Luigi Buonanno Wins the Young Lawyers Award 2019

THE PHD STUDENT IN LEGAL STUDIES HAS BEEN AWARDED FOR A PAPER THAT INVESTIGATES WHO'S LIABLE IN CASE OF BLOCKCHAIN MALFUNCTIONS

Luigi Buonanno, a PhD student in Legal Studies at Bocconi, is the winner of the European law Institutre (ELI)’s Young Lawyers Award 2019 for a paper on blockchain and civil liability. The prize-giving ceremony took place in Vienna during the opening reception of ELI’s 2019 Annual Conference at the Austrian Ministry of Justice.
 
In his Blockchain as the Backbone of a New Technology-based Civil Liability Regime, Luigi Buonanno aims to evaluate the impact of blockchain on private law’s civil liability sector, attempting to describe its future path and envisage future regulation. « The need to identify the person responsible for either malfunction in the chains or illegal activities perpetrated against them, thereby causing economic damage to end users, clashes with the highly decentralized nature of this technology», he writes.
 
The paper argues that the strict liability of the operators of blockchain platforms will become the reference paradigm for civil liability. Meanwhile, the need to consider the introduction of a mandatory insurance scheme for blockchain platform operators is emphasized, with a view to not only protecting the assets of operators but also ensuring full compensation for end users in the event a malfunction or attack results in the loss of assets held on the decentralized network.
 
Luigi Buonanno has been congratulated for the award by both Pietro Sirena, Director of Bocconi’s Department of Legal Studies, and Giovanni Strampelli, the PhD in Legal Studies Program Director.

by Fabio Todesco