Articles by author
Bind to law: Soulbound tokens and property law
Soulbound tokens (SBTs) are a novel type of crypto-token. They are not intended to be treated as liquid, transferable items, but instead as verifiable and non-alienable repositories of provenance-secure information related to specific people. SBTs are intended to be non-transferable – but because of the technological medium within which they are created, they are generally transferable as a matter of fact. This article considers whether it is justifiable to treat this type of token as an object of property rights. It suggests that property law could help to achieve what technical design alone cannot – the non-transferability of SBTs. While the ability to transfer the token might remain as a matter of fact, SBTs might achieve non-transferability as a matter of law, through the application of property law concepts such as relativity of title and the bona fide purchaser rule.
1 DEC 2022Law Commission Report on Digital Assets
In this article the authors discuss two key conclusions and recommendations from the Law Commission’s final Report on Digital Assets.
1 JUL 2023What’s at stake? The legal treatment of staking
Since 15 September 2022, the majority in number and value of blockchain systems are secured by proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms. Yet the legal treatment of staking has received little attention. Further confusion is caused by the fact that the use of the word “staking” has generally focussed on the existence of a return, rather than consideration of how that return is generated. For this reason, the term “staking” is now used to refer to a range of materially different activities, from staking for the purposes of validating a blockchain protocol (the primary focus of this article) to staking referring to DeFi lending and staking as used as a rewards system in NFT markets or online games. This article considers the features of different staking arrangements, describes some of the potential legal consequences of those arrangements and identifies issues that might arise as proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms evolve. The article suggests that validator staking within proof-of-stake systems is a very different type of arrangement, with a very different risk profile, to the provision of other staking models, even if colloquially or economically they are seen as “equivalent”, as both arrangements generate a return and involve locking up tokens.
1 OCT 2022
