Key note given at Inside Bitcoins, London 2014 on the topic of crypto-law, the potential future it has in society and why.

1. Crypto-law
WHAT IS IT AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?
- or -
Money isn’t everything
Gavin Wood
ETHEREUM

2. News flash!
Bank of England says of Bitcoin technology:
“minimises the degree of trust participants
need to place in any third party”

3. News flash!
...third parties like?
The Bank of England, perhaps...

4. In the beginning...
Crypto-currency
e.g. Bitcoin, Litecoin, &c.

5. Then...
App-coins
Namecoin, Reddcoin, &c.

6. Then...
Crypto-finance
“Bitcoin 2.0”

7. The State of the Game
CRYPTO-FINANCE
CRYPTO-CURRENCY
APP-COINS
Boolean Structured
Language
Rules
Trivial Ammendable General
Numeric Discrete
(Less Relevant) (More Relevant)

8. Where is this going?
Rules are increasing in ultimate complexity
Language is increasing in relevance to reality

9. HOLD THAT THOUGHT

10. Life in the (Capitalist) World
Less certainty
=
Greater cost
ultimately to society

11. Rule of Law
Laws to increase fundamental certainty
Transactional law for “opt-in certainty” over
arrangements between parties
Extensible and useful

12. Not all Roses
Consistency not always present
RE-INTERPRETATION
APPEALS
CONTRADICTORY PRECEDENTS

13. Not all Roses
...nor objectivity...
DISPARITY IN COUNCIL FEES:
NON-NEGLIGIBLE FACTOR IN TRIAL OUTCOME?

14. Not all Roses
...nor transparency...
HUGE TIME REQUIRED FOR EXPERT TO UNDERSTAND
FULL RAMIFICATIONS OF EVEN A SINGLE CONTRACT

15. Not all Roses
...and efficiency...
ANNUAL COST TO U.S. OF CIVIL LAWSUITS:
$233 billion

16. What we would like...
Unambiguous contract specification
Deterministic contract evaluation & execution
Fundamentally
No natural language
No human judgement

17. A generic tool for legal arrangements,
much as we have tools for payment.

18. SOUND FAMILIAR?

19. (Unwittingly?) Working towards
Rule-specification and enforcement mechanism:
Rules arbitrarily complex.
Language relevant to real world.

20. The anatomy of the trial
Fact-finding
Contractual evaluation of facts
Execution of determinations

21. Fact-finding
Natural digital assets/services/information
ASSIMILATION & CRYPTO-PROOFS
Authorities (police, organisations)
CRYPTO-SIGNING & ORACLES
Witness-plurality, crowd-sourcing
HOLISTIC REPUTATION, WoT, SCHELLING MECHANISMS

22. Evaluation
Logically specifiable decisions
PROGRAMMING
Non-logically specifiable decisions
JUDGE-as-a-SERVICE, JURY-as-a-SERVICE, CROWD-JUDGEMENT

23. Execution
Natural digital assets/services/information
ASSIMILATION & CRYPTO-PROOFS
Physical effects
BAILIFF-as-a-SERVICE & CRYPTO-PROOFS

24. Nothing new, really
Last 75 years
Information processing on computers rather
than done by humans
Last 15 years:
Decentralisation, trust-free(dom) rather than
authorities & trust-requirements

25. SO WHAT?

26. What will change?
Assets & services
Taxes & collection
Regulation
Trading, esp. between individuals
Representation

27. The Final Frontier
Not physics, but...

28. Chin up
Logical threats only, please.

29. Not there yet
Unanswered issues
Privacy
Consensus-scalability
User-interfacing
Human comprehensibility
Formalisation of terminology

30. But it’s on its way
...and you better be ready.
To paraphrase Feynman:
Efficiency cannot be cheated.

31. Crypto-law
Gavin Wood
Questions?