Watch the Gap: Making code more intelligible to users without sacrificing decentralization?

Abstract

The potential for blockchain technology to eliminate the middleman and replace the top-down hierarchical model of governance with a system of distributed cooperation has opened up many new opportunities, as well as dilemmas. Surpassing the level of acceptance by early tech adopters, the market of smart contracts is now moving towards wider acceptance from regular (non-tech) users. For this to happen however, smart contract development will have to overcome certain technical and legal obstacles to bring the code and the user closer. Guided by notions from contract law and consumer protection we highlight the ‘information gap’ that exists between users (including judges/legal bodies) and the source code. We present a spectrum of low-code to no-code initiatives that aim at bridging this gap, promising the potential of higher regulatory acceptance. Nevertheless, this highlights the ‘The Pitfall of the Trustless Dream’, because arguably solutions to the information gap tend to make the system more centralized. In this article, we aim to make a practical contribution of relevance to the wide-spread adoption of smart contracts and their legal acceptance by analyzing the evolving practices that bring the user and the code closer.