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Polkadot Parachain Auctions Polkadot Crowdloans are used to increase projects’ bids in Polkadot Parachain auctions. Parachains are parallel blockchains that connect to the Polkadot Relay Chain. To connect to the Relay Chain, projects must lease a parachain slot by staking DOT tokens. Slots are offered in an auction process. Projects that stake the highest amount of DOT tokens win the opportunity to lease a slot for a defined period of time by leaving their DOTs in the staking module. Projects can acquire DOT with their own funds and stake them to bid, but there is also another option: the crowdloan.  What is a Polkadot Crowdloan and how does it work? A Polkadot Crowdloan is a mechanism that allows anyone to support a project’s parachain auction bid by locking DOT tokens in a crowdloan module. DOT tokens staked through crowdloans can be added to the project’s own staked DOTs to increase the total staking bid for the auction. Parachain auctions last one week. Crowdloan campaigns also have specified start and end dates which are defined by the project. If there is a crowdloan open when an auction period closes, the DOTS staked in that crowdloan can be applied as a bid for the auction. Once a crowdloan campaign period ends, if the project has not won an auction, the staked DOTS are returned to their owners. However, if the project’s stake is sufficiently high to win a slot during the campaign period, all the DOTs in the staking module will remain locked for the entire duration of the lease.  Why participate in a  Polkadot Crowdloan? Projects usually offer a direct reward for participation. The most common form of reward is a payment in project tokens, often made at the end of the staking period. Crowdloan participation is also a way to signal support for a project that you believe in. Crowdloans offer projects and their supporters a way to support the Polkadot ecosystem, win a parachain slot, and start a flywheel of reciprocal support. The individual supports the project and Polkadot and the project reciprocates with project tokens, encouraging and helping the individual to participate in the project.  How to participate in a Crowdloan? Some projects may offer dApps(decentralised applications) DAPPs or access to centralised exchange features for participating in crowdloans, but the least expensive way will usually be to use the Polkadot.js browser extension with the Polkadot.js UI wallet. You will also need to buy some DOT, which is easy to do with fiat or crypto on Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken and you can also buy DOT with USDC on Kucoin and Bybit. Once you have purchased DOTs and sent them to your Polkadot.js address, you can use the Polkadot.js wallet to participate in the crowdloan. Navigate from the top menu to Parachains, select Crowdloans from the second Menu Bar, then locate the project you want to support and click contribute. Your wallet can support multiple accounts, so you will need to specify the account you want to use. Then select an amount of DOT between the minimum and maximum shown on the screen. Make sure that subtracting your contribution from your total balance will leave at least 1.1 DOT in your account. You must maintain a minimum balance of 1 DOT and there will be a small transaction fee.  It is easy to install the Polkadot.js wallet (only available for Firefox and Chrome). Once you have one of those browsers set up, just download the extension here and then follow the prompts on the screen to add an account and store the key.

For a virtual society to exist, individual citizens must create and join it. Managing participation in society requires a way to identify individuals. In May 2022, Jur created the first NFT passports. Following the initial release, as of the day this post goes live, there are already more than 2,500 pre-constitutional citizens holding Jur NFT passports.  The current passports use dynamic NFT technology. “Dynamic” in this context means that data can be attached to the NFT and stored on the blockchain. Jur passports can already hold several types of data. Token-Gated Access Jur team believes Web3 societies will need to control participation, selecting particular citizens for particular activities for the sake of focus and efficiency. Jur NFT passports can hold stamps that can be used to grant access to virtual spaces (like Jur Discord channels) or actual physical areas. Ownership of other tokens or NFTs can also be used to control access to physical or virtual spaces. Examination of NFT stamps can reveal the spaces to which a citizen has access.  We can see already that Web3 societies will want to use this type of feature. NFTs and tokens on blockchains provide an extremely secure and auditable way to control access.  Contributor/Participation Rewards Citizens can do more with their passports than just enter token-gated channels and spaces. We can’t leave all of those pages empty! Jur provides tools to give citizens award badges in appreciation of citizens’ activity and service for completing quests and other tasks, and stickers can be used to memorialise event attendance. Citizen Profile Citizens can add a custom image to their passports and further personalise them by storing their Discord and Twitter credentials. The social credentials are accompanied by rules that the citizen can adjust to make this data publicly viewable, or not. Citizens can generate a QR code that can be used to refer new citizens and each referral is automatically counted and attributed to the referring citizen. In the future, passports could store all kinds of information. Reputation All citizens may in some sense be equal, but each citizen is also unique. To understand citizen participation and engagement both at the aggregate and individual level, Jur offers reputation data. Citizens benefit from recognition of their individual social contributions expressed with visible blockchain data. The Jur society as a whole benefits by using reputation data to measure the results of community growth and engagement efforts. And reputation data can be used to create incentives that go beyond social recognition, including creating automated $token rewards for reputation.  Reputation data can measure value creation such as Discord engagement, Github commits, bug bounties, and proposal contributions in Discourse. Reputation and reward data will be visible to all citizens in real time on an easy-to-use dashboard. Reputation analytics to measure growth and engagement campaign effectiveness will initially only be visible to Jur team.  Other projects are already implementing similar ideas. NationCred is a tool used by Nation3 for measuring value creation across Discord, GitHub and Discourse. NationCred points are given to active contributors, and each week a budget of 0.25 $NATION is split proportionally amongst these contributors, based on their NationCred score. Social participation data can motivate people by allowing everyone in the community to recognize their efforts. It can also help identify dormant citizens and measure the effectiveness of efforts to engage them.  Ultimately, Jur passports will be what Jur citizens want them to be. It is us up to us, collectively, to shape the future we will live in. Please join us. You can get your free pre-constitutional passport here and then join us on Discord to share your ideas and opinions. 

