Blockchain is one of the emerging technology in recent years in the field of information technology. Blockchain is a decentralized, traceable, temper proof, and trustworthy distributed database system operated by multiple nodes. Blockchain is used not only in cryptocurrency or electronic cash, but also in other applications such as financial transactions, healthcare, insurance, IoT, manufacturing, education, etc., with the promise of more skills and higher resilience. Over the past few years, a significant number of public announcements and news have been made about its goals, partnerships, development, and implementation. However, the most important aspects and discussions on issues related to blockchain security, challenges and policies have been raised around the world. Focus on blockchain security issues and this review paper reviewed 80 research papers. Notable works in this review article are on the concept of blockchain ecosystems, the division of blockchains, the implementation of blockchains and finally security issues and blockchain challenges. This review paper will be helpful for the new research work and safety related issues for blockchain.

A Review on Blockchain Security Issues and Challenges

Corporate Insolvency Law

The modernization of Italy’s insolvency framework has been the subject of much interest in recent years, related not least to its role in potentially facilitating an efficient allocation of resources. A unique feature of Italy’s insolvency framework is a special regime for large enterprises known as “extraordinary administration”. This paper evaluates the merits of this special regime by assessing its efficacy and success in achieving its stated goals and comparing its features to international standards and best practices. It finds that the special regime tends to impose large costs on creditors and the state. The regime results, in most cases, in the sale of parts of the group, followed by a liquidation phase of the remaining assets which can take longer than the general regime, hindering legal certainty for creditors and more generally economic efficiency, investment and job creation. Based on international best practices and experience, consideration should be given to folding the special regime into the general insolvency regime, possibly with provisions to allow for state intervention in specific well-defined circumstances.

https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2018/wp18218.ashx

The Insolvency Regime for Large Enterprises in Italy: An Economic and Legal Assessment1

To try to protect the stability of the financial system, regulators and policymakers have been extending bankruptcy-resolution techniques beyond their normal boundaries. To date, however, their efforts have been insufficient, in part because bankruptcy law traditionally has microprudential goals (to protect individual firms) whereas protecting financial stability is a “macroprudential” goal. 
This Article seeks to derive a logical and consistent theory of how and why resolution-based regulation can help to stabilize the financial system. To that end, the Article identifies three possible regulatory approaches: reactive resolution-based regulation, which comprises variations on traditional bankruptcy; proactive resolution-based regulation, which consists of pre-planned enhancements that are designed to strengthen or facilitate the resolvability of financial system elements that become troubled; and counteractive regulation, which seeks to reduce the need for resolution (and thus is not truly resolution). 
The Article then argues that resolution-based regulation should seek not merely (as currently conceived) to protect individual troubled systemically important firms but also to protect against the failure of systemically important firms in the aggregate as well as to protect other critical elements of the financial system. These include the markets in which securities and other financial assets are traded and the infrastructure that serves to facilitate that trading. Finally, the Article applies these insights to design resolution-based regulation that can be used by regulators as an additional macroprudential “tool.”

Beyond Bankruptcy: Resolution as a Macroprudential Regulatory Tool

Blockchain technology allowing mass tokenization of assets represents the fundamental element of the ongoing industrial revolution. It helps asset owners to draft unique and tailored product offerings with access to broad groups of investors, exit opportunities and limited risk of fraud. Nevertheless, potential hazards to the process and the very concept exist. The near perspective of a private stablecoin threatening the financial system puts pressure on governments, regulators and the banking system to adopt the revolution rather than oppose it. Tokenization of residential real estate assets opens vast opportunities for inclusion of traditional financial institutions in the process via oracle services, as the quality of data exposed to the asymmetry of information and other factors particular to this market segment is crucial. The author believes that retail banks should further leverage their role in the economy, given their business experience, local expertise or trust, and drafts a concept of the Oracle Bank operating at the crossroads of the physical and digital worlds. This organization should emerge from the unstoppable process of the financial paradigm shift. The discussion on the institutional adoption of residential property tokenization should not be limited to the security of transactions but reflect other aspects of the inevitable redefinition of the banking sector’s role in the emerging token economy, with residential real estate at the focus point of future socio-economic development plans.

