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Technology-based Decentralization and the Structural Limits of Legal Attribution: Why Adapting the Law Requires Rethinking Its Foundations

Identification

Clé publique

doi:10.2139/ssrn.6493863

Auteurs

Filippo Zatti

Année déclarée

2026

Langue déclarée

en

Type source

preprint

Première détection

2026-11-09T19:04:47.917401+00:00

Dernière observation des métadonnées

2026-11-09T19:04:47.917401+00:00

Dernière vérification HTTP

Non effectuée

Institutions déclarées par la source

University of Florence

Pays d’affiliation déclarés

IT

Résumé documentaire — langue originale

This article examines whether the challenges that blockchain-based decentralization poses to legal order are amenable to incremental regulatory adaptation or whether they reveal a structural inadequacy in the foundational presuppositions upon which law operates. Legal systems are built on the identification of subjects-natural persons, legal entities, or state authorities-to whom rights, obligations, and consequences can be attributed. This principle of attribution operates across three constitutive dimensions: territory, which anchors jurisdiction and enforcement; language, which provides the symbolic medium for the articulation and interpretation of norms; and the body, which grounds legal personality in embodied human agency. Blockchain technology and autonomous decentralized systems-including Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and Decentralized Finance protocols-challenge each of these dimensions simultaneously, operating without identifiable centres of accountable authority, across territorial boundaries, through algorithmic code rather than natural language, and independently of embodied human intermediaries. The article argues that this challenge is not merely one of regulatory difficulty but of structural inadequacy: when the foundational condition of identifiable centres of attribution is systematically absent, traditional legal categories lose not merely their ease of application but the very referent that gives them meaning. The analysis engages with the counter-position that existing legal tools can reach de facto controllers within decentralized ecosystems and examines regulatory responses-including the EU MiCAR framework and US enforcement actions-that consistently re-centralize accountability around identifiable human actors. The article concludes that the integration of decentralized technologies into legally regulated domains demands the reconstitution of identifiable centres of attribution, requiring not mere adaptation of existing frameworks but institutional innovation.

Identifiants

OPENALEX

W7162260183

DOI

10.2139/ssrn.6493863

HANDLE

2158/1472072

Repères documentaires

Famille documentaire

Working paper

Types déclarés par les sources

preprint

Entités naturelles mentionnées

Écosystème · Territoire

Les mentions d’entités ne constituent pas une preuve de reconnaissance juridique. La juridiction étudiée est distincte du pays d’affiliation des auteurs.

Sources

OpenAlex · Document 1 · Document 2 · Document 3

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6493863
• Handle · https://hdl.handle.net/2158/1472072
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W7162260183

Statut documentaire

Pertinence à examiner

Bibliothèque

Cette identité n’est pas encore intégrée à la Bibliothèque juridique.