Electronic-Digital Smart Contracts: Modernization of Legal Tools for Foreign Economic Activity

Abstract

The article explores the possibilities of improving the methods of managing foreign economic activity and increasing its efficiency with the help of smart contracts. The advantages of the blockchain technology and the legal contradictions associated with the use of smart contracts in the practice of economic entities are analyzed. The methodological basis consists of the authors’ materialistic, positivistic worldview, general scientific methods of cognition, a number of special legal methods. The purpose of the study is to search for improvements in the legal support of electronic interaction of participants in foreign economic activity, registration of facts of property relations between them, which can be executed by smart contracts. As a result of the study, it was substantiated that a smart contract can neutralize many civil law problems, including questions about applicable law, judicial jurisdiction, verification of counterparty powers. Based on the analysis, it was substantiated the conclusion that neither at the domestic (national) level of legislation, nor at the international level within the framework of universal or regional agreements, a coherent systemic matter of legal norms regulating the conditions, procedure and limits of use of smart contracts was created.