveria Sjafrina</author><author>Mochammad Jusuf Djafar</author><author>Ermi E. Koeslulat</author><author>Sitti Ramlah</author><author>Satrio Utomo</author><author>Boni Benyamin</author><author>Puji Astuti</author><author>Agung Hendriadi</author><author>Arief Arianto</author>
        <description><![CDATA[BackgroundAgricultural supply chains are characterized by high transaction costs and agency risks stemming from information asymmetry and biological variability. Although blockchain is widely proposed as a solution, existing literature predominantly focuses on passive traceability rather than active algorithmic governance.MethodsThis study conducts a bibliometric synthesis of 367 documents (2018–2025) to map the field’s intellectual structure and research orientation. Co-occurrence analysis was employed to reveal distinct thematic clusters and identify the evolution of technological infrastructure in the sector.ResultsThe analysis reveals a critical volume-impact paradox within the technological infrastructure group and a 16:1 asymmetry between traceability and automation research. This indicates a significant gap in leveraging smart contracts for economic enforcement and active supply chain management.ConclusionWe propose the Agri-Cognito framework, a prescriptive architecture designed to bridge the cognitive void through AI-driven pre-consensus validation. The framework provides a theoretical blueprint for transitioning agricultural blockchains from passive digital logbooks to autonomous governance ecosystems, offering a direct response to the “oracle problem” and structural inefficiencies in current implementations.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1730114</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1730114</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Hyper-heuristic driven smart contracts for DeFi: a framework for dynamic rule optimization and adaptive executions]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-01-08T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Kassem Danach</author><author>Hassan Rkein</author><author>Ahmad Farroukh</author><author>Ziad E. L. Balaa</author><author>Samir Haddad</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The static and hard-coded logic of smart contracts in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms significantly limits their adaptability in dynamic and volatile market environments. To address this challenge, we propose a novel hyper-heuristic driven framework that enables real-time rule optimization within smart contracts, thereby enhancing responsiveness, gas efficiency, and operational robustness. The framework features a two-layer architecture: a reinforcement learning-based high-level controller selects appropriate low-level rule heuristics from a domain-specific library based on evolving transaction contexts and on-chain data. Implemented and evaluated on Uniswap v2 and Aave v3 protocols, the system dynamically optimizes parameters such as slippage tolerance, gas usage thresholds, and loan-to-value ratios. Experimental results on real-world datasets show significant performance improvements, including a 45.6% increase in transaction success rate, 28.3% reduction in average gas consumption, and 38.4% drop in liquidation events under market stress scenarios. This research demonstrates the feasibility and advantages of embedding intelligent, adaptive decision-making mechanisms within DeFi smart contracts, opening new pathways toward autonomous, resilient, and regulation-aligned blockchain systems.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1724292</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1724292</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Defeasible logic reasoner to support legal reasoning in smart contracts on blockchain]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-01-07T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Marko Marković</author><author>Stevan Gostojić</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The introduction of information and communication technologies in the legal domain has enabled the automation of some activities in the legal profession. With the advent of blockchain and smart contracts, new tools have emerged for lawyers and their clients, enhancing transparency and increasing trust compared to traditional legal instruments. Once deployed, smart contracts should be able to respond to various events that can occur during the contract’s lifecycle. However, this kind of automation in smart contracts requires them to embed necessary legal knowledge and implement support for legal reasoning. In this paper, we propose a legal reasoning method for smart contracts that incorporates defeasible logic, a key requirement for automated reasoning in the legal domain. The entire reasoning process in our approach is performed on the blockchain infrastructure, making the drawing of conclusions fully transparent and accessible to all interested parties. To demonstrate our concept, we illustrate how certain rights prescribed under labour law can be embedded within a smart contract and deployed on the blockchain as a legal reasoning service. Then, we show how an employment contract can use the reasoning contract to automatically apply legal norms to infer conclusions and determine legal consequences in particular cases. We analyse the benefits and potential issues of this method and discuss directions for future work. Optimisation of the reasoning engine is one of the challenges we identified that needs to be tackled in future.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1481339</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1481339</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain oracles for decentralized agricultural insurance using trusted IoT data]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-01-13T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Manoj T</author><author>Krishnamoorthi Makkithaya</author><author>Narendra V. G.