Blockchain Acceptance in United States Courts
How will American courts view Trokt Blockchain Certified Email?
Blockchain is rapidly gaining acceptance as a proven way to authenticate records and evidence within the legal community. While best known for its use in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, blockchain is actually a far broader, powerful technology in its own right that can more generally be used to archive digital truth. As more court systems accept blockchain as a fundamental technology, the number of sensitive files being validated on the Trokt neopublic blockchain network using Blockchain Certified Email or an enterprise equivalent is poised to skyrocket.
According to a recent article in the ABA Journal, nearly 1 in 4 states have already enacted, or are planning to propose, laws or regulations that specifically identify blockchain as a court-admissible means of self-authenticating digital records. Of those that have not specifically identified blockchain by name, every court nationwide has already approved and widely uses the hashing technology at the center of Trokt’s “digital thumbprinting” technology.
The type of hashing technology accepted by courts nationwide and incorporated into Trokt’s “digital thumbprint” is an irreversible process of converting the bits and bytes that make up any digital file into a unique, repeatable alpha-numeric output of a fixed length. Hashing ensures file validity because any change in any single bit or byte making up any file — a change even smaller than deleting a single period from a 600-page file — will produce a new, unique hash.
Courts are already universally accepting hashing as a necessary component of any digital forensic analysis. Hashing during a digital forensic analysis proves document validity by comparing the hash of a questionable document to the hash of the original document. If the hashes are the same, it is admissible evidence that proves every bit and byte of each document is exactly the same. If the hashes don’t match, you can be certain the document was altered at some point in time after the original document was certified.
The universal acceptance of the hashing technology incorporated into Trokt’s “digital thumbprint” by American courts is an important first step for the explicit acceptance of Trokt’s Blockchain Certified Email solution. States like Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Washington, Vermont, and Wyoming already adopting or crafting legislation that is explicitly pro-blockchain accelerates the adoption of solutions built upon tools like the Trokt neopublic blockchain network. These steps indicate a groundswell of blockchain acceptance by American courts is forming.
Yet the real future of blockchain adoption by the American court system — the action that has led to this unavoidable groundswell — is seen in the bold pro-blockchain stance already taken in Delaware.
Delaware’s decision in 2017 to amend its corporate laws so businesses can maintain records on a blockchain was a transformative leap bringing legitimacy to blockchain in the business world. Long known for its pro-business laws and precedent setting Court of Chancery, the majority of all publicly traded companies in the United States are incorporated or domiciled in Delaware. Because most companies are incorporated or domiciled in Delaware, most disputes are settled by the specialty judges in the Court of Chancery whose sole focus on business-related cases enable well reasoned, predictable outcomes that are routinely cited and adopted as precedent across the United States.
Delaware taking an active approach in blockchain acceptance means Trokt’s Blockchain Certified Email solution will soon be as universally common as the core hashing technology used by its “thumbprint.” After all, in American business law:
As goes Delaware, so goes the rest of the United States. And Delaware is going with blockchain.
To learn more about Trokt Blockchain Certified Email and the neopublic network it is built upon, please visit www.ecert.email
