Smart contracts operating on blockchain: advantages and disadvantages

Moving on from the current national and transnational legal framework, the article will attempt to analyse the potential and critical issues arising from the application of blockchain and smart contracts to legal relations, especially for the protection of the socalled weak contracting party. The need to identify which rules to adopt implies a fundamental choice between the options of (a) considering smart contracts not only as an advanced technological tool but also as a means for carrying out the activity that must in any case be traced back to the person who benefits from and answers for it, and (b) the science fiction like scenario, but perhaps not that much, of enhancing the ability of smart contracts to make choices and therefore to be responsible for the activity performed.