Seminar
Blockchain, smart contracts & decentralized autonomous organisations
- Aron Fischer
- Date
- Monday 9 April 2018
- Time
- Location
-
Old Observatory
Sterrenwachtlaan 11
2311 GW Leiden - Room
- B.104
The Future Business Structures project team - a research group within the Business & Liability Research Network (BLRN) - proudly presents an interactive seminar with Aron Fischer, lead researcher of both the Ethereum Foundation's Swarm team, which is responsible for developing a decentralized storage platform, and Colony, a platform for open, blockchain-based organisations which facilitates decentralized collaboration.
About the seminar
Have you always wanted to learn from, and ask questions to, someone who is at the heart of developments relating to Ethereum and Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs)?
In this seminar, Aron Fischer introduces you to the idea of a blockchain running arbitrary computer code. He will explain why such code is often called a "smart contract" and discuss with the participants the relationship between smart contracts and legal contracts, addressing the problems with the "code is law" paradigm. He will sketch how this technology allows us to imagine entirely new form of organisations - Decentralised Autonomous Organisations - running on a blockchain based world computer, not controlled by any individual but largely governed by the smart contracts that define them. If time permits, Colony will be explained as a specific example of a new form of collective governance.
For law students, this seminar offers a great opportunity to learn from an Ethereum thought leader and an experienced engineer who is able to transition from legal issues to the technological possibilities of the blockchain and back.
About the speaker
Aron Fischer received his PhD in Mathematics in New York City in 2015, writing about Algebraic Topology. Ever since then he has been working on the Ethereum blockchain both as a member of the Ethereum Foundation and as a member of Colony. He was involved in writing the Colony whitepaper and the Ethereum Swarm "orange papers"; co-designing the structures within the Swarm and Colony networks and providing economic and game-theoretic analysis of the built-in incentive systems. He is a regular speaker at events concerning the future of blockchain and has been involved with academia for a substantial amount of time.
Students or colleagues who wish to participate are kindly requested to send a registration e-mail to blrn@law.leidenuniv.nl. Please include in the e-mail a reference to the education programme you are following (bachelor, master specialty, advanced master, exchange) or the department you are working at.