The Supreme Court of China has ruled that evidence authenticated with Blockchain technology is binding in legal disputes. The new ruling comes as part of a series of more comprehensive rules that clarify litigation procedures for Internet courts throughout China, and takes effect immediately.
According to the Supreme Court, it is declared that:
"Internet courts will recognize the digital data that is presented as evidence if the relevant parties collected and stored this data through Blockchain with digital signatures, reliable timestamps and verification of hash values or through a digital deposition platform, and can prove the authenticity of the technology used. "
In what had been called "the first in the world", in August 2017, the Chinese city of Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province, opened a court dedicated to prosecuting disputes related to the Internet in an online web platform "Netcourt". The court handled its first case with evidence legally derived from blockchain this January.
Now the Internet courts of China carry out cases online, with "acceptance of litigation, delivery, mediation, exchange of evidence, pre-trial preparation, trial and judgment", all resolved on the web. Currently, China has two additional Internet courts scheduled for the country's capital, Beijing, as well as for the southern city of Guangzhou.
As noted by a CoinTelegraph expert, innovations related to Blockchain are not only legally recognized as capable of authenticating evidence, but even - as in the case of smart contracts - they are considered to have the potential to become a great force disruptive in the legal field.
Immutable and time-stamped data generated in a Blockchain provide auditable tracking with which intelligent contracts interact in accordance with binding and pre-specified rules.