White paper 2.0.2: highlights of the New Justice Ecosystem
After weeks and months during which our vision has expanded and the project has grown, surviving unharmed through the “crypto winter”, the Jur Team has published the new White paper V.2.0.2. on our new website. We have rewritten the White paper to reflect the significant evolution of the project.
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Why did we need a largely revised White paper, and how does it reflects Jur’s evolution?
To understand our steps forward, let’s take a step back to get the wider picture of Jur’s entire project.
Jur has always had a broad mission to improve the world of business transactions, by simplifying the dispute resolution systems thanks to the automation provided by smart contracts. Optimizing dispute resolution systems definitely helps eliminate inefficiency, but there are also other problems that Jur can solve, and we have grown our entire ecosystem in order to better address some gaps.
- Firstly, we needed a legally binding solution, a method for resolving disputes arising from complex contracts whose obligations and fulfilments cannot be fully automated by means of smart contract technology.
- Secondly, we needed a better way to help people harness the use of smart contracts.
- Thirdly, we needed to restructure the entire Jur’s ecosystem to cover the whole lifespan of business transactions, from contract creation to dispute resolution.
The #1 major improvement: the Court Layer, our brand new legally binding solution.
The Court Layer consists of a digitized arbitration procedure supported by blockchain technology that can be adopted by arbitration chambers or other entities wishing to establish Arbitration Hubs. It is, simply put, a way to fully digitize the arbitral tribunals.
Something that has never been attempted before.
What led us to do this? Developing an arbitration procedure in accordance with the New York Convention and the principles of the UNCITRAL Model Law seemed to us to be the most effective move to provide a legally binding mechanism, whose decisions will be enforceable before national courts. By offering an arbitration procedure, the Jur platform allows our ecosystem to cover even complex and multifaced disputes where it is not simply a matter of addressing allocation of sums by choosing between two concurring proposals over a dispute.
In order to achieve Jur’s vision of simplifying business deals and transactions and reducing time and costs for the parties — the Court Layer had to become a fully digitized procedure. By putting it all online, Jur allows parties and arbitrators to complete the arbitration process solely relying on the Internet without ever having to leave their respective offices, remaining in their respective countries, moreover eliminating any travel expenses. The system is designed to be globally accessible and legally binding, thus truly valid, in more than 150 countries worldwide.
The Court Layer is empowered by the blockchain technology, so that:
- it is powered by the JUR Token, like the whole Jur ecosystem;
- the selection of the arbitrator (or of the three arbitrators) is made randomly thanks to the use of a specific blockchain-based algorithm that allows parties to audit the selection and verify that it happened in a random way without the possible intervention of a third party
- the resilience provided by the blockchain ensures that no one can alter the information about the proceeding that is stored along with a “hash” for confirmation;
- a decentralized review mechanism is implemented, carried out by arbitrators randomly selected from other Arbitration Hubs to evaluate the provisional arbitration award drafts before they become final and binding awards.
- the decentralized review mechanism provides an objective ranking / reputation mechanism assessing the quality of the judgements and creating an objective competition between different private jurisdictions
#2: from smart contracts to Smart Legal Contracts for an intelligent contract editor and a peer-reviewed template marketplace, with the Jur editor and the Jur Marketplace
As regards the application of smart contract technology, we adopted the term “Smart Legal Contract” to describe the contract templates that the parties can purchase from the Jur Marketplace or create from scratch on the Jur Editor.
The Smart Legal Contracts are the result of combining contracts written in natural language with smart contract software in code language to automate obligations and performance. All of these features will be accessible to users through the Jur Platform and aims to cover and simplify the initial phase of business transactions, i.e. the creation of contracts.
#3: an entire legal ecosystem re-built and re-written for the new White paper release
Finally, we have restructured the entire White paper to reflects the holistic nature of all the components of the ecosystem, that is meant to cover the entire life-cycle of a business transaction.
This 2.0.2 version, after the necessary introductions and premises, illustrates the contract management phase in the section 3, entirely dedicated to the Jur Platform for the creation and sale of Smart Legal Contracts templates. This section then examines the above mentioned two components of the Jur Platform dedicated to this phase, the Jur Editor and Jur Marketplace.
Subsequently, you will find that section 4 is entirely dedicated to jurisdictions on the blockchain. We present the Court Layer first because it is close to the mindset of today’s legal professionals and because, thanks to the above-mentioned features, it represents the most important dispute resolution mechanism of the ecosystem, and the most potentially successful on the market, since it covers the market gaps in a very elegant and scientifically substantiated way.
After the top-tier Court Layer, meant to be used for every big sized dispute, we introduce two mechanisms again entirely based on blockchain and designed to solve the problem of micro- to medium-sized claims: the Open Layer and its enhanced version, the Community Layer, dedicated to resolving higher-value disputes by restricting the vote to members of communities composed of specialized professionals.
Final notes on terminology and final technical appendixes soon to be released
The introduction of a new Layer and the consistent reorganization of the entire White paper required us to change or add certain terms and definitions.
The change is not only related to terminology but also to the different approach that we have decided to take on what mattered the most for having the best possible solution to the problems addressed. Among the most important examples are the following:
- the term “Smart Legal Agreement” has been replaced with “Smart Legal Contract”, that is to strengthen the close relationship within the smart contract technology, used to automate the contract execution, with the legal contract, in order to highlight that our technology is meant to offer a solution that is legally valid and that is based upon an automation and an overall ‘smart’ platform able to provide the user with the more fitting solutions for their needs;
- the term “Hub”, which in the previous White paper indicated a community of professionals allowed to vote on the Community Layer has been replaced by the simpler term “Community”, so to differentiate between the features of the different layers put in place by Jur’s Ecosystem;
- the body constituted by an arbitration chamber or other legal entity for the adoption and conduct of the new Court Layer procedure is called “Arbitration Hub”, to foster the idea that the Court Layer helps to create a chamber of arbitrators that can be seen as a hub in a network of Arbitrators Hubs, competing against each other in order to create the most effective jurisdictions for the Jur’s Platform’s users needs.
It is worth mentioning that the White paper has been conceived in an organic way so that it can be expanded by Appendices that deal with the technical details of each component of the ecosystem, and each of these writings can be easily updated to reflect future refinements and changes.
That said, we hope you will jump right in and begin reading our most comprehensive document about the Jur ecosystem, and that you will be coming back to us with a whole lot series of questions, feedback, and suggestions, since we strongly believe that any of you can make a difference by joining our community of thinkers, voters, and game-changers.
Stay tuned for the release of the technical appendixes and for all the updates.
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