Web3 Governance

Joseph Lee is a reader in corporate and financial law at the University of Manchester School of Law. He is founding programme director of Manchester Online LLM Master of Laws in International Commercial and Technology Law. He is author of the book Crypto-Finance, Law and Regulation: Governing an Emerging Ecosystem and editor of the book Data Governance in AI, FinTech and RegTech. He is a member of the LawTech Advisory Council of the Astana International Financial Centre and of the Manchester LawTech Initiative. Dr Lee has been principal investigator of research projects funded by the UKRI, British Academy, and British Council. He has held a number of visiting positions, including at KU Leuven and Tokyo University. He is also an attorney-at-law of New York State.Jyh-An Lee is a Professor and the Executive Director of the Centre for Legal Innovation and Digital Society at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. He has been featured on ABC News, BBC News, Bloomberg News, Financial Times, and Fortune as an expert on intellectual property and internet law. His works have been cited by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the UK High Court of Justice, and the European Union (in a WTO dispute-settlement case).

• Roadmap to Legal Implications of Web3: An IntroductionPart A: Property and Contract1. Deciphering the Legal Enigma of NFTs 2. Taxation of Cryptoassets and Web 3.0 3. The Sense and Nonsense of Smart Contracts Part B: Reorganising Organisations 4. Law and Regulation for Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) 5. Resource Dependency Theory and Cybersecurity Regulation Part C: Data Governance6. Data Law in China 7. Copyright Law and the Use of Big Data for Computer Vision Part D: Disputes and Liabilities in the Platform Economy8. What’s the Gig? Tort Liability of Platforms for Physical User-to-User Harm 9. Envisioning the Future of Online Dispute Resolution from the Case of China Part E: International Law Perspectives10. Navigating the Cryptosphere: Jurisdictional Uncertainty in Emerging Cross-Border Cryptocurrency Disputes 11. Rethinking Jurisdiction of Online Defamation 12. Grounding a Right to Internet Access in the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living

In this admirable collection, contributors probe the governance challenges and opportunities that are presented by the transition from Web2 to Web3, offering readers important insights about not only the governance of Web3 artefacts—NFTs, smart contracts, DAOs, and the like—but also about the interface between, on the one side, law and policy and, on the other, the latest online technologies that support decentralisation, co-production, and user-centricity.Roger Brownsword, Professor of Law at King’s College London and Bournemouth UniversityThis remarkably informative and insightful volume offers lawyers and policymakers a thorough roadmap into the possible futures in which we will likely find ourselves in the age of Web3. As the learned contributors demonstrate, the existing knowledge in the field remains highly relevant for understanding and responding to novel issues. The sources of creativity and innovation, however, are nowadays increasingly more diversified and widely distributed across actors and places in the world.Xin Dai, Associate Professor and Vice Dean, Peking University Law SchoolWeb3 law and policy has evolved as quickly and diversely as the technological environment it seeks to govern. Featuring examples from multiple jurisdictions, this timely and comprehensive volume tackles a wide range of topics that are important to understanding this new environment. Whether you are into crypto assets, cybersecurity, data regulation, the platform economy, online disputes or jurisdictional questions, this book will provide a one-stop reference for the changing legal landscape surrounding Web 3.0. Highly recommended!Peter K. Yu, University Distinguished Professor, Texas A&M University