# Lex cryptographica : the legal challenges of new blockchain-based lifeforms by Primavera De Filippi

- Speakers: [Primavera De Filippi](https://streameth.org/speakers/primavera-de-filippi)
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2019-10-09
- Duration: 35:03
- Topics: blockchain, smart contracts, distributed ledger, Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-irOl-Y9xuD0
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irOl-Y9xuD0

## Description

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https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/4/lex-cryptographica-the-legal-challenges-of-new-blockchain-based-lifeforms

Primavera De Filippi talks about the legal challenges of new blockchain-based lifeforms.

Speaker(s): Primavera De Filippi
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Society and Systems
Keywords: legal, law

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## Transcript

[Applause] [Music] thank you so today I'm gonna talk about what I consider to be one of the most fascinating aspects of blockchain technologies which is the ability to operate on them on their own and to interact with their own environment like an independent entity with a life on its own and this is what I call a blockchain base life form and so before we begin let's look at what of the fundamental characteristics of blockchain based system that actually distinguish themselves from traditional internet-based platforms so first of all a blockchain is at the centralized database that operates on top of a peer-to-peer network and just like the Internet those networks are global and transnational and not generally account for national boundaries and because a blockchain is replicated on the computer of every network node then it is highly resilient and because all nodes actually follow the exact same protocols then it is virtually impossible to unilaterally modify or tamper with the data recorded on this decentralized database and then many block chains are also inherently transparent in the sense that everyone that is in the network can see what everyone else is doing with exception of course of privacy enhancing block chains like the cache but because every transaction is actually cryptographically signed with the private key of the party executing it then no one can also later deny actually having affected and executed this transaction and then most public block chains are also pseudonymous in the sense that people do not need to identify themselves as individuals in order to join the network and they just need to create an account in order to obtain a public address that will identify them in AB pseudonymous manner and then finally and most importantly modern blockchains make it possible not only to stop transaction information but also to store and execute software code that will hand with a guarantee of execution in the sense that no one can actually modify influence or even stop the execution of that software and so when we're thinking about regulation then how does this actually differ from traditional software code so on the internet we have this notion of lags informatica which essentially just means that code is increasingly being used as a mean to regulate behaviors and so code is law because code assumes the same functionality as the law event oh of course this code actually remains under the control of specific online operators which are themselves subject to the rule of the law and on the blockchain code is also being used as a means to regulate behavior the difference is that this time because of the specificity and the fundamental characteristics of a blockchain then blockchain based code can actually be designed to largely ignore the traditional rule of law and so the only law that actually matters on those systems is the code and so this has two important implications the first one is that it reduced the need for intermediaries and trusted authorities because it actually shift the the notion of trust away from those centralized potatoes and two of the underlying technology and so as long as we can actually trust the technology then we no longer need to trust in theory anyone else and the other one is that this actually creates new opportunities for increasing the automation and the autonomy of those blockchain based systems because once they have been deployed on the blockchain then the system no longer needs or hit their creators and they can actually be designed to operate autonomously and independently of the original will of the parties deploying it and so this obviously can create some potential conflicts between the real of code and the rule of law and so what is actually a really interesting to explore is what is the interplay between those two types of regulation regulation by law and regulation by code and whether one can actually overtake the other so can a blockchain based systems actually fast to comply with the law or can it instead be used as a mean to bypass existing regulatory frameworks to the extent that they operate within their own separate technical framework and so if we back up a little and we look at the narrative from the early internet days we might remember the claims of some of the internet pioneers like John Perry Barlow of Tim atsume who saw the cyberspace as an independent space that simply could not be regulated because governments simply did not have the heart nor the capacity to exert the sovereignty of a writ but of course this vision did not actually materialize in the same way as many of us would have hoped and as soon as the opportunities of the internet actually began to be understood by new and established market players then the market dynamics actually kicked in and the architecture of the internet slowly started to change become in this increasingly concentrated system which is today controlled by a few incumbents and so in just a few years the internet which has initially perceived as this tool to promote individual freedoms and autonomy as eventually become a powerful tool of surveillance and control and in fact after the initial fear of crypto anarchy faded away it soon become quite clear that it's not to help to regulate the internet because as until direct regulation by law can be difficult because code is increasingly replacing the law as a means of regulation