Overview of the Case WhatValueResultSale of vehicle ownership$10,000Contract done in less than 10 minutes for only $1.50 A story that was first seen on Hackermoon. History was made in early November 2019 when a separated Austrian couple, Stefan and Daniela, entered into a legal smart contract to transfer the ownership of a $10,000 Land Rover campervan using the Jur Beta Platform. The Jur Beta Platform enabled the ex-couple to create a legally binding contract through the blockchain, which made the transfer of vehicle ownership easier. This transaction is a clear example of how technology is taking the legal industry to new and greater heights by providing effective and efficient processes that benefit lawyers and clients alike. History of the case Stefan and Daniela bought the van back in 2017. After splitting, Daniela thought about buying Stefan's share of the vehicle to travel around Europe. Stefan, who has been a supporter of VeChain (the network Jur is in), learned about Jur earlier that year. He asked Daniela if they could use the Jur platform to demonstrate and experience the benefits of using smart contracts. Initially, Daniela thought it would be easy to do the sale via traditional means since they already know and trust each other. However, she was also curious and wanted to see a legal smart contract in action as she's thinking about using it for her work as a freelance designer. Using the platform, they simply accomplished some forms, set up some conditions on the transaction, and placed the money in escrow until the conditions were met. The sale contract was completed within 10 minutes and cost the two only $1.50. Jur is on the case Jur's beta platform represents the Jur team’s dedication to innovation and experimentation in the legal field. The effort aimed to test alternative ways legal contracts are made and used by businesses and professionals. Jur developed a smart contract-based escrow connected to an editor of legal clauses. In case of failure, a decentralized "jury" would have voted on the case.  The experiment was interesting and unique because two parties trusted a digital editor and an escrow. In case of dispute, a decentralized jury would have decided where the $10,000 worth of tokens would have gone. Should that have happened, the vote would have required no more than 24 hours. Aside from transactions such as the one in this case, Jur is using blockchain technology to define a new level of transparency and trustability in online dispute resolution processes. By using the UNCITRAL Model Law, Jur can make legally binding dispute resolution that is recognized in more than 160 countries, ensuring credible and quality arbitration procedures made affordable and faster.

