Blockchain Bills of Lading: A New Generation of Electronic Transport Documents

Abstract

Recently, great attention has been paid to blockchain technology for creating new opportunities in international trade. Parties involved in international trade can now enter into transactions more securely thanks to immutable, distributed ledgers without necessarily relying on a third-party system provider while benefiting from the improved speed and cost of transactions. Blockchain technology has a decisive impact on the development of electronic transport documents. Pre-existing electronic bills of lading have relied on a system provider of “registry” whose nature has restricted them from being widely used in practice. Blockchain bills of lading are expected to address the shortcomings of their preceding generation by allowing anyone to use them and achieving a mechanism of transferring their control in a similar way to transferring the possession of paper bills of lading. At the same time, however, there are a number of practical and legal issues that might slow down the full application of blockchain bills of lading. To examine the potential issues in their use, this paper aims first to introduce blockchain bills of lading and how they carry out the functions of traditional bills of lading; secondly, the paper seeks to identify what the challenges are and how they may impede the use of blockchain bills of lading; and lastly, it investigates whether the proposed legal instruments could provide legal recognition of the use of blockchain bills of lading. These questions will determine the prospects for blockchain bills of lading: could they eventually render paper bills of lading a relic, or will they simply remain just another type of electronic bill of lading that has to coexist with paper bills of lading?

Keywords

• blockchain bills of lading
• distributed ledger
• registry
• token
• public blockchain
• private blockchain
• functional equivalence