In a recently published newspaper, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin forth with Harvard faculty Thibault Schrepel argued that blockchain is positioned to help antitrust laws in areas where regulations are difficult to apply and enforce.

The paper, dubbed Blockchain Code as Antitrust, explains that blockchains can aid antitrust laws past increasing decentralization and preventing the creation of monopolies. However, they said, blockchains tin can only do and so if regulations support the applied science.

"Law and technology should be thought of every bit allies – not enemies – as they characteristic complementary strengths and defects," reads the newspaper.

Bringing trust with blockchain

Buterin and Schrepel explained that blockchain — with the help of smart contracts — can create trust in situations where laws are hard to implement, such every bit "when jurisdictions are mutually unfriendly (cross-edge event), or when the state is not enforcing legal limitations on the practice of ability by its agents or private entities."

Smart contracts assist create an ecosystem where none of the transacting parties are subject to placing trust in an unknown person or entity without being assured that their transaction volition be successfully completed.

The fact that blockchain's master purpose is to decentralize various industries complements antitrust laws that prohibit companies from creating a monopoly or abuse their centralized market power to eliminate competition:

"The thought is for all market players to retain the power to decide without having to follow the instructions of centralized economic ability."

Stressing for legal support

Buterin and Schrepel urged antitrust agencies to consider using blockchain engineering science. As a two-step process to promote blockchain for decentralization, they suggested that antitrust agencies ready new regulatory sandboxes so that more developers can test the engineering without antitrust concerns.

If these sandboxes succeed, the agencies could move further with safe harbors, which are similar to sandboxes merely with no limit in time or scale, they wrote. They summed upwardly saying:

"When engineering chooses confrontation, the law must also choose confrontation. When the tech chooses collaboration, the law must choose collaboration despite the absence of certain sanctioning it may entail."