Can I read Smart Contracts: The Limits of Autonomous Performance on EtoBox?

Smart Contracts: The Limits of Autonomous Performance by Tian Xu is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Smart Contracts: The Limits of Autonomous Performance about?

This chapter looks beyond the novelty of self-executing ‘smart contracts’ in blockchain networks and explores developments against the background fact that commercial parties have, for centuries, used documentary credit to simulate autonomous performance. Blockchain-based smart contracts and documentary credit share three core functionalities which are essential to any effective autonomous performance, analogue or digital—they both (i) act through internalized media of exchange; (ii) operate as closed systems; and (iii) provide means of securing sufficient resources to guarantee contractual performance. Using these three functionalities as a framework, this chapter conducts a comparative analysis of mechanisms for effecting autonomous contractual performance in a commercial setting. From this comparison, a few hypotheses are drawn regarding the potential areas where smart contract technology is more likely to find fruitful application. In particular, the chapter considers potential limitations to applying smart contracts to scenarios beyond digital asset transfers, how dispute resolution mechanisms should be designed to complement (rather impair) the autonomous nature of contractua

Author

Tian Xu

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published

2022

Language

EN