Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has agreed to collaborate with a group of smart contract pioneers, including Barclays, to help create the first legally admissible ‘smart contract templates’.

The project, announced last week after a seminal meeting to discuss the plan in June, will see US-based financial tech company R3 spearhead an effort to develop what it hopes to be the equivalent of ‘industry gold standard’ templates for self-executing smart contracts that will exploit blockchain protocols, much as cryptocurrencies currently do. One initial area of use will be in relation to derivative trading, though its potential is far wider.

The group hopes to create repositories of smart contract templates for banks to download and use on a blockchain-type platform. These will then be used to execute trades, such as of derivatives, while improving the speed and security of such trades. It is also hoped the technology can remove the need for duplicated ‘off-chain’ ledgers across a bank’s offices that add to costs.

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