The Swedish brand of sportswear Björn Borg launched a digital platform based on blockchain technology, through which people of the same sex can marry anywhere in the world, in a symbolic way.
The initiative is called "Marriage unlocked" and was announced on June 11 by the company through its website, which states that one of the objectives of the project is to facilitate the union of same-sex couples living in places where gay marriage is not legalized . It is, according to figures of the company, 87% of the countries of the world.
The new platform allows anyone to make proposals, exchange votes and marry . It was designed by the company Superblocks, founded in 2012 and specialized in implementing intelligent contracts and decentralized applications of open source, allowing its users to start up any idea in the chain of blocks.
On the initiative, the founder of Superblocks, Thomas Backlund, noted that "Marriage unlocked" is an example of how new technologies can be used to question the way countries control unions.
The project is linked to a brand campaign of the firm Björn Borg, whose slogan is Love for All (love for all), which defends the right to love those who wish freely. In this regard, Jonas Lindberg Nyvang, director of Marketing , said that the idea is to decentralize power and open the marriage to all who wish to get married, taking advantage of the blockchain technology to eliminate the restrictions imposed by the states.
The information clarifies that through the platform couples make a symbolic marriage, legally invalid, which is specified through the creation of an intelligent contract that draws up a proposal and sends it to the other person . The receiver receives a link and with a click gives its confirmation, leaving the transaction stored in the chain of blocks of Ethereum . The network issues a digital marriage certificate that can be made public or kept anonymous.
The note adds that Sybille and Alexandra, a couple from Switzerland, a country where gay marriages are not allowed, was the first to marry by this mechanism. The newlyweds affirmed that they expect their "blockchain marriage" to open the doors to the recognition of the right to marital equality, and they appear in one of the images used for the campaign to promote the platform, devised by the agency DDB Nord.
SMART CONTRACTS AS A LEGAL ALTERNATIVE
It should be mentioned that using the block chain it is also possible to get married through a matrimonial registration application called Smart Love , which runs on the Bitnation blockchain. It is a decentralized and borderless government proposal that offers public notary services to create and execute smart contracts for weddings, birth certificates, identification documents, among others. Through this ecosystem, in October 2014, the first heterosexual wedding was held using blockchain technology .
In this way, distributed accounting technology is becoming an ally of legal systems due to its reliable, transparent and immutable cryptography.
However, its ability to operate in a decentralized manner, independent of government regulations, is also an obstacle to its full legal acceptance. Even so, several countries and even state governments of the United States, such as Arizona and Florida , weigh the possibility of giving legal validity to smart contracts.