Contratos ex machina: breves notas sobre a introdução da tecnologia Blockchain e Smart Contracts

Abstract

EnglishGiven the forthcoming advent of new and challenging figures coming from the technological advances of our time, we seek to address in our essay the Smart Contracts, covering the historical and legal framework underpinning them and the possible implementations and impacts of this new technological model in various fields, with particular emphasis on the financial sector. We found very important to carry out this analysis in order to foresee the potential risks and benefits of the Smart Contracts’ application for the professionals in the financial areas in general, by examining the technological base of this new type of contracts, the link with Blockchain technology, its automatic convergence and its legal effects. The adoption of Smart Contracts seems fairly certain due to the spontaneous and practical forms as Smart Contracts allow to articulate the technology with the legal obligations people bound online in a daily basis, and for this reason the Smart Contracts arise as a figure of great importance for Fintech. portuguesPerante o advento de novas e desafiantes figuras provenientes dos avancos tecnologicos da nossa era, procuramos abordar no nosso artigo os Smart Contracts, abarcando o enquadramento historico e juridico que lhes subjaz e nao olvidando as possiveis implementacoes e impactos deste novo modelo tecnologico em diversas areas, com especial enfase no sector financeiro. Consideramos preponderante efetuar esta analise de forma a perspetivar os potenciais riscos e beneficios da utilizacao de Smart Contracts por parte de profissionais das areas financeiras em geral, perscrutando-se a base tecnologica deste novo tipo de contratos, a sua conexao com a tecnologia Blockchain, a convergencia automatica envolvida e os seus efeitos juridicos. A adocao dos Smart Contracts parece quase certa, devido a forma espontânea e pratica como os Smart Contracts permitem articular a tecnologia com as obrigacoes juridicas a que os sujeitos diariamente se vinculam online, sendo por esta razao que os Smart Contracts surgem como uma figura de extrema importância nas Fintech.