In a milestone development, the British Standards Institute has opened the consultation phase for public contributions to an open, public, specification for smart legal contracts.
In a milestone development, the British Standards Institute has opened the consultation phase for public contributions to an open, public, specification for smart legal contracts.
The specification quickly follows on from the development, consultation, and publication of the Law Tech Delivery Panel’s Legal Statement on Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts. While the smart contract and cryptoasset markets are seeing significant growth, their legal uncertainty is often cited as the most barrier to adoption, investment, and development. The landmark statement addressed legal uncertainty by recognising cryptoassets as tradable property and smart contracts as enforceable agreements under English law.
The Accord Project assisted in the development of the Legal Statement and is now proudly sponsoring a technical specification as a complementary component of the development of a joint techno-legal framework. The technical specification is embodied in the British Standards Institution’s Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 333. The PAS sets out requirements to develop functional elements for use within a smart legal contract. The PAS is currently out for public comment. Individuals and organizations are invited to read and comment on this PAS on BSI’s web portal. To comment, first register an account with BSI in two easy steps. Next, click through ‘Read and draft comment’ at the bottom of the PAS page, after which you will be taken into the document and be able to add your comments to each section. If you need assistance in this process, see this guide or contact cservices@bsigroup.com.
PAS 333 aims to define the specification for legal contracts that are both human-readable and machine-readable, provide a technical and technology-agnostic foundation for the development of software using smart legal contracts, and provide industry with a framework within which new or existing contracts can be digitized and connected to IT systems and data services. In sponsoring this PAS, the Accord Project hopes to further advance its goal of developing an ecosystem and open source tools for smart legal contracts to benefit individuals, businesses, organizations, and industry.
This PAS is now available for public consultation, after which it will undergo further panel review before being published as a BSI specification for smart legal contracts.
Both BSI and the Accord Project encourage all stakeholders from technology companies, industry bodies, open source projects, law, financial and professional services firms, and academics to participate in the public consultation stage and contribute to the development of the PAS. All industries and stakeholders stand to benefit from the PAS’ development and implementation.
About BSI
BSI is the world’s first national standards body. Established in 1901, it collaborates with industries, businesses, governments and consumers to develop British, European, and international standards. BSI is appointed by Government as the UK’s national standards body under Royal Charter and feeds into the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the European Standards Organizations (CEN, CENELEC and ETSI).
About Accord Project
The Accord Project is an open source technology initiative under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation – home to many of the most important shared technology projects in the world. The goal of the Accord Project is to provide open source software libraries and tools for computable legal agreements. Further details are available at www.accordproject.org. The code published under the Project is accessible at www.github.com/accordproject. For press inquiries please contact press@acccordproject.org.