Blockchain to the Rescue—Tokenization of Residential Real Estate in the Emerging Token Economy

This paper explores the legal risks involved in depositing cryptocurrency with crypto-custodians such as crypto-exchanges. These risks materialize most acutely in case these crypto-custodians fall insolvent, which has happened over the last decade in several instances. Recent years have witnessed the demise of crypto-exchanges such as Cryptopia (New Zealand), QuadrigaCX (Canada), BitGrail (Italy), Cointed GmbH (Austria) and a host of other crypto-exchanges around the world. These cases reveal that the qualification of the contractual and property law rights of crypto-investors is problematic. This is why this article discusses which rights crypto-investors can and should be able to assert in case a crypto-custodian falls insolvent. To answer this question, the (legal) qualification of bitcoin is analysed (can it be owned and if so, how can such ownership be created and transferred?) and the status of deposited bitcoins is discussed (do stored crypto-assets form a part of the crypto-custodian’s insolvency estate or can they be revendicated by customers?). Private international law aspects form the starting point of the legal analysis (which court has jurisdiction to open insolvency proceedings and hear crypto-investors’ claims, and what law applies to such claims?) and the analysis is based on the current terms and conditions of major crypto-custodians.

The Failed Hopes of Disintermediation: Crypto-Custodian Insolvency, Legal Risks and How to Avoid Them

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/iir.1370

Conflicts of interest, intra‐group financing and procedural coordination of group insolvencies

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis the EU bank resolution regime went through fundamental changes that seek to preserve financial stability and ensure continuity of critical functions. The same cannot be said of insolvency rules applicable to non-financial enterprises. Unlike bank resolution with its macroprudential and proactive focus, insolvency law has largely remained microprudential and reactive.

Admittedly, unlike bank failures, corporate insolvencies usually do not pose systemic risk. However, in practice this may not hold true for significant non-financial enterprises (SNFEs). Such enterprises oftentimes play a major role in national economies and serve important public functions. Their failure may trigger contagion and cause disruptive consequences. Insofar as insolvency of SNFEs raises concerns common to bank failures, the question arises whether certain strategies and tools embraced within the EU bank recovery and resolution framework should be extended to regulate SNFE insolvency. This article explores the feasibility of such an extension.

Insolvency of Significant Non-Financial Enterprises: Lessons from Bank Failures and Bank Resolution

Economic and political instability has become a characteristic of many societies around the globe. Recent examples revealing the volatility of the current state of affairs include the trade restrictions imposed by the Russian Federation in August 2014, and currency fluctuations experienced by many countries, including Russia and potentially Greece. In this situation, one may wonder whether contract law has a solution to offer to the parties affected. Traditionally dominated by the pacta sunt servanda principle, jurisdictions made their own choices. This paper analyses approaches adopted by Russian, German and French law in response to situations of force majeure (trade embargoes)and unforeseen change of circumstances (currency fluctuations). In search for an explanation of each given approach, we reviewed historical arguments, as history played a crucial role in the formation of German and French responses, though in a completely different way. Whereas Germany, heavily affected by the cataclysms of the World Wars, was eager to adopt a lenient view on the possibility of the judicial revision of contracts, France never gave up its suspicion of court interventions. As legal preferences are often connected with cultural factors, we looked at distinct cultural traits of the societies at issue, by using the Hofstede index. We realized that there could be compelling cultural reasons why France and Germany are situated at opposite poles, while Russia is somewhere in the middle. Lastly, we took into account considerations derived from law and economics, arguing that narrowly construed court intervention might be economically justified in cases of impossibility and impracticability, as ultimately decreasing transaction and risk-appraisal costs.

https://www.russianlawjournal.org/jour/article/download/94/103

Ilya Kokorin

Papers

The Failed Hopes of Disintermediation: Crypto-Custodian Insolvency, Legal Risks and How to Avoid Them

Conflicts of interest, intra‐group financing and procedural coordination of group insolvencies

Insolvency of Significant Non-Financial Enterprises: Lessons from Bank Failures and Bank Resolution

The Failed Hopes of Disintermediation: Crypto-Custodian Insolvency, Legal Risks and How to Avoid Them

Force Majeure and Unforeseen Change of Circumstances. The Case of Embargoes and Currency Fluctuations (Russian, German and French Approaches)