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Blockchain Oracles: Implications for Smart Contracts in Legal Reasoning and Addressing the Oracle Problem

Published: 07 December 2023 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive investigation into the role, functionalities, and complexities of blockchain oracles, focusing particularly on the implications for smart contracts in legal reasoning contexts. Oracles serve as a vital bridge to smart contracts’ inability to interact with external or “off-chain” data, enabling them to be used in a variety of real-world situations. Oracle’s integration, however, introduces a number of complexities, including security vulnerabilities, collectively referred to as the Oracle Problem. In addition to a review of existing literature, we also provide a mathematical analysis quantifying the computational complexity associated with automating legal reasoning and a novel design framework aimed at establishing oracles that are secure, efficient, and legally compliant. The paper aims to serve as a foundational text for researchers, legal practitioners, and blockchain developers, advancing the academic discourse surrounding blockchain oracles and their role in smart contracts.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
SOICT '23: Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Information and Communication Technology
December 2023
1058 pages
ISBN:9798400708916
DOI:10.1145/3628797
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 December 2023

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Author Tags

  1. blockchain
  2. legal
  3. oracle
  4. oracle problem
  5. smart contracts

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  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

Funding Sources

  • University of Wollongong - RevITAlise (RITA) Research Grant 2021

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SOICT 2023

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Overall Acceptance Rate 147 of 318 submissions, 46%

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