</author><author>Vijaya Murari T</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Agricultural insurance is one of the formal and reliable risk management instruments to cope with agrarian risks. Presently, agricultural insurance products rely heavily on centralized systems that lack transparency and traceability, leading to suboptimal risk assessment and delays in payouts. To address these concerns the fintech industry has started to embrace a popular decentralized technology called blockchain. However, blockchain operates as a deterministic and synchronized state system, which means it cannot directly access real-world data for decentralized applications. A mechanism called oracle is required for the trusted access of agricultural risk factor data to smart contracts from external sources such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, web services and databases. Hence, the present study proposes a blockchain-based AgriInsureDON framework with a privacy-preserving decentralized oracle for risk factor data access from trusted IoT devices for agricultural insurance. Initially, a method for computing the direct reputation score of IoT devices based on behavioral and data reputation is illustrated. Next, a privacy preserved decentralized oracle mechanism is designed and implemented using a masked secret sharing and secure aggregation scheme. Later, we demonstrate the working of weather-indexed insurance contracts based on decentralized oracle. Finally, a performance analysis of smart contract transactions w.r.t average latency, throughput, average CPU utilization and total memory usage is conducted on Ganache and Sepolia test networks. The evaluation results of privacy-protected decentralized oracle and an indexed insurance contract within AgriInsureDON framework confirms that transactions are efficient and scalable to meet the requirements of expedited claim settlement.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1481914</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1481914</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Upgradeable diamond smart contracts in decentralized autonomous organizations]]></title>
        <pubdate>2024-12-17T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Paul van Vulpen</author><author>Hidde Heijnen</author><author>Samuel Mens</author><author>Thijn Kroon</author><author>Slinger Jansen</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Upgradeable smart contracts allow decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to address bugs, enhance security, and expand functionality post-deployment. The proxy pattern enables smart contract upgradeability but introduces admin-centric governance, where power is concentrated in a single or small number of addresses. This paper explores the potential of decentralized smart contract governance to overcome admin centric governance while achieving flexibility in governing smart contracts. We investigate the Diamond Pattern as a flexible upgradeable contract framework that allows for modular smart contracts. Using the SecureSECO DAO as a case study, we examine how the diamond pattern can be configured for decentralized governance. The used architecture allows DAOs to upgrade smart contracts collectively through community consensus, and the implementation provides proposals, votes, and execution without requiring technical knowledge. The study highlights the benefits of this approach, namely, flexibility in smart contract governance, enhanced modularity, and a single point of interaction for governance. We also discuss limitations and challenges for upgradeable smart contracts such as the decision-making delays and potential vulnerabilities. To encourage adoption of consensus governance, we call for the creation of user-friendly tooling and smart contract facets.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1235704</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1235704</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Editorial: Blockchain for trusted information systems]]></title>
        <pubdate>2023-06-19T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Editorial</category>
        <author>Giovanni Meroni</author><author>Marco Comuzzi</author><author>Julius Köpke</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1141909</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1141909</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain based resource governance for decentralized web environments]]></title>
        <pubdate>2023-05-09T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Davide Basile</author><author>Claudio Di Ciccio</author><author>Valerio Goretti</author><author>Sabrina Kirrane</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Decentralization initiatives such as Solid, Digi.me, and ActivityPub aim to give data owners more control over their data and to level the playing field by enabling small companies and individuals to gain access to data, thus stimulating innovation. However, these initiatives typically use access control mechanisms that cannot verify compliance with usage conditions after access has been granted to others. In this paper, we extend the state of the art by proposing a resource governance conceptual framework, entitled ReGov, that facilitates usage control in decentralized web environments. We subsequently demonstrate how our framework can be instantiated by combining blockchain and trusted execution environments. Through blockchain technologies, we record policies expressing the usage conditions associated with resources and monitor their compliance. Our instantiation employs trusted execution environments to enforce said policies, inside data consumers’ devices. We evaluate the framework instantiation through a detailed analysis of requirments derived from a data market motivating scenario, as well as an assessment of the security, privacy, and affordability aspects of our proposal.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1141760</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1141760</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Empowering trusted data sharing for data analytics in a federated environment: A blockchain-based approach]]></title>
        <pubdate>2023-04-21T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Pierluigi Plebani</author><author>Davide Rossetto</author><author>Francesco Tiezzi</author>
