Blockchain Governance Is Now a Legal Problem

Stanford’s new report says blockchain’s real fight is governance, liability, and regulation, not decentralization alone.

Blockchain keeps showing up in more places than crypto trading. Stanford’s new report, published on May 1, 2026, argues that the hard problem is now legal: who controls these systems, who is accountable when they fail, and how regulators should respond.

The report, Balancing Code and Law: Governance and Policy Challenges of Blockchain, comes from Florence G’sell at Stanford’s