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Legal Risks of Blockchain

Blockchain has become broadly active and been widely used around the world, but most of those are used by individual or illegal organizations. Legitimate organizations should be aware of various legal risks that come together with using the open node method (in which anyone can become the node operator such as in Bitcoin or Ethereum mainnet).

Dealing with the Data Transfer Regulation Issues​

Certain countries, such as the EU and China, have laws regulating data transfer. Node servers are operated around the world in blockchain with open node methods including Ethereum, so that it requires careful attention not to write data that violates the data transfer regulations when using for the business.

Using the blockchain for business and not knowing what country its server is from, may unconsciously violate data transfer regulation in each country, in some cases, the EU and other countries may demand large amounts of compensation.

Node operators of Japan Open Chain, however, are limited to those inside Japan, and there is no risk of violating the data transfer regulation of each country.

Dealing with Data Loss Issues​

Data on open node blockchain is, in general, not legally protected. Therefore, in the event of the problem, there is no way to handle the issue since the blockchain has no operator. Even the operator exists, when it is uncertain who is the real operation entity, or having doubts about continuity, or uncommon and different from the ones generally used in the world, then it may increase the risks of legal, operational, technical security issues, thus the considerable risk of your data loss, loss of your assets, and loss of your valuable data.

As such, extremely careful consideration is needed in deciding which blockchain to use, to find out what kind of organization or community the chain is operated, whether the community is large enough to be audited, whether the community or the network has no risk of being hacked by malicious groups, whether the blockchain is controlled by a certain capital. Especially in the network using PoW or PoS, if the community holds 51% of power, what is called 51%Attack, there is a risk of being hacked, so extra caution is needed.

Ethereum is a very robust and secure blockchain because it operates on open source software with the world's largest community and thousands or tens of thousands of engineers. In the Ethereum mainnet, however, the transaction data loss worth of one part of the whole day may happen, or sudden specification updates far different from the existing ones may occur because of the spec difference bugs caused by lack of updates on the operator nodes.

While Japan Open Chain benefits from the Ethereum community, its operators are compliant with the Japanese law system so that your private information and assets are protected under the Japanese law by any chance. In cases such as large specification changes, we will provide sufficient notification to the users both in Japanese and English.