In recent years, a significant aspect of the Law Commission’s work has focused on emerging technologies, including smart legal contracts, electronic trade documents, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) and digital assets such as crypto tokens. These developments often rely on distributed ledger technology (DLT).
It is now consulting on proposals for law reform. It focuses primarily on wholly decentralised applications of DLT, which it has identified as posing very particular and novel challenges to the current rules of private international law.
In the context of international jurisdiction, the Law Commission considers how the existing jurisdictional gateways for property and tort can be applied in the context of crypto litigation. It proposes the creation of a new free-standing information order to help claimants who have lost crypto-tokens through fraud or hacking obtain information about the perpetrators or the whereabouts of their tokens without having to go through the existing gateways.
In the context of applicable law, it has identified wholly decentralised uses of DLT as being particularly problematic for private international law, and suggests that a different approach is required that would no longer require courts to identify a single applicable law. Rather, the courts would take into account a range of factors to determine a just outcome of the dispute, including the legitimate expectations of the parties. The Commission notes that this might involve taking into account the terms of a protocol that participants have signed up to.
The Law Commission has also proposed modernising section 72 of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, a private international law provision that identifies the law applicable to particular contractual issues arising in connection with bills of exchange and promissory notes. These proposals, if implemented, would apply to relevant documents in both paper and electronic form.
Separately, the Commission is publishing an FAQ document concerning property issues in permissioned DLT systems.
The consultation ends on 8 September 2025.