then governments can actually use the law in order to regulate the code by actually exacting criteria on those online operators which are indeed operating that code but can the same solution be applied to a blockchain based system and so the problem here is that we would have option we actually have lost one of the most effective means of regulation which are the intermediary operator and if there is no intermediary operator then it becomes much harder to leverage the traditional means of regulation that were available on the internet because it actually is no longer so easy to identify what is the actual object of regulation and so if we look at the early narrative and promises of the early blockchain advocates then we might actually notice that those are actually quite similar to those the narrative of the early internet pioneers and so the question then is whether blockchain technologies could actually succeed where the Internet has failed can it become this new tool of disintermediation an individual emancipation that the internet pioneers were advocating for and can it actually help materialize these early visions of the cypherpunks leading to this whole new wave of crypto energy and so when talking about the regulation of the cyberspace people introduced the notion of irregular bility in order to highlight the difficulties inherent in the regulation of such a global and transnational network like the internet and in the blockchain space people prefer to refer to those platforms as being illegal in the sense that they operate outside of the purview of the law and so the idea is that a blockchain based system create its own separate technical framework that cannot be touched or affected by the law and we can already see quite a few applications of blockchain technologies that are actually in direct conflict with existing regulatory frameworks and those application of leveraging the autonomy of Bitcoin of other cryptocurrencies in order to facilitate money laundering are in order to set up some decentralized marketplaces for the trading of illicit goods or services and then more recently we also found out that the tamper resistant feature of a blockchain can also be abused in order to record illegitimate content on a block such as copyright infringement or hate speech are potentially links to a child pornography but answer to prevent the excesses of specific rights that actually require the deletion of content such as of course the height with forgotten but this discrepancy between the rule of law and the rule of code is perhaps the most apparent in the context of property so traditional property rights are defined by the law and the thought they can only be taken away by the law so if I acquire a particular piece of property in a way that turns out to be illegitimate then regardless of what the law says then I could order or a judge or I can essentially be declared not to be the legitimate owner of this property and the property can be taken away from me well as when we enter into this blockchain based systems then we encounter those new types of cryptographic assets or blockchain base property that do not actually follow the same rules and so for instance if I legitimately acquired a Bitcoin then no one has actually unilaterally the power to seize it from me unless the code actually provides for that and then the same issues actually applies in the context of contracts so traditional legal contracts are created according to specific rules which are defined by contract law and which are the design to actually create a binding agreement between two parties but those agreements can only be enforced through the intervention of a third party Authority which needs to read and understand and interpret the meaning of those contracts in order to identify what the real intention of the parties well and when we move into those blocks and assistance then we can now create those new types of contractual arrangements through those blocks in very smart contracts which are defined only and exclusively by the code which is deployed on the blockchain and so those agreements actually in the longer choir third party intervention because the contractual provision will be automatically and fast and executed by the underlying technology of course which however cannot actually identify what the real intention of the parties were but will just merely apply the wordings of the code and so overall what this all means is that it is now possible to deploy software entities on a blockchain in such a way that they can de facto act as autonomous agents because those agent can own property to the extent that this property can be digitally represented on a blockchain and they can also engage into a series of contractual relationship through the smart contracts and most importantly even to most of those agents are actually quite simple in the sense that they do not feature any type of decisional autonomy of AI they do not the less benefit from a different type of autonomy which is mostly operational because they can be designed to operate autonomously and independently of any third party authority and so this leads us to what I consider to be the most exciting aspect of blockchain technologies which is the ability to create those new types of algorithmic and entities that can be regarded to some extent as a blockchain based life form because they are autonomous self-sufficient in the sense that they can collect the licenses that they need in order to sustain themselves and of course like any other type of life form they are potentially capable of reproducing themselves and so this might sound a little bit confusing at first but in order to illustrate this concept I have brought here a small prototype of a blockchain base life form which you can interact with so let me just turn it on so this is a plant ID which is essentially the Android version of a plant and this is my personal attempt are trying to illustrate in the physical world what are the basic functionalities but also what are the legal challenge faced by decentralized autonomous organizations and so how does this work exactly so plants traditional plants most of them are incapable to reproduce themselves on their own and they require the help of top part is to help them reproduce to the process of pollination and in the same