Blockchain

Overview

The buzz surrounding non-fungible tokens (NFTs) reached a fever pitch with the US$69 million sale of an NFT by digital artist Beeple in March 2021. While artwork has remained the predominant use of NFTs – and generated a good deal of media hype along the way − companies across a variety of industries are coming up with new and innovative use cases for NFTs – and turning to our multidisciplinary global team for guidance in the uncharted territory surrounding these digital assets.

First: What Is an NFT?

NFTs are unique tokens based on blockchain technology. Unlike cryptocurrency tokens such as bitcoin, which are fungible, NFTs are digitally unique – no two NFTs are alike. The unique nature of NFTs, as well as the security and other advantageous features of blockchain technology, provide a number of unique benefits, including:

  • Verification of ownership and authenticity
  • Driving of value of digital assets through scarcity
  • Built-in smart contracts for re-sale royalties for artists and other NFT creators
  • Decentralization of digital asset ownership, management and transfers (in other words, independence from large platforms)

Continue Reading Your NFT Playbook

Blockchain involves various computers that are located in different states around the world so that the jurisdictions and applicable laws are questionable and assumingly not known to the parties using the blockchain technology.

In principle a blockchain is a distributed ledger, that can be defined as a replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data structure maintained by consensus algorithm and spread across multiple locations, countries, and/or institutions. In the blockchain digitally recorded data are stored in packages called blocks which are linked together in chronological order. It is technically very difficult to change the order such blocks, without changing the order of all subsequent blocks. Each block on the network contains a complete copy of the entire ledger, from the first block created to the most recent block and each block contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp and transaction data.
Continue Reading Blockchain and GDPR – Many Open Questions to be Addressed and Solved!