A UWindsor law professor has published one of the first analyses of blockchain and the legal and economic challenges faced by this new technology.

Muharem Kianieff’s book Blockchain Technology and the Law: Opportunities and Risks (Routledge, 2018) was released on April 8. In it, Kianieff, a leading expert in the field of financial technology and its regulation, offers an introduction to how blockchain works and demonstrates how a legal framework that governs it can be used to ensure that it can be successfully deployed.

A blockchain is a time-stamped series of immutable data that is managed by cluster of computers not owned by any single entity. Each of these blocks of data (i.e. block) are secured and bound to each other using cryptographic principles (i.e. chain). They are designed to be resistant to modification of the data, making them useful for cryptocurrencies.

Kianieff provides a thorough examination of blockchain technology in relation to the law from a comparative perspective with a focus on the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

At Windsor Law, the book will be at the centre of a new blockchain course to be offered in Winter 2020 — the first of its kind among Canadian law schools.

Professor Kianieff, who joined the UWindsor faculty in 2008, works in the areas of banking law and payment mechanisms. His research looks at the role that regulation plays as it applies to innovation in financial technology. By using economic and historical analyses, he seeks to advance proposals for reform that make products safer for consumers and increase access to justice.

—Rachelle Prince