Crucial documentation

Many people associate blockchain primarily with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, and rarely think of recordkeeping. Yet this is precisely at the heart of the technology: blockchain serves to record transactions and make them verifiable. Many of its applications rest on this foundation – decentralised identities, data sharing, provenance tracking, supply chain management, fractionalization of real-world assets and more. Archival science is therefore well placed to make important contributions in the field of blockchain. It deals with the question of how we know what we know – and how that knowledge shapes our social and material world.

In written societies, knowledge, claims and rights are transmitted across space and time through recorded transactions. Contracts and proofs of ownership are typical examples. Blockchain is changing the way transactions are documented, and could thus fundamentally alter social practices and institutional structures. Land registers offer one illustration: traditionally, proofs of ownership are managed centrally by government bodies. Today, start-ups promise to revolutionise land registration using blockchain, arguing that this would make transactions more efficient and help combat corruption. These are worthy goals. The problem, however, is that such companies quite often fail to appreciate even the basics of recordkeeping, let alone the deeper aspects of archival science or epistemology. The consequences can be serious: efficiency gains fail to materialise, property rights become less certain, and existing institutions are weakened.

Alongside blockchain, a second technology is now changing our understanding of knowledge and reality: artificial intelligence. At first glance, one might think that both technologies together represent double cause for concern. But perhaps the opposite is true. Blockchain can, for example, help combat deepfakes and disinformation through verifiable digital evidence or registered "fingerprints" of images and videos.

The new Zug Institute for Blockchain Research (ZIBR) is investigating how blockchain challenges existing institutions and what role the technology can play in the society of the future. The perspective of archival science helps us better understand its implications.

Victoria Lemieux, International Research Fellow at ZIBR and Professor of Archival Science and Co-Director of Blockchain@UBC at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Programmed rules

Blockchain raises a fundamental question: what happens to the law when rules are no longer primarily interpreted, but programmed? This question cannot be answered within a single discipline. Blockchain is not merely a tool of computer science or financial technology – it touches on the core institutions of modern societies, from money and markets to forms of collective order.

From the outset, blockchain discourse was characterised by high expectations. Although the Bitcoin white paper initially described the technology as electronic peer-to-peer money, blockchain was soon seen as a means of organising economic and social processes without banks, companies or government bodies. It appeared not only as a technical infrastructure, but as a political project of decentralisation.

Against this backdrop, a well-known thesis from internet law theory takes on new significance: "Code is law." This does not mean that software replaces the law. Rather, code regulates by determining which actions are possible within a technical system and which are not. Alongside laws, markets and social norms, code thus becomes a form of regulation in its own right.

Blockchain intensifies this development. In so-called smart contracts, rules are translated directly into executable code and automatically carried out on the blockchain. Agreements no longer need to be interpreted or enforced: their implementation is already built into the technology. This shifts the locus of regulation. Law no longer appears merely as something that courts or authorities apply retrospectively; instead, behaviour is shaped in advance by technical systems.

This is a crucial difference between traditional law and code-based regulation. Conventional law thrives on leeway, interpretation and the possibility of challenging decisions. Code, by contrast, strives for unambiguity – it defines what is possible and what is not. Conflicts that were previously negotiated politically or legally are thus partly displaced into technical design decisions.

Blockchain therefore does not simply automate existing rules. It embeds a specific understanding of law: that rules should be formulated as unambiguously as possible, executed automatically, and enforced without further interpretation. Research into blockchain must therefore go beyond the technical – examining not just how these systems work, but what kind of legal and social order they quietly put in place.

Max Baumgart, Associate Professor of Public International Law and Director of the Amsterdam Centre for International Law at the University of Amsterdam Law School

This article first appeared in German in the magazine Cogito.