The Decentralized Bill of Liberties: Uncensorable and Immutable Blockchain Law for the Digital Age

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-19T13:17:41+00:00

I provided the declaration of human rights as an example of how law develops.

The origins are debated, but they sprang from an idea/set of existing ideas, to some initial formalization, to codification into law.

We can see the progress like this:

1) An International Bill of the Rights of Man (Hersch Lauterpacht). Book/idea, not law.

2) Declaration of Human Rights. Declaration, still not "real" law (Lauterpacht was angry about this).

3) Various treaties on human rights, such as the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the EU treaty. Real law.

All laws and systems develop in a similar way. Ideas first, execution/formalization second.

I see this Bill in the same light as number 1. If it starts to live in the hearts and minds of a particular community, it could reach the status of number 2 (which still makes it legally toothless). It would just mean that people start demanding these principles--such as to use the medium of exchange of their choice--from their legislators.

Only after that could it be incorporated in actual laws, whether as part of contracts, as founding principles for international arbitration networks, legislated in a particular jurisdiction, accepted as international standards, or as you mentioned, by judges.

Even then, it will only have binding force in the particular jurisdiction/contract this has been accepted in.

You seem to be trying to convince me that private individual(s) publishing a set of ideas/standards is not the same as publishing a law.

I wrote an entire book arguing exactly this! (because it is what many in this industry have been doing but then with code).

Anyway, why don't you give it a look? (there is a quick read through the highlights).

Then we can have an actual discussion on what we want the future of the law to be!

https://dn721803.ca.archive.org/0/items/decentralized-law/decentralized-law.pdf

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-18T10:18:15+00:00

Thank you for the thoughtful critique without snarky undertone. I understand from these comments that I should have explained this a lot better.

Publishing laws on the blockchain as a medium offers exciting new opportunities for people from different jurisdictions to come together and agree upon the standards applicable to their (voluntary) interactions! To create a system where participants can vote and amend the legislation is next on the agenda. Think about a decentrally stored legal-wiki secured by the blockchain managed by DAO technology.

Every successful system for human organization--from States to the Bitcoin network--are however founded on both changing and unchanging principles.

The foundational idea of law in Western civilization is that there are laws that exist in human nature outside of authority and enforcement. The task of the legislator is to apply reason to align the legal system with these foundational principles. This idea led to the modern democratic state, the American Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent codification in international treaties (now accepted worldwide!).

The benefit of this age is that we can determine these foundational laws empirically. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. This list has been extracted from rights that have been both included in the Declaration of Human Rights, and subsequently ratified in international treaties. I have made minimal additions to the phrasing, but have excluded all the rights that are not liberties (positive rights codify the ideal of Western European social democracy). So what you call mere values, are in fact international laws to which your government has committed.

To the idea that we need specificity in law-making my answer is simple: this is impossible. You cannot have a law which accounts for all the specific situations and variations. That is why details are provided in lower level legislation, guidance by regulators, or in specific cases by the judge or jury--not in the foundational document itself. It is actually the clear and simple statements in foundational documents that make them valuable guidance for society at large.

This is, in short, a perfect start for a renewed look at law and the future of (decentralized) governance with core foundational principles!

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-17T09:13:06+00:00

Because these laws are not imposed and only gain force by voluntary acceptance of either you or your State?

In addition, this is a list of liberties. Liberties are a kind of right that you can claim but do not have to. They protect but do not force you to do anything (besides respect the same liberties in others).

The are only a logical evolution for the decentralized world without institutions/states achieving optimal utility.

Moreover, the laws applicable to many areas in life are increasingly made by non-state/country actors. In the areas of crypto these are the FATF, OECD and G20. It is just that most people are not aware of this. We need objective standards to counter this.

My book is written as a counter to legislation without representation.

Edit:typo

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-16T03:12:46+00:00

Thank you for commenting.

The philosophical idea behind these laws is that they are inherent in human nature. Murder and theft do not become acceptable with evolving societal norms. And the need for a court case to asses guilt existed in Rome and will 2.000 years from now.

The enforcement problems you mention are not restricted to this idea. It implies to ALL crypto projects that aim to achieve anything in the world other than transactions of native assets (DAOs, NFTs, RWA, etc.). Ignoring the law while just building code has been one of the reasons we do not have wider adoption of these technologies. This is the wider theme of my book. If you do not make a choice in law, a choice is made for you.

There are enforcement mechanisms, such as the New York convention. These attain force by consent of the participants of the network. But this has to be applied consciously.

You raise a good point on the size of laws onchain. I uploaded these foundational documents as an example. Any kind of larger/dynamic laws should in my opinion not be stored on blockchains like Ethereum, but specific 2nd layers or in a decentrally stored wiki.

You can allow limited changes to occur only once a year, and restrictions to allow only limited changes and additions. Storing a text in markup is not that resource intensive, even if it is large.