Zug, 31 March 2021 Jur is pleased to announce the immediate release of the private beta version of the Open Justice Platform, the online dispute resolution platform for civil and commercial claims worldwide, in a legally-binding way. Anyone in the world can apply to get early access to the private beta program starting on the 31st of March 2021. Apply for the private beta of the Open Justice Platform. How does it work?  Offering an UNCITRAL-compliant arbitration procedure, the Open Justice Platform brings an efficient justice process to small-medium enterprises and professionals across 168 jurisdictions worldwide. The UNCITRAL model is an international legal framework that ensures the enforceability of the legal decisions. The activation of each procedure on Jur requires either the previous existence of a compatible arbitration clause or an arbitration agreement done between the parties. As a consequence, the result is binding on the parties being an arbitration award. Hence, the Open Justice Platform offers a fully digitised flow which helps arbitrators, lawyers and claimants with dispute resolution procedures anywhere in the world.  Small and medium-sized businesses are able to access a user-friendly arbitration process online. Arbitrators are selected according to their expertise and manage simplified arbitration procedures with an easy-to-use platform that saves precious time and effort. Digital arbitration chambers Operators in the legal sector can create "digital arbitration chambers", also called Hubs, attract dispute cases, and offer administered arbitration procedures that are cost-efficient and qualitative. The Jur expedited arbitration procedure is built to offer a complete arbitral procedure within a customizable range of 30 to 90 days. A key outcome is considerable savings in the management costs typical of arbitration and an extremely rapid procedure. Testing with partners will commence this month.  Depending on user configuration, the platform can manage disputes of up to USD 1M. Over time, Jur will integrate the infrastructure with other platforms and blockchain platforms. In a nutshell The platform supports every phase of the arbitration procedure from A to Z, including:  filing of the claim,  notifications of each action and relevant phase of the procedure  payment management definition of terms of reference case management for the arbitrator and for the hub presentation of pleading hearings booking, management and recording adoption of the award, scrutiny, approval and any corrections of the same The procedure is entirely online, integrating secure digital signatures and notifications via certified email. The platform allows, in case of need, the management of the award in physical copy and signed by hand. After testing in a separate environment, the platform will gradually introduce elements of decentralisation and blockchain to provide an enhanced level of transparency, quality and neutrality of the procedure. From micro-claims on blockchain to a user-friendly justice for small and medium businesses As per the new white paper, Jur first released a fully decentralised online dispute resolution (ODR) solution, concerning an innovative product in the blockchain field targeting micro-transactions. The previous product has been tested by a number of institutions, including the prestigious Radboud, Hull and IE universities.  The Online Justice Platform is part of an industry that sees the rise of digital courts as a way to support the backlog of courts. It is estimated that 70% of businesses experience disputes, and existing resolution methods are notoriously time-consuming and costly, often prohibitively so. The cost of dispute resolution for small-medium enterprises is £11.6Billion each year solely in the UK. Although technically arbitration, Jur does not compete with institutions currently operating in the traditional, non-online arbitration sector as well. In fact, arbitration procedures involve disputes of USD 10-50M value. Sometimes there can be smaller disputes in the order of USD1-5M. The primary target of Jur’s platform are disputes with values ranging from USD 10K-1M. There are platforms for supporting arbitration, but they only focus on optimising document management of the arbitral procedures. Future improvements Arbitration is a solution mainly used for high-value disputes, which are often international. Still, arbitration faces problems in terms of guaranteeing the quality of the arbitrators, neutrality of the procedure, and ensuring reputable outcomes.  These problems are now primarily solved thanks to the reputation of particular bodies or arbitrators that work as an element for generating trust. Outside a strict circle of entities and arbitrators, reputation is a concern.  These are currently existing problems which may only worsen in the case of a scaled digital version of arbitration for smaller disputes.  The impact of blockchain technology is inevitable everywhere where "trust" is needed. For this reason, smart-contract based procedures and models are required to solve the aforementioned problems in a better way. Our roadmap includes elements of decentralisation of part of the procedures in order to define a new standard of transparency, quality, and neutrality of digital justice in general and arbitration in particular. The approach with which Jur operates is to focus on product-market fit and, in parallel, separately test advanced blockchain-based features. Only after adequate testing will Jur integrate these features into the main product in order to preserve the legally binding character of the procedure itself. This is a new approach for blockchain startups which we believe is the most sustainable one and will bear the best results in the medium and long term. A brief history of Jur Jur has recently worked with LawtechUK (UK government’s backed initiative powered by Tech Nation to help transform the UK legal sector) and accelerated by MDR LAB's startup program. Jur has been funded in the past by VeChain Foundation, Fenbushi and Rascal Ventures. The new Open Justice Platform is part of Jur’s solutions to foster access to justice and help business and professionals work in a more reliable environment thanks to the digitalisation of traditional procedures. Jur has also released a cryptocurrency, the JUR token, and part of the future releases of the Open Justice Platform features and other products will be based on a blockchain infrastructure, to ensure better security, transparency and reliability.  Jur. World’s multi-jurisdictional dispute resolution platform for small-medium enterprises.  More: Main website - jur.io Private Beta Platform - Open Justice Jur MDR legal tech Acceleration program Jur LawtechUK SME feasibility study Social media -Twitter Social media - Linkedin Telegram community We have released the private beta of our online dispute resolution platform, the Open Justice. Learn more. [jurctabox url="https://go.jur.io/8c6c1" title="Easy Online JusticeWorldwide"]

