The Kleros Fellowship

Below is an archive of all the Fellowship reports created by our fellows.

Abeer Sharma

International Arbitration, Queen Mary University.

Incorporating Kleros in Long-Term Energy Supply Contracts

Long-term contracts are a special category of contracts where the obligations of the contracting parties are spread over many years – sometimes up to decades. While used in a range of different transactions, they are most famously used in lucrative supply contracts in primary resource industries such as coal mining, liquified natural gas, electricity, and nuclear power supply contracts.

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Dmitry Narozny

Civil Law Attorney Russia

Due Process in Kleros Consumer Dispute Resolution

Kleros’ dispute resolution technique meets the highest level of internationally
recognized due process requirements. The main purpose of this Report is to deliver a model of Kleros' consumer redress scheme which is compliant to any identifiable regulatory coordinate system for conducting dispute resolution procedures.

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Tian Zhao

UX Designer

My Kleros Fellowship Experience as a Digital Product Designer

I chose to work with Kleros is because it was a great opportunity for me to learn and contribute more as a blockchain-focused product designer who’s passionate about social impact.

What’s incredible about all of this is that prior to encountering Kleros, I had no interest in law. Despite being told that I should become a lawyer when I was young (due to how much I loved to argue, I guess), I still had no interest in law growing up.

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Julieta Fernandez Tineo

Digital Law Specialist. Argentina.

Application of Kleros decentralized dispute resolution technology in cases of civil liability derived from parental responsibility to Argentinian courts.

The Kleros decentralized dispute resolution technology has already proven its worth in the private sector as an effective alternative arbitration method, which is why in this paper the case will be made for its application in the public sector. Because the public order of a country – in this case Argentina – will be at stake when testing this protocol in the Courts, it is important for the matter being discussed to be as straightforward as possible in order to avoid any undesired rights violations. That is why this paper studies the possible extrapolation of the Kleros protocol from the private to the public sector in Argentine Family Courts in cases where the existence of a civil liability of the parents, derived from their parental responsibility duties, is being investigated.

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Elliot Talbert-Goldstein

Assistant Director for Digital Marketing, Division of Professional Studies, University of Maryland. United States.

Labor Certification on the Blockchain

There are many risks in the steps along the supply chain that bring food from farm to table. For the consumer who buys the end product, for the companies that own the production processes, and for the workers who perform the labor required in fields and facilities.

Certification and regulation frameworks that reduce risks for each party while increasing transparency make a major impact on food production and consumption by protecting consumers, workers, and companies. Those frameworks today can be drastically improved using blockchain technology and companies are looking for ways to implement distributed ledgers in order to create new value.

The following case study analyzes a real-world example of designing a blockchain application that improves the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data for the certification for food growers, processors, sellers, and, ultimately, consumers. The research is designed to inform key challenges and opportunities in using blockchain for regulation in the supply chain and regulatory frameworks more broadly.

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Eric Martin Scott

Public Law & Cyber Security, University of Alabama

Kleros and the Alabama Arbitration Act

This article will focus on the Kleros platform as it currently has the most detailed
published research available regarding blockchain based arbitration. Moreover, the Kleros platform seeks to develop a smart contract standard that Kleros expects “all smart contracts to use when they need to use arbitration.” This includes the way in which smart contracts are built, the way in which evidence is presented, and for all arbitrators to eventually be “plug and play” as desired by the parties.

Further, this article will discuss generally the arbitration laws in the United States and how the state of Alabama’s laws favoring commercial arbitration, could make the state a favorable locus for blockchain based arbitration. As one researcher into blockchain and U.S. state law suggests, “Like any contract, smart contracts should contain a dispute resolution clause, which specifies, among other things, choice of law and choice of jurisdiction.”10 Thus, Alabama, once referred to sarcastically as the “Arbitration State”11 could earnestly find itself as the “Blockchain Arbitration State.”

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Mauricio Duarte

Attorney and Notary, Specialist in Energy Infrastructure Investment Law. Guatemala.

Mauricio Duarte is an attorney and notary graduated with honors from Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Before obtaining his LL.M. in US Law at the University of St. Thomas (Minesotta), he worked at one of Guatemala's most prestigious law firms, QIL + 4 Abogados, where he specialized in energy infrastructure investment, corporate governance, international investment, and commercial arbitrations.

During his time in the Fellowship, Mauricio will research the application of Kleros in the renewable energy industry, in particular disputes revolving around the distribution and trading of produced surplus energy.