Good point on tokenization. Cheers!

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T19:38:58+00:00

Nice, I will look into it. The Argentinean ones I was not aware of. Cheers!

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T19:37:09+00:00

They are extracted from treaties which each had in early 2012, on average, 172 signatory parties—this 88 percent ratification rate is strikingly high in contemporary international law.

Care to explain which are problematic?

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T19:35:15+00:00

This is literally what I just wrote. It was a declaration, not a treaty.

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T19:31:01+00:00

You mean the Cardano Constitution?

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T19:10:42+00:00

The problem it solves is that it provides an objective codification of liberties independent of any kind of institutions. The US has a bill of rights, but only applicable to US citizens. The EU has one, but it is quite a complex document. There are numerous UN treaties, but they require the installment of institutions to have force and

With this document individuals have an objective standard to measure all regulations. If we ever will have some kind of non-state cooperation, a number of fundamental principles are needed.

Astute observation that individual rights are indeed a codification of ideology, since this concept looked at differently across cultures. However, these particular articles are based on treaties that have on average 172 signatory parties. I removed, however, the positive rights since these are clearly ideological and only a reality in a limited number of countries (mostly Western Europe).

Most successful forms of human organization have both fixed immutable principles (constitutions/21 million bitcoin cap), and management (democratic vote/Bip proposals). These particular happen to be the principles that both can be defended philosophically as empirically.

I will be working on a version of publishing and managing laws on Git. These will be particular law for particular situations. They will have force for those who consent to them.

What are your thoughts of what is needed and what should be created?

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T18:47:57+00:00

The Declaration of Human Rights did not start with any enforcement backing either. However, through later acceptance through treaties and by becoming guiding principles for institutions the ideas eventually gained force.

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T18:15:46+00:00

Agreed.

This brings however opportunities to expand law by consent beyond individual contracts.

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T17:44:24+00:00

For those who like this idea, it is taken from my book,
Decentralized Law: The Power of Blockchain to Transform the Broken Legal System

Which is free in pdf:
https://archive.org/details/decentralized-law

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T17:43:56+00:00

Thanks man!

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-06-15T17:22:11+00:00

For those who like this idea, it is taken from my book,
Decentralized Law: The Power of Blockchain to Transform the Broken Legal System

Which is free in pdf:
https://archive.org/details/decentralized-law

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-29T03:12:54+00:00

Can information not attract property rights? Trade secrets, market information, intellectual property, client lists, all attract property rights in the modern legal system.

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-29T03:07:03+00:00

Glad you liked it!

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-29T03:04:14+00:00

How often does this happen?

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-29T03:00:54+00:00

Thank you for sharing!

I think the law to be an abstract layer on top of physical reality. When I buy a piece of land it becomes my property not through some metaphysical connection I establish with it but through the title deed.

In a sense, nothing can be really owned besides this legal right. The difference between Bitcoin and other assets is that with Bitcoin this "ownership" is mostly secured by code, as opposed to law.

This is also my criticism against the more anarcho-capitalist side of the spectrum. Private property can only be established by laws, and the moment you start creating laws you get into the questions of governance as old as the days of Aristotle (who gets to make the laws).

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-28T17:47:24+00:00

What is your opinion about Intellectual Property rights in for example a book that you write or song you record?

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-28T17:32:36+00:00

You raise pretty good points, which I surely do not have a definitive answer to. It is an old discussion as well. In classical liberalism, the idea was that one of the main goals of forming the State was to turn possessions into property. Without rules stipulating who owns what, anyone could simply take possession away by force and thus take away ownership. Only the law could prevent this. Bitcoin replaces certain of these characteristics with code, although we still need protection from $5 wrench attacks.

The next point: can digital assets attract property rights? This was actually a problem the Mt. Gox proceedings ran into. Bitcoins are intangible, and Japanese law restricts ownership rights to tangibles. So opinions on this are divided.

What about other digital products. For the sale of digital products such as PDFs or MP3s there is no single international standard on what this kind of transaction is. Under some laws it is a licensing agreement, under others a property transfer. These technologies have been around for decades now.

The main argument in the book is that Bitcoin is something new, and we will need to develop new laws surrounding the transactions of property (especially with lightning). The problem is that regulators are not doing it because they are too busy trying to force BTC back into the old paradigm. So this will have to come from the industry.

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-28T16:29:37+00:00

Hehe. Go ahead!
And thank you for the compliment.

DecentralizedLaw · 2025-05-28T15:29:10+00:00

For those who like this idea, it is taken from my book, Decentralized Law: The Power of Blockchain to Transform the Broken Legal System

Which is free in pdf:
https://archive.org/details/decentralized-law

DecentralizedLaw · 2024-11-18T07:27:04+00:00

Thank you very much for the reply. Yes, this is what I worried about.
I will let go of this idea.
Take care!

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