糖心原创

Property Law Research Group:

This session will be led by Dr Sally Zhu, based on the abstract below: 

Digital assets and the distributed ledger technology that underpins them are becoming mainstream.  The US Genius Act and recognition of stablecoins is the latest in a line of formal legislative and regulatory signals that digital assets will soon become part of our financial systems.  Their purported benefits of programmable certainty, automation, and security of performance seem to promise a property transaction system free from title disputes, vitiating factors, and high transaction costs.  Is a system devoid of human interaction, and therefore human error, better than our current messy system whereby law determines form and equity strives for fairness?  The doctrine of notice serves as a suitable bellwether for the role of equity in the future of property law.  Like most equitable doctrines, the doctrine of notice is a fact-based inquiry into human knowledge and intentions which aims to protect priority on the basis of good faith.  What digital asset transactions offer is the ability to replace human action and intention with code, smart contracts, and agentic artificial intelligence.  What does notice look like on a distributed ledger?  Is there any role for good faith in a programmed transaction?  Is our preoccupation with equity hindering the realisation of a superior property system, or will digital assets follow the old forms of action and have their programmed certainty undermined by the human desire for fairness?