D6.1 ONTOCHAIN LEGAL / REGULATORY/ ETHICAL FRAMEWORK REPORT

ONTOCHAIN with a €6 M fund marries the Semantic Web with Blockchain to deliver a new software ecosystem for trusted, traceable and transparent ontological knowledge management.

This document presents in: o Section 1, specific human-rights related considerations towards an open and trusted Internet, the way how blockchain and smart contracts may actually help achieve such goals and the current regulatory framework. o Section 2, the gaps and conflicts of blockchain with the current framework. o Section 3, the potential impacts of ONTOCHAIN in terms of legal, ethical and societal aspects. This includes the ways how ONTOCHAIN will address these aspects all along its lifetime from the conceptualization, through the development and implementation as well as how it will contribute to a regulatory framework that reflects the fundamental values of diversity, plurality, democracy, equality, privacy and participation, and more broadly of human-rights. While some of the impacts considered concern the mid-term, which is beyond the lifetime of the project, we start our investigation by analysing the ONTOCHAIN short-term impacts, which have been summarized as follows:

o More credible content,

o Trustworthy transactions,

o Less centralized Internet,

o More inclusive Internet,

o Higher accountability, but no harm to anonymity.