Blockchain has made incredible advances since Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the Bitcoin whitepaper over 15 years ago. It already powers new forms of money through cryptocurrency, new ways of organizing companies through DAOs, and even new ways of owning property through the tokenization of real-world assets. But one sector that blockchain technology has been unable to penetrate is the practice of law – a $400 billion annual market in the U.S. alone.
However, the barriers to blockchain in the law are rapidly falling thanks to Jurat, a blockchain-enhancing technology that provides infrastructure for attorneys to practice law in Web3. At its core, Jurat allows blockchains to interact with courts and understand legal rulings without the need for intermediaries while maintaining decentralization. The technology has now been merged with the Bitcoin core software to create a new Bitcoin branch called JTC.
In this article, we will delve into the law practice tools that are available in the JTC ecosystem using the $JTC native coin.
The JTC Ecosystem: Legal Remedies for Cryptocurrency Users
Unique among cryptocurrencies, $JTC has the native ability to interact with official court systems and can, therefore, follow the law. This is a vital missing piece for the digital asset landscape, where users are often victimized by frauds and where exchanges and DeFi projects can be victimized by exploits costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Lawyers have been largely unable to help in these situations due to the absence of legal recourse on-chain, which is a shame for the legal industry and for the blockchain users who could benefit from their assistance.
However, for transactions in the JTC ecosystem, lawyers have powerful tools to help their clients. Whenever a dispute arises concerning $JTC, each user is able to hire an attorney and access a court. The process is simple, and the tools that an attorney needs are available through the Jurat UI on the Jurat website.
Depending upon the result that the client seeks in the case, the attorney can generate a Jurat ID, which will specify the relief that the attorney is asking for from the court. If the court agrees, the judge can include the ID in their written opinion and add it to the public docket. There, Jurat-enabled blockchain nodes can access the court’s order, and the miners can execute it on-chain.
The system is available not only for transitions by $JTC users but also for victims of prior illegal conduct on the $BTC blockchain, who can obtain an award for the $JTC coins corresponding to the $BTC they own. In other words, even if the user cannot recover $BTC from a hack or after losing a private key, the user can still get relief from a court denominated in $JTC.
Using JTC Ordinals to bring legal documents on-chain
While many attorneys are familiar with the term “NFT” (meaning a non-fungible token), most are just learning the term “ordinal,” which is a new form of NFT. The difference is that ordinals store unique data on the blockchain where it is immutable and undisputable, while NFTs are more like a map – telling the user where to go look for a piece of data, but they cannot guarantee that the data is true, accurate, or complete.
In law practice, certainty is everything. Consider an important document like a Last Will and Testament. It is vital to know that a document purporting to be a person’s Will is true and reliable because when that person dies, they will not be able to verify it. Ordinals are ideally suited for recording Wills because the document is inscribed into the ordinal and stored in its entirety on the blockchain. Once inscribed, the Will cannot be changed. Moreover, the document receives a timestamp when recorded into the block, indisputably establishing when the Will was created. This level of reliability is vital to the attorneys for the person’s estate and to the probate court, which must administer it to the family and other heirs.
NFTs, by contrast, only record a URL pointing to where the Will is stored. Usually, this is a location in the cloud that could be altered, replaced, or even accidentally deleted. It is neither as enduring as the token itself nor as reliable.
With $JTC, attorneys can mint Wills to the blockchain, providing their clients with the certainty that they seek. Client needs are the same for many other types of legally operative documents, like contracts, trusts, and ownership records. Even evidence that will be used at a trial can be minted to the JTC blockchain, offering a high degree of certainty for important legal proceedings.
Tokenization of real-world assets on the JTC Blockchain
The same features that make JTC ordinals a valuable solution for important legal documents are vital for tokenizing real-world assets, where authentication is necessary before a user can accept digital proof of ownership. JTC ordinals also supply a missing piece that has, thus far, eluded the tokenization industry – legal enforcement through the token.
Because JTC ordinals are inscribed within small subunits of the $JTC cryptocurrency (as tiny as 1/100,000,000 of a coin), they have the same court connection features. Thus if an asset is tokenized in a JTC ordinal – for example, a deed to a house, the court is available in case there is a need. If the token were stolen, the owner of the house can recover it. Likewise, a court order can transfer the token as needed if there is a legal dispute over the house in the real world, like foreclosing a mortgage.
Attorneys representing the asset owners can use JTC ordinals to digitize the transitions, while attorneys for a client with a dispute about the property can use Jurat tools to get the client relief from a court.
Helping to advance Legal3
Another way that attorneys can expand their practices with the JTC blockchain is by joining as a miner to help maintain the network. As a branch of Bitcoin, JTC uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which requires miners to process transactions. Licensed attorneys and law firms can request to join the mining community and earn JTC by creating blocks. This is a direct onboarding opportunity for attorneys wanting to develop blockchain technology experience in the Legal3 space.
Final Thoughts on Jurat’s On-Chain Legal Remedies for Attorneys
Blockchain technology has much to offer the legal profession, but due to the lack of legal compliance on blockchains, many attorneys and law firms have steered clear. JTC offers a blockchain where attorneys can onboard into Web3, evolve their law practice, and provide clients with the representation needed in Web3.
