Abstract

AbstractCommunities that stretch across international borders struggle to resolve their members’ disputes. It is not a trifling problem. Distributed protocols such as Ethereum, EOS, and Dash host hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and handle transactions worth millions daily. Their members likely number in the tens of millions, scattered in unknown locations across the globe. Even the most successful of these communities have fractured over questions of how to interpret, apply, and amend their rules. The resulting “governance by hardfork” has generated skepticism about all things crypto -from currencies, to economics, to governments. Distributed protocols need a comprehensive, trustworthy, independent set of rules for resolving disputes. Ilex, an open source legal system, offers a solution. Its substantive and procedural rules can resolve the disputes of communities stretching across international borders. Its flag-free rules, drawn from tested and trusted private and non-governmental sources, define a wide range of legal claims and the procedures to follow in resolving them. This paper explains how Ilex can upgrade the governance of distributed protocol communities, describes current efforts on that front, and paints an attractive future of open source, non-territorial law.