Personal Growth Bets Made With Smart Contracts According To NYU Law Professors Should Be Lawful

According to the study by the pair, self-contracts can aid users in quitting smoking or losing weight, but incentives like planting a bomb inside one's own head would undoubtedly push the boundaries of the law.

Source: www.coinspeaker.com

Professors Max Raskin and Jack Millman, from the New York University School of Law, recently authored an article in the Journal on Emerging Technologies. This article delves into the legal implications associated with the utilization of blockchain-based smart contracts for personal development wagers. The two claim that individual development bets are one-sided agreements people would enter into with themselves. These agreements are typically made to improve oneself, and they usually specify when to start or cease performing a specific task.

The concept is explained by the researchers using the examples of giving up smoking or losing weight. According to their article, one example of such a wager may go like this: Max would have to pay Jack $1,000 if he didn’t drop 10 pounds in the following six months. As opposed to that, Jack is required to buy Max a piece of meat meal if he has lost weight.

Owing to the investigators, the main contention of the paper is that rewards can positively affect a person's capacity to succeed at challenging personal endeavors. Such rewards, however, are more unlikely to be effective in the absence of accountability.

According to the authors, smart contracts can serve both the functions of enforcers and track, enabling aspired individuals to successfully commit to his or her future selves minus the need of including a third party. Raskin and Millman suggest a strategy in which a smart contract is created on the blockchain utilizing contractware, hardware used to gauge or keep an eye on the terms of the wager, to ensure that the terms are followed.

The researchers take the situation of a person who invests $10,000 in an electronic contract which calls for the user to abstain from smoking for 30 days in order to get the money in the event of stopping smoking. In the event of disappointment, the money may, for instance, be donated to a user-selected predetermined charity.

The provisions of the smart contract would automatically carry out and the user’s stake would be lost if they skipped a predetermined check-in or passed a test with a breathalyzer. Although the idea is very simple, the laws governing self-contracts and how they can be enforced are a little unclear. According to the researchers, there shouldn’t be any legal obstacles that prevent people from using their own money to gamble on themselves. As long as those conditions are given formal thought, the agreement should presumably be enforceable in court.

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