Digital disputes in the new legal reality

The article presents the authors’ view on the ongoing changes in the process of resolving new “digital” disputes. The authors assess the global practice of resolving digital disputes through arbitration, as well as the new form of digital rights protection - blockchain arbitration. They analyze regulation of the new procedure for the protection of digital rights in foreign practice. The authors believe that the developed foreign experience in resolving smart contracts is progressive and effective. The findings of the research can be outlined as follows: 1) for the first time, special rules for resolving digital disputes have been formulated; they have been developed in tight cooperation of lawyers and IT specialists; 2) disputes from smart contracts and blockchain were isolated into a separate form of rights protection; 3) special approaches to settling digital disputes at the stage of concluding smart contracts have been worked out; 4) the process of enhancing the procedure for resolving digital disputes is ongoing.