Clyde Code

Helping clients benefit from smart contract and distributed ledger technologies.

Investment in smart contract and distributed ledger technology has been gathering pace. With over USD 1.5 billion invested in related projects in the last five years and industry consortiums making headway, focus has now turned to making these innovative ideas a reality. Clyde Code supports companies with smart contracts needs by providing fully integrated legal and technical advice to help them realise the growing potential of smart contracts and DLT.

Smart contracts are coded instructions that execute on the occurrence of an event. They often use DLT (for example blockchain) to record and enact the event. The Clyde Code legal team provides clients with smart contracts legal advice including on jurisdiction, regulation, terms and conditions, and enforcement. The team has an established reputation for being at the cutting edge of the legal sector’s involvement in smart contract and blockchain related technologies.

The Clyde Code technical team provides clients with smart contracts technical and programming advice. The team’s technical lead has access to an international team of software and IT engineers on a preferred supplier basis. With its combined legal and technical expertise, Clyde Code offers the full range of smart contract products and services, and bridges the gap between the legal and technical aspects of smart contracts implementation.

Unlike many other law firms, we are actively working on smart contract and related blockchain projects and transactions in a number of sectors, including:

• Advising a global agri-business on a proposed smart contract based insurance product
• Advising a global NGO in respect of a new technology enabled payment mechanism
• Advising insurers in respect of a proposed multinational agriculture micro-insurance product
• Considering the regulatory issues arising out of a decentralised pooled mutual operated by smart contracts
• Reviewing the potential for a new Insurance-Linked Securities regime to utilise DLT technology
• Providing regulatory and legal advice in relation to a number of Initial Coin Offerings, and related smart contract issues Smart contracts and blockchain together have the potential to radically change and simplify legal contracts and transactions. However, they are different to many other new technologies as they go to the nature of contractual and legal relationships. Thus, they represent not a new sector but another way of transacting in existing sectors. Combined legal and technical smart contracts advice is needed to ensure that workable agreements are reached and enforced. 

Connected contracts for parametric insurance

Clyde Code has developed a unique off-the-shelf connected parametric insurance contract for use by insurers. The contract – which consists of a data model, a logic code and a supporting natural language contract – covers the insurance of a solar energy producer against the risk of a shortfall in expected energy generation due to unfavourable weather. It automates the performance of the policy by receiving weather data, calculating potential claims obligations and producing an exportable report of insurance premiums or losses.

The contract was built in collaboration with smart legal contracts platform Clause and according to the specifications developed by the Accord Project, although it can be deployed on other systems and platforms. Clyde Code is using this model and approach to build other bespoke or off the shelf connected contracts for clients.