Blockchains and laws: are they compatible?

At conferences and events I often get asked a variation of “Is blockchain regulated?”.  The short answer is no: technology is rarely regulated.  It’s entities who are regulated (especially in finance).

Blockchains and Laws: are they compatible? A paper I coauthored at R3 with Baker Mckenzie.

Banks need their technology to conform to certain standards – resilience, security, and so on.  The banks (not the technology!) get penalised if they can’t demonstrate high standards with the technology they choose to deploy.  A common rulebook that is adapted for each jurisdiction is called Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures.

But blockchains and distributed ledgers share data, and often business is conducted across borders.  And many countries have data protection laws specifying that certain types of data (eg personally identifying data) need to remain stored on computers within the borders of the country itself.  How do we reconcile data sharing with data protection laws?

Well, instead of thinking about blockchains and distributed ledgers as a mechanism for sharing data (we know data sharing is a solved problem), think of them as “business to business glue” that can make business processes between entities much more efficient.

So, some data absolutely needs to be shared.  In finance that may be some trade details: prices, amounts, delivery dates, etc.  We do this today anyway, bilaterally and via intermediaries.  But we only really want to share this kind of data with the other party (and not the entire network of participants!).  Other data needs to be kept completely internal: customer details and instructions, valuations and profit margins, etc.

Can blockchains and distributed ledger platforms deal with these kinds of requirements?  Absolutely – R3’s Corda was built specifically for this.

In my role as Director of Research at R3, I recently coauthored Blockchains and Laws: are they compatible? with Baker Mckenzie, the world’s leading cross border law firm.  If you’re into that kind of thing, it’s well worth a read.

R3’s cutting edge research and thought leadership is also now available as a separate offering to consortium membership – here’s a selection of papers that R3 has produced.