Jur is pleased to be part of Tech Law Clinics 2021 edition, an annual moot court hosted by the prestigious Radboud University in The Netherlands. Tech Law Clinics is an international project, bringing law students in touch with cutting-edge technologies. The event is an occasion for law students to test their learnings on real-case scenarios, by acting as lawyers and judges in a case at the crossroads between private law and new technologies. Judges, law firms, and tech companies coach the teams and prepare them for the oral hearings. Jur’s dispute resolution platform, the Court Layer, was part of the environment used by Radboud and other universities to run fictional procedural orders of the moots.  The Court Layer is an online dispute resolution platform whose basic flow and mechanics host the Open Justice Platform that Jur is presently developing. About 80 students from four different universities have already been instructed in January on the dispute resolution procedures available in the Court Layer. Apart from Radboud, the universities involved are UCLy (Lyon, FR), Jagiellonian University (Krakow, PL),  University of Lodz (Lodz, PL). The sessions provided Jur with useful feedback on the dispute resolution flow engineered in the Court Layer and expanded its university network in France and Poland. The moot itself will take place in March.  A true elite of experts from the fields of legal tech and dispute resolution are participating in Tech Law Clinic. Radboud University will be represented by legal tech experts starting with Professor André Janssen, Assistant Professor Pietro Ortolani, and PhD candidate Tom J. Vennmanns will be present. On the other hand, Poland will have private law experts such as Monika Namyslowska, Director of the Department of European Private Law of the University of Lodz, and Piotr Tereszkiewicz, Associate Professor in Private Law of  Jagiellonski University. Topping it all off, the President of Chamber at the Administrative Court of Lyon, Marc Clément, will also be present representing France. The sessions conducted by Jur’s experts Luigi Cantisani, Legal Engineer, Shuchi Tyagi, Blockchain Developer and Michele D’Asaro, R&D covered: How and Why the Court Layer Works Phase 1 - Appointment of Arbitrator Phase 2 - Conduction of Arbitration Phase 3 - Peer Review System Quick showcase of the prototype Q&A with students According to Michele D’Asaro, “it is thrilling to share details and technicalities of our ODR with interested students.” For Luigi Cantisani, “years after participating as a student in moot courts, it was really exciting to be on the other side and be able to talk about digitising arbitration and implementing blockchain to students from different universities in Europe, based on a prototype that currently exists.” For Shuchi Tyagi, “it is a must to help law students experience the advancements offered by existing tech in the legal industry.” Jur’s participation in Tech Law Clinic is part of a long-lasting fortunate relationship with universities that tested a series of assumptions on its ODR platform.  After Tech Law Clinic, a Spring School will follow, in order to raise students’ awareness about the challenging legal implications posed by digital technologies.  Jur’s CEO, Alessandro Palombo will deliver a speech in the Spring School on decentralisation and justice and decentralised dispute resolution types. The event will happen on the morning of March 15, 2021, from 9:30 am to 11:50 am. Other than digitisation of dispute resolution, the event will cover topics on automation of government decision-making and competition law in digital markets, among others from speakers all around the world. We are developing the first multi-jurisdiction online dispute resolution platform, the Open Justice Platform. Learn more. [jurctabox url="https://go.jur.io/69b03" title="Easy Online JusticeWorld Wide"]

The Global Legal Blockchain Consortium (GLBC) is made up of large companies, law firms, software companies, and universities. GLBC’s primary aim is to develop standards governing the use of blockchain technology within the legal sector. This perfectly aligns with Jur’s objectives. Jur will join GLBC’s mission into organize, align, and educate stakeholders and industry professionals by creating standards governing the usage of blockchain technology, as well as to enhance security, privacy, productivity, and interoperability in the legal technology ecosystem. We are pleased to join one of the most interesting networks of innovators in the blockchain field. We are also excited to bring our contribution and be able to interact directly with other members, authoritative subjects on an international scale of the legal industry, and we look forward to receiving feedback from their community. CEO Alessandro Palombo. Jur’s participation within the Consortium will improve the reach of the project in terms of networking, education, and coordination with other industry participants. We are very pleased to welcome Jur to the Global Legal Blockchain Consortium. With over 300 participating organizations from more than 30 countries, the GLBC is leading the world’s legal industry to develop standards for the application of blockchain technology to the business of law. We look forward to Jur’s contribution to this important global effort.”The consortium now has over 270 members and is positioned to become the second largest blockchain consortium in the world across any industry — David Fisher, founder and board member of the GLBC commented David Fisher, founder and board member of the GLBC commented Jur is looking forward to collaborating with other innovative companies and individuals within the consortium as they focus on applying blockchain technology to the legal industry in a transparent and ethical manner.