        <description><![CDATA[As data analytics is used in business to increase profits, organizations use it to pursue their goals. Even if enterprise data could be already valuable on its own, in many cases, combining it with external data sources would boost the value of the output, making data sharing a need in data analytics. At the same time, organizations are reluctant to share data, as they are scared of disclosing critical information. This calls for solutions that are able to safeguard data holders by regulating how data can be shared to ensure the so-called data sovereignty. This paper focuses on the usage of data lakes as well-established technology across enterprises for data analytics where internal or publicly available data are considered. The goal is to extend data lakes with functionalities that, respecting the data sovereignty, enable a data lake also to be ingested with data shared by other organizations and to share data to external organizations. Notable, the purpose of this work is to face this issue by defining an architecture that, inserted in a federated environment: restricts data access and enables monitoring that the actual usage of data respects the data sovereignty expressed in the policies agreed upon by the involved parties; makes use of Blockchain technology as a means for guaranteeing the traceability of data sharing; and allows for balancing computation movement and data movement. The proposed approach has been applied to a healthcare scenario where several institutions (e.g., hospitals and clinics, research institutes, and medical universities) produce and collect clinical data in local data lakes.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1105119</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1105119</link>
        <title><![CDATA[A Solidity implementation of TAVS]]></title>
        <pubdate>2023-03-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Technology and Code</category>
        <author>Antonio M. Larriba</author><author>Damián López</author>
        <description><![CDATA[We present a Solidity smart contract implementation of the TAVS e-voting protocol. The Two Authorities Electronic Voting Scheme (TAVS) is a voting scheme that achieves universal verifiability with a reduced time-complexity both for the elector and the voting system. TAVS security derives from the RSA cryptosystem it employs, and the assumption of two entities that do not share information. We present a Solidity implementation which replaces one of these entities with an immutable smart contract in Ethereum based networks. By doing so, our implementation extends the security properties of TAVS and achieves a higher degree of resilience, verifiability, and availability. We open source the code of the implementation.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2022.814977</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2022.814977</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Review of Automated Vulnerability Analysis of Smart Contracts on Ethereum]]></title>
        <pubdate>2022-03-24T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Review</category>
        <author>Heidelinde Rameder</author><author>Monika di Angelo</author><author>Gernot Salzer</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Programs on public blockchains often handle valuable assets, making them attractive targets for attack. At the same time, it is challenging to design correct blockchain applications. Checking code for potential vulnerabilities is a viable option to increase trust. Therefore, numerous methods and tools have been proposed with the intention to support developers and analysts in detecting code vulnerabilities. Moreover, publications keep emerging with different focus, scope, and quality, making it difficult to keep up with the field and to identify relevant trends. Thus, regular reviews are essential to keep pace with the varied developments in a structured manner. Regarding blockchain programs, Ethereum is the platform most widely used and best documented. Moreover, applications based on Ethereum are entrusted with billions of USD. Like on similar blockchains, they are subject to numerous attacks and losses due to vulnerabilities that exist at all levels of the ecosystem. Countermeasures are in great demand. In this work, we perform a systematic literature review (SLR) to assess the state of the art regarding automated vulnerability analysis of smart contracts on Ethereum with a focus on classifications of vulnerabilities, detection methods, security analysis tools, and benchmarks for the assessment of tools. Our initial search of the major on-line libraries yields more than 1,300 publications. For the review, we apply a clear strategy and protocol to assure consequent, comprehensive, and reproducible documentation and results. After collecting the initial results, cleaning up references, removing duplicates and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, we retain 303 publications that include 214 primary studies, 70 surveys and 19 SLRs. For quality appraisal, we assess their intrinsic quality (derived from the reputation of the publication venue) as well as their contextual quality (determined by rating predefined criteria). For about 200 publications with at least a medium score, we extract the vulnerabilities, methods, and tools addressed, among other data. In a second step, we synthesize and structure the data into a classification of both the smart contract weaknesses and the analysis methods. Furthermore, we give an overview of tools and benchmarks used to evaluate tools. Finally, we provide a detailed discussion.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.770503</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.770503</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Is it Possible to Verify if a Transaction is Spendable?]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-12-14T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Marcelo Arenas</author><author>Thomas Reisenegger</author><author>Juan Reutter</author><author>Domagoj Vrgoč</author>
        <description><![CDATA[With the popularity of Bitcoin, there is a growing need to understand the functionality, security, and performance of various mechanisms that comprise it. In this paper, we analyze Bitcoin’s scripting language, Script, that is one of the main building blocks of Bitcoin transactions. We formally define the semantics of Script, and study the problem of determining whether a user-defined script is well-formed; that is, whether it can be unlocked, or whether it contains errors that would prevent this from happening.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.758169</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.758169</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Which Event Happened First? Deferred Choice on Blockchain Using Oracles]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-10-26T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Jan Ladleif</author><author>Mathias Weske</author>
