当在线纠纷解决遇到区块链:去中心化司法的诞生

When Online Dispute Resolution Meets Blockchain:The Birth of Decentralized Justice

在线纠纷解决(ODR)诞生于20世纪90年代。随着互联网成为人们日常生活的一部分,许多人试图利用互联网建立虚拟法庭,以大幅度提高纠纷解决程序的效率。然而,这一愿望至今未能完全实现。在某种程度上,早期的ODR纠纷解决机制是一种进步,它简化了原有的替代性纠纷解决机制,但并没有产生颠覆性的创新。近年来,一些新的信息网络技术创新如区块链和加密货币的普及,为在线纠纷解决提供了新的制度设计。由于区块链技术和陪审员网络的去中心化性质,这种新兴方式被称为去中心化司法,能够大幅提高纠纷解决效率。本文主要研究新兴的去中心化司法的主要理论原则和早期实践经验。

The Online Dispute Resolution(“ODR”)industry was born in the 1990s.As the Internet became a part of people’s everyday life,many also sought to leverage the web’s potential for the creation of virtual courts that would greatly increase the efficiency of dispute resolution procedures.This vision,however,failed to fully materialize.To some extent,early ODR solutions only brought an incremental innovation that streamlined existing alternative dispute resolution procedures,but did not create any disruptive innovation with the potential of generating a more than 10x advantage over existing methods.In recent years,a number of technological innovations in computer networks such as blockchain and the growing use of cryptocurrencies have enabled new types of mechanism designs for online dispute resolution.This emerging approach,which may be called decentralized justice because of the decentralized nature of blockchain and of juror networks,enables the possibility of a radical increase in the efficiency of dispute resolution.This essay reviews the main theoretical principles underlying the nascent field of decentralized justice and the early empirical experience in real life use cases.