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The rapid evolution of anonymous, autonomous, and distributed blockchain-based smart contracting creates friction and enforceability issues with existing legal and jurisdictional principles, calling the future governance of blockchain technology into question. The effective governance of blockchain technology and smart contracting is essential to ensuring its continuing evolution. Based on the mathematical principles underlying the disposition of blockchains, we propose and evaluate an alternative approach to the existing legal exercise of jurisdiction that is inherent in blockchain technology itself. We call this "distributed jurisdiction."

This contribution is not merely theoretical. Several Ethereum smart contracting crypto start-ups have demonstrated that anonymity can be perpetuated in blockchain technology, despite blockchains' eternal storage of information and their growing size working against anonymity. Start-up …