        <description><![CDATA[First come, first served: Critical choices between alternative actions are often made based on events external to an organization, and reacting promptly to their occurrence can be a major advantage over the competition. In Business Process Management (BPM), such deferred choices can be expressed in process models, and they are an important aspect of process engines. Blockchain-based process execution approaches are no exception to this, but are severely limited by the inherent properties of the platform: The isolated environment prevents direct access to external entities and data, and the non-continual runtime based entirely on atomic transactions impedes the monitoring and detection of events. In this paper we provide an in-depth examination of the semantics of deferred choice, and transfer them to environments such as the blockchain. We introduce and compare several oracle architectures able to satisfy certain requirements, and show that they can be implemented using state-of-the-art blockchain technology.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.653128</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.653128</link>
        <title><![CDATA[What Blockchain Are We Talking About? An Analytical Framework for Understanding Blockchain Applications in Agriculture and Food]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-04-29T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Lan van Wassenaer</author><author>Cor Verdouw</author><author>Sjaak Wolfert</author>
        <description><![CDATA[With the many promises it holds in addressing problems concerning information exchange and digital transactions in multi-actor processes, blockchain technology (BCT) has gained considerable traction in the agrifood sector. Governments, international organisations, private companies, consortia of public and private actors are launching various blockchain projects for improving transparency, traceability, and many other key issues in the agrifood sector. This has resulted in a large number of use cases. It is often unclear, however, what and how technical, social and economic aspects were considered in different usecases. Due to the novelty and elusiveness of the technology, there is no ready-to-use analytical framework or guideline yet for assessing its applicability and choosing the right technical and organisational setup. As a result, many stakeholders have to grope in the dark when designing and implementing their “blockchain application.” Based on studies of use cases worldwide and experiences in organizing different blockchain pilots in the Netherlands, this paper seeks to address this problem by providing an overview of the choices to be made at three layers of a blockchain application: the ledger, the governance structure and the ecosystem. This can serve as a reference framework for understanding different blockchain applications and choosing key parameters for new use cases in the agrifood sector. It is expected that such demystification of the blockchain will contribute to more realistic and effective application of the technology to pressing problems in agriculture and food.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.553671</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.553671</link>
        <title><![CDATA[What Do We Mean by Smart Contracts? Open Challenges in Smart Contracts]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-02-03T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Maria G. Vigliotti</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Contracts regulate most of our professional and personal life: they enable modern society to operate. The term “Smart Contract,” coined in 1994 by Nick Szabo, means different things to different people. This editorial perspective explores the meanings of the term “smart contract” and the challenges about the legality of “smart contracts.” We are familiar with contracts written in natural language, yet our relationships with smart contracts is yet to be defined. The advent of blockchain technology seems to have accelerated the development and the opportunities for the adoption of smart contracts. The purpose of this editorial is to create an interdisciplinary section where computer scientists and members of the legal profession participate in a constructive debate around smart contracts to positively influence future development.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00038</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00038</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Design of a Sustainable Blockchain-Oriented Software for Building Workers Management]]></title>
        <pubdate>2020-10-19T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Andrea Pinna</author><author>Gavina Baralla</author><author>Giorgia Lallai</author><author>Michele Marchesi</author><author>Roberto Tonelli</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The building workers sector is one of the most challenging sectors for Human Resources (HR) management. In this work, we propose a solution relying on Blockchain technology and present the design of a Blockchain-Oriented Software system conceived for managing the building workers sector with a focus on workers' safety, and it is guided by sustainable and Agile Methodologies in software design. The proposed approach takes advantage of different features of the Blockchain technology and provides transparency for labor inspectors, grants data integrity and immutability, relies on tamper-proof time stamps for any recorded activity, allows the implementation of Smart Contracts where clauses are automatically respected without the need of a trusted control authority, acknowledges the legal requirements in the field, including the possibility of creating an Operational Safety Plans, which construction companies have to provide, and finally implements the creation of vacant job positions that workers can find and apply to. In order to achieve these goals, we adopt the Blockchain-Oriented Software Engineering (BOSE) methodology to design Blockchain software applications and apply an Agile