way plantoids are also incapable of reproducing themselves on their own and they require the help of third party in this case humans to actually help them in the reproduction process by donating capital to them in the form of cryptocurrencies and so one important thing to understand about a plant art is that it is made of two separate components one is the body which is essentially this mechanical sculpture that subsist in the physical world and the other one is the spirit of the soul of the plant side that subsist as a smart contract on the ethereum blockchain and those two components interact with each other in order to bring the plant or to life and of course in order to ensure its capacity of reproducing and so let's look at what are the different phases of reproduction of a plant oil so the first one is the capitalization phase which is when the planter will try and make itself pretty in order to lure people into donating some cryptocurrencies to it and so every plant or it has its own eternam account that people can send funds to and whenever it has collected some fans then the plant that will show some form of appreciation to to thank the Sunda by doing some dances or by playing music or by doing some small light show so I'm gonna do a small demonstration I'm gonna feed this little plant out with some eat and hopefully it's gonna be thankful for that and so what is happening is that the planted is constantly monitoring its balance on the Italian blockchain and whenever it does notice that it has actually collected a sufficient amount of funds in order to reproduce itself it will trigger the math contracts on the Italian blockchain which will actually activate the second phase of reproduction which is the mating phase and this is when the planted will actually actively start looking for her mate in order to help it reproduce and this is done again via the smart contract on the Chilean blockchain that will open a call for bids inviting artists designer or anyone to submit propositions as to how they envision to produce the next plant I'd and so the people that then have submitted a proposition and then the people that have founded the planter can then vote on those different propositions that they liked the most and then eventually the smart contract will then process all this information and eventually will identify which one is the winner and this is what will activate the third and final phase of the production which is the - phase and this is when the Plantard will execute as much contract transaction in order to transfer the funds that it has collected so far to the selected winner who will then be hired by the planter in order to create a new copy of itself and then of course plantoids are not inherently selfish but they also care about their own theaters and so every time appointed has accumulated a sufficient amount of funds to reproduce itself it will spend a small portion of those funds back to its pattern to the planter that generated it and another small portion of those funds will be sent to the artist to the person that actually created it and so this kind of pyramid scheme actually comes with two important benefits so the first one is that I created the genesis planted and so I currently stand at the top of this pyramid but the second one which is more important is that this actually creates a positive incentive accession structure for every artist to try and create the most beautiful or the most interesting plant I'd because the most popular this planted will be then the more fans it will be able to collect and reproduce under for the high of the royalties that the artist will be able to collect and then another interesting aspect of this is that this to some extent disrupt the traditional conception of copyright law which is based on the notion of scarcity and exclusivity whereas here every artist actually has the strongest incentive to maximize the dissemination of its work because that will enable the planter to collect more funds but also to encourage the remix and the creation of derivative works because this is actually what we maximize the return on investment but then more importantly what it does is that it actually is shifting the focus away from the artist and two of the artists and so instead of sending money to an artist in the hopes that he or she will continue to produce works that I like we can now send funds directly to the art piece itself who will then be in charge of selecting which artists is actually entitled to reproduce a copy of itself and so here you can see the genealogical tree of the planted species so as you can see this is pointed number seven which is the result of the reproduction of the Janice's planted number one and so every planter actually needs to abide by the criterias which has been embedded into the DNA of its patterns so for instance in the case of this plant art it has to be made of chains and its design must be released under a Creative Commons license as required by the genesis plant oil one and then every artist can then introduce additional criteria into the DNA of the planter that they are producing and those criteria will then need to be implemented and incorporated into every single one of the distinct descendants and so what this does is that this actually creates some kind of evolutionary algorithm oh well by different plant arts will evolve in two different species each one with their own characteristics and so the planter that will be the most popular will be able to collect more funds and the four will be able to reproduce more whereas the blinders that are actually perhaps least appreciated will eventually just fade out into extinction and so in the end we can actually find out which one of those plantoids are actually the most fit for the whole environment and those are the one that we'll be able to reproduce more and eventually colonize our planet and so and on that point I'm actually very happy to say that the last three plantoids that have been produced I've traveled all the way to the US in order to colonize black cod city during the Burning Man festival last year and hopefully we also be coming back next summer but when it comes to the reproduction process then one important thing to understand is that just like humans plantoids can actually rely on two different strategies in