The blockchain technology and smart contracts require new legal norms to be created, claims Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. As he predicts, it can lead to the emergence of a brand new branch of law.

The creation and expansion of the distributed ledger technologies will force lawyers to apply significant creative effort to adopt current legislation to the new practices, Medvedev was quoted as saying at the St Petersburg Legal Forum.

“It is quite an unusual task for lawyers to find new efficient solutions, which can, in fact, become a basis for a new branch of law,” Medvedev pointed out.

He noticed that these technologies are developing so rapidly nowadays that the current national legal system seems to be way behind them.

“With the help of these technologies, autonomous from the government self-regulatory systems are formed, which start living by their own unwritten rules. For lawyers, it is a very interesting problem, often surpassing the boundaries of current law,” Medvedev said.

The main challenge posed by the new technologies is that blockchain allows deals (for example, related to property rights) to be carried out automatically, without the need for intermediaries and with the help of electronic devices.

Russian authorities have repeatedly expressed their support for the blockchain technology, admitting its great potential to be used for a variety of purposes. Thus, the Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev acknowledged that blockchain could be extremely important for the development of the e-commerce and e-services sector. The Russian Central Bank set up a working group to study blockchain. As the deputy chairman of the Central Bank Olga Skorobogatova noticed, blockchain is the future of the global financial system and it needs further development.

There are many prominent blockchain supporters in Russia, including German Gref, the head of the largest Russian bank and former Russian minister of economic development. According to him, blockchain “will revolutionise all industries without exception, from agriculture to banking, and, unfortunately, the governance system too.” Yet, as Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich declared during his speech at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, “however promising the blockchain looks, there will be a need for the rules either, and somebody will have to define them.” Dvorkovich believes that national governments should secure the right to establish the standards and dictate regulations.

Elena Platonova