methodology centered on Blockchain Software development (called ABCDE) for the design and development of the decentralized application. Such a methodology allows us to center the software development around the actors of the system in the specific domain, such as Building Workers, Construction Companies, Labor Inspectors, and so on. In addition, we rely on the software sustainability analysis, based on the five dimensions of sustainability, to evaluate the approach and to avoid mistakes in the system development. We design system elements with specific diagrams, and we divided our system in the on-chain and the out-of-chain components. The implementation of the system, done by using Ethereum and the ERC721 standard, allows us to improve some aspect of the design, to know the deployment and usage costs, and to evaluate the effect of the user interface. Finally, we discuss the effects of our system and its sustainability, and we provide a comparison of our system with a similar per aims but centralized system.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00036</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00036</link>
        <title><![CDATA[What Happens in Blockchain Stays in Blockchain. A Legal Solution to Conflicts Between Digital Ledgers and Privacy Rights]]></title>
        <pubdate>2020-08-04T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Hypothesis and Theory</category>
        <author>Gianluigi Maria Riva</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Blockchain is a disruptive technology presented in 2008 that allows both scarcity and timestamps to be introduced to the digital world. Whereas many technological applications may benefit from this architecture, it involves direct conflict with both Privacy rights and Data Protection rules, as introduced by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This study first provides an overview of what blockchain is, how it works, and how it can affect privacy. It describes how this technology functions, thanks to binary ledgers distributed amongst the system nodes, and what role they play in validating the succession of blocks. The work then analyses how blockchain can be applied to innovative fields and investigates related Privacy issues. Indeed, the chain can certify the time, the parties and the object included in a “block” but cannot guarantee the legal validity, the veracity or correctness of the content. Furthermore, its immutability is in direct conflict with the right to be forgotten. In addition, due to the distributed nature of the system, it does not allow identification of data controllers and, consequentially, the liable (accountable) subject for the personal data processed within the digital ledger. The study is intended for both legal and non-legal audiences and provides a technical overview of the technological foundations behind blockchain to the legal audience, and the conceptual tools to understand the legal requirements that apply to the non-legal audience. The aim of the study is to highlight the characteristics of the proposed solution, i.e., supporting centralised governance of blockchain infrastructures to ensure control over the distrubuted nodes, as well as having the capability to intervene in modifying the chain when the law requires it. This set of interventions would also render publicly available the personal information within the blockchain with different levels of accessibility (“Privacy by Layers,” PbL) and, therefore, provide log control that can ensure compliance with the Data Protection regulatory framework. To provide a complete analysis on the matter, the study also addresses how Intelligent Systems running on a blockchain-based infrastructure that holds pieces of personal information can clash with Article 22 of the GDPR on automated decisions when it affects the fundamental rights of individuals. Finally, the conclusions crystallise the legal remarks by stressing the essential elements of the analysis that emerged during the study and framing them within the bigger picture of how the Lawaddresses social or technological phenomena.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00027</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00027</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Smart Contracts Contracts]]></title>
        <pubdate>2020-06-04T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Massimo Bartoletti</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This paper explores the connection between software contracts and smart contracts. Despite the assonance, these two terms denote quite different concepts: software contracts are logical properties of software components, while smart contracts are programs executed on blockchains. What is the relation between them? We answer this question by discussing how to integrate software contracts in the design of programming languages for smart contracts.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00025</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.00025</link>
        <title><![CDATA[The DAO Controversy: The Case for a New Species of Corporate Governance?]]></title>
        <pubdate>2020-05-27T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Policy and Practice Reviews</category>
        <author>Robbie Morrison</author><author>Natasha C. H. L. Mazey</author><author>Stephen C. Wingreen</author>
        <description><![CDATA[This paper reviews the recent case of The DAO “hack” in June 2016 and analyzes The DAO's response in its time of crisis, and its implications for corporate and IT governance. There was no human-led governance in The DAO. Instead, The DAO placed its trust in the smart contract they had built together on the blockchain, which became its governance mechanism. The events that follow allow us to see hitherto unobservable organizational behaviors that are unique to trustless organizations, and hence The DAO gives us a glimpse at a new species of corporate governance. This paper explores the implications of these ideas: we propose the emergence of a spectrum of organizations based on the alienation of trust, we consider the economic impact and legality of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), smart contracts, work and job design, and what happens when corporate governance is managed solely by IT governance.]]></description>
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