SMART CONTRACT PHENOMENON: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES OF THEORY AND PERSPECTIVES OF LEGAL REGULATION
The topic of smart contracts is currently relevant both for study within scientific disciplines and for application in the context of professional activities. However, the history of this phenomenon is often overlooked. If today it is stated that a smart contract is a contract implemented into a blockchain-based program code, then this is perceived by a person adapted to the latest information technologies quite easily and naturally. However, upon a detailed examination of the subject, we will notice significant contradictions in its definition, which is widely approved in scientific circles. We will not see in the initial concepts of a smart contract the features that are assigned to it today. As a consequence of error facti (error in fact), there are defective ways of legal regulation that have a destructive effect on social progress. This article is aimed at eliminating such a perspective. It summarizes the history of the emergence and development of the smart contract theory. Attempts to legalize smart contracts in Russia, the Republic of Belarus and the United States of America are analyzed. We have identified imperfections in the legal regulation of smart contracts in foreign countries, in particular, expressed in the inaccurate de nition of a smart contract, as well as in the issue of the legal regulation of a smart contract. Based on the methods of empirical (observation, comparison, experiment) and theoretical (formalization, abstraction) cognition, the facts of incorrect interpretation in the scientific literature of the technical side of a smart contract are reflected - its conjugation with the blockchain, self-execution. General dificulties in creating the legislative structure of a smart contract are formulated. The most optimal, from the standpoint of view of legal science, way of involvement in civil circulation, which excludes the characteristic of a smart contract as a contract, a special contractual structure, an accession contract, conditional transaction and method of ensuring the fulfillment of obligations, has been deduced. It is concluded that it is advisable to settle a smart contract in civil law as a way to fulfill an obligation.