order to maximize their chances of the projection on the one hand they can rely on the physical attributes or aesthetics trying to be as beautiful as possible in order to attract more hearts cryptocurrency donation and on the other hand they can actually rely on the more spiritual of intellectual features which are defined by the governance structure which has been codified into the smart contract and so this little planter is actually a new experiment because it incorporates those dark holographing consensus into its DNA and so this means that once this planted will actually start reproducing after it has collected one eater of donations then anyone will be able to submit propositions about how to envision to produce the next plant ID and every single one of those planters will also need to incorporate the holographic consensus into that government structure and if you do want to learn more about the holographic consensus please come and talk to me afterwards but to conclude I just want to say that what's actually is feel interesting about this is actually not just the fact that the planter can actually reproduce itself but actually all the legal challenges that it actually brings about especially with regard to property and contract law and so for instance those the planted actually owned the ETF that is being donated to it even though it does not actually qualify as a legal entity and can be planted actually enter into a real contractual relationship with the artists that it is actually hiring to create a new copy of itself even though it does not have any type of legal personality and then most importantly what kind of Records does the planted actually has in the case of a breach of contracts for instance if someone decides not to respect the DNA and the criteria that has been incorporated into its patterns and so those are all very important legal questions that actually do not really have any proper answer yet and the plaintiff is actually really here just to convey and to illustrate all those new legal challenges that are actually being raised by many different types of blockchain based life forms are decentralized autonomous organization more generally and that actually it will become soon very important to actually address and and those are actually all those questions that we are currently investigating with koala as we are trying to better understand the interface between the rule of law and the rule of code enacted by blockchain technologies with the intention to actually create a bridge between those two world in order to enable them to interconnect and to interface with one another without necessarily having one overtaking the other and so I'm happy to answer any question you might have and if I don't manage to answer them properly I will invite you to try and read this book blockchain and the law where I'm actually engaging into a much more in-depth analysis between the discrepancy between the river flow and the hill of course thank you we have five minutes for questions I'm just curious during the proposal process where people can vote on what the next plantoids is going to be like can you propose any arbitrary improvement to it within the genealogical tree so you need to respect the DNA of the patterns but then it's actually part of the of the game that every artist will incorporate new additional criterias into the new plant or that you're treating so you can innovate in any ways you want as long as you're actually respecting the DNA criterias I say so could I propose attaching a giant solar array to it and then having it mind its own ether yes and and you can not only you can do that but you can also add these as a DNA criteria which means that once this plan so it will reproduce everyone will also need to implement a similar thing it seems like you would have a significant selective advantage maybe you should try to submit that maybe yeah well and you suggested among the questions you have is can the planetoid act as an autonomous agent as in a way recognized by law I it seems to me that the planetoid does act as an autonomous agent per its own contract yes I mean the fact that it does that the point so the factor you create something that can own property and that can engage into a set of contractual relationship so in practice the factor it is acting as an autonomous agents now the question is how does this thing that exists within a technical framework how does that interface with the law as in if the planet is holding heater how do you actually represent this from a legal perspective because you cannot say that an object is owning either because this doesn't have a legal personality or if I'm actually being hired by the plant ID to create a new plant ID what kind of contractual relationship I have is the counterparty to my contract is not doesn't have a legal personality and most importantly the question of course what happen if I hate the contract that I have with the plantoids what kind of plant I do in order to actually sue me I'll do anything about my pitch of contra so that's the it does the interesting thing is that there is a distinction between what happened de facto which actually we can create those autonomous agents and then what the law can see and then lo cannot see those agents because it can only see things that the legal system actually recognized and so it's going to try and interpret for instance Edina so maybe it is a general partnership if there isn't some people that are actually part of it but it's a fully automated system then it becomes much more complicated so the question is how do we actually connect the two are actually how do we create some kind of membrane that enable the blockchain based system the autonomous system to interact with the real world with the legal world in a way that actually is consonant with what they actually can do and in the u.s. what would you say the structure is closest to being able to recognize your early plantoids so I mean most of the plantoids today because they don't have not very sophisticated in terms of AI and whatever so they actually rely on a human government so the funders are actually to some extent the governor of the plant odd so I will say that in the u.s. it most likely will qualify as a general partnership and therefore you could you could claim that if we are