#41 On-chain Power of Attorney: case study in the Polkadot ecosystem from a legal perspective.
A while back I started preparing a proposal for writing 3 articles within the broader topic of privacy preserving legal transformation in Polkadot. You can find the previous proposal here. I had sought feedback via the Kusama Direction channel back then and the topic of Power of Attorney (PoA) was a clear favorite. Therefore, I have now decided to pursue that topic specifically.
To reinforce that, I got feedback from the community members that as a first step to win the community's trust and prove added value, it might be better to focus on a smaller funding amount and as such limit the proposal to just one article. That's exactly my plan now.
Finally, I've been told that by limiting the scope of research to the Swiss law only, the impact for the community might be reduced. As such, I've decided to expand the scope and focus on building a general legal framework to regulate on-chain PoA. The authorities (especially in Europe) will face the same types of challenges when dealing with digitising the legal system and I aim to provide a framework and guidelines for addressing these issues from first principles (both legal and technological). In order to ground my research in a practical environment and not just theoretical constructs, I will use the Swiss juridical system to provide examples where appropriate.
You can find the full proposal on my GitHub. Below is the summary of the topic and as always, feedback is very welcome:
On-chain Power of Attorney: challenges and promises for a legal system.
- How is PoA currently enforced in EU & Switzerland, who benefits from it and who can abuse it?
- Private key ?= full access revisited: a need for additional, trusted verification (or else take all my money).
- A partially government-controlled blockchain - pros and cons. Could a parachain be the solution?
- Encrypted 'allow-revoke' mechanism, revealable only to selected parties, by the means of substrate chain and a user-friendly app.
The resulting research article will be submitted to an open-access journal.
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The full proposal information is available here.
I voted yes since I like it as an experiment that is fitting to Kusama. It is was also a good idea to try it with one paper first.
Just some comments:
- I think 5h for writing an academic paper of 10 pages that can be submitted to a journal is unrealistically low (even after having performed the research of 1 month full time). Then again, charging 75 CHF / hour for a post-graduate student is too much since even doctoral students earn much less in Switzerland.
- Make sure that the submitted article is in open access. Kusama treasury typically only funds work that is made available as open source.
Thanks for your support @MathCrypto and I truly appreciate your engagement and feedback. Let me comment briefly on the above points:
- Please note that the bulk of the work (estimated 1 month of full time equivalent) is not just research, but also write-up of the body, as detailed on GitHub. The 5h (again, just an estimate) that are planned for submission are for making sure the style, formatting etc. conform to the requirements of the journal. I'm not planning to add more content at that point.
- Normally doctoral students are paid less than the legal professionals, it's sad but true. The hourly rate of CHF 75 is pretty standard for legal professionals though, see e.g. this source. Perhaps the description of my education & job status wasn't clear - I am in fact working as a legal professional since more than a year already, not in academia. I updated my bio accordingly on GitHub.
- I am indeed planning to submit my research to a journal with open access, ideally still peer-reviewed, e.g. sui-generis. I updated the GitHub page and added a short sentence here to reflect that.
I hope these help to address your concerns! Please let me know if you have more feedback, I'm also available under @legal_julia:matrix.org
Thanks for the reply. The project as a whole looked fine for me already (my comment about the writing time was only meant as a friendly warning). Great that you agree to go for open access!
Hello team,
Your treasury proposal was approved and funded more than 3 months ago. Could you please take the time to share an update on your progress with the Community by posting a comment in this referendum post?
Please keep in mind that, as part of treasury proposals’ lifecycle, a final report is due at the completion of all milestones to evaluate the success of the initiative. You can find a template for the treasury proposal report here.
Thank you for your consideration.
Hello Team,
Just a reminder to share your latest update(s) with the community on the referendum post for the record and future reference.
Thanks.
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