breaching the contract then perhaps every single person from the legal the general policy could potentially identify itself because of course it's absurd animals and then try to prove that they are indeed some of the governance people and therefore try and bring a claim and it's like it's really messy and I mean the work that we are trying to do with coral and in general is like let's try and figure out how we can some extent like formalize or just like trying dive into this to understand what are the different possibilities and what kind of step do we actually need to take either at the technical level or like techno legal contraption in order to achieve the goal that we want I so the the plantoids definitely looked very cool but you know how much importance is really being placed on physical form of these things it seems like a lot of dowels that are you know popping up the overall lifetime expectancy of a dhow is for it to become a autonomous agent especially as you know collecting becomes automated voting becomes automated by the network and everyone implementing things in the real world becomes increasingly automated so I mean like this entire project is cool you know why focus on a physical piece of hardware that doesn't really add too much compute capabilities instead of more you know software deployment and autonomous ways trying to lead more towards dows with autonomous decision-making so I mean that's an artistic project successful so it needs to have some artistic project and the idea is actually I'm using this as a as an object to talk with lawyers and to talk with anyone like if you try to explain to like someone that is not like deep into the bloodstream space if you try to explain a dhow and if you want to discuss with lawyers about the legal challenges of a dhow it's really complicated because everyone stopped asking about the technical question which is not the interesting thing because then you have to stop explaining the world auction thing before you can actually engage into an interesting legal discussion so this is actually a very nice shortcut because you just explain how the dial works and then people actually stop thinking around this object of the doubt but actually sub-discipline thought and therefore you can actually engage into the snigger discussions without having to explain all these things that goes into like the technicalities of the blockchain so it's it's not far it's not as a prop that illustrates the legal challenge in a way that is actually very accessible and that makes it possible to actually discuss around that and I'm actually I'm very eager to figure out or to resolve those legal challenge for the plaintiff but if we figure it out for the plan that we figure out for the dollars in general right and then the other thing is that I feel like having like the physicality and the governance is like in the evolution in the genealogical tree you can play on both sides so most of the planted so far they have always been focusing on the physical evolution so the DNA is mostly related to the way they look and this is actually the first one that incorporates as a DNA criteria a governance question so now it is like this is the smart contract that becomes part of the DNA which means that now every single one that is reproducing from this one will have to incorporate the double-stack holographic consensus and then people need to innovate within the government structure of that smart contract right so it can go it's like a hybrid between two my hope is that actually there will be increasingly more advances and evolutionary things that happen within the governments but at the same time there will also be the physical because it's an artistic project thank you for that inspiring talk about such an inspiring topic and my question is you mentioned two notions about autonomy and agency and whenever we are in discussions about like let's call it digital persons to explain like natural legal and digital persons and people are always scared of this guaranteed self execution and this case that it's unstoppable unless you stop the whole network and then the first thing that people usually say is like oh that's kind what are we going to do we need a kill switch in the code what is your thought about if you would have a kill switch in the code wouldn't that take away the operational autonomy at the end absolutely so there would be a contradiction actually to have a good so not all doctrine based systems are designed to be fully autonomous and if you start creating something whether is an owner of this map contract or if you use like proxy contracts or all this stuff I mean it is it is decentralized but it's not autonomous because you have someone that is actually controlling the system so yes I mean I'm not sure yes it will definitely reduce the autonomy of the system so when we talk about the centralized autonomous organizations we probably talk about those particular types or smart contracts which are you know I mean whatever who knows what sort of commands but of course it's never fully autonomous because usually you always have people that can vote with tokens or with a reputation on things like this so it's not like fully AI based system but and the question is one is when does it stop being decentralized autonomous organization and it becomes like a centralized control smart contacts thank you hello I have done some experiments with Delaware series LLC and interim smart contracts but in this case isn't it global consensus that you can't have legal personality just by contracting isn't it consensus that personalities always granted and awarded by a law and government absolutely that does the point is like we have things that can technically do things that the law cannot understand of C because of the lack of legal personality but it still happened interest in owning they are still processing ETA and they can still enter into smart contracts relationship it's just that the law doesn't see this as being the owner but then the question is who is the owner of the heeta that has been donated to it I don't know the partnership I'm sorry the partnership and people in the partnership assuming that you do have a patent a general partnership probably if it's like a fully automated AI based system then we have another question Thanks okay thank you