Blockchain Evidence in Court: A Cross-Jurisdictional Study of Admissibility and Weight
Marco Barulli and Paul Reboh
Cite
Barulli, M., & Reboh, P. (2026). Blockchain Evidence in Court: A Cross-Jurisdictional Study of Admissibility and Weight (Version 3) [Working paper]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23054309
@techreport{barulli2026blockchain,
title = {Blockchain Evidence in Court: A Cross-Jurisdictional Study of Admissibility and Weight},
author = {Barulli, Marco and Reboh, Paul},
year = {2026},
institution = {IP LEVERAGED SAS},
type = {Working paper},
note = {Version 3},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23054309},
url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23054309}
}Abstract
Courts across the common-law and civil-law worlds no longer ask whether a blockchain-anchored record is admissible, but how much weight it deserves. This paper surveys the admissibility and probative value of blockchain records and electronic timestamps in more than thirty jurisdictions, drawing on primary law, case law and literature in more than a dozen languages.
It sets out the four questions every court asks (admissibility, integrity, time and attribution), the three procedural traditions that shape the answer, and the international instruments that make electronic records admissible, including UNCITRAL's model laws, eIDAS and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2531 on qualified electronic ledgers. It analyses the leading decisions and rules, among them China's Online Litigation Rules, the Tribunal judiciaire de Marseille's 2025 anteriority ruling, OLG Jena on screenshots, the Sterlingov Daubert rulings affirmed by the D.C. Circuit in 2026, and the Supreme Court of India's 2026 order on the hash-value certificate.
The paper distinguishes what a ledger proves (existence, integrity and time under the control of a key) from what it does not (authorship, identity and authenticity before anchoring), and compares public, consortium and private ledgers. It concludes with eight technology-neutral design criteria for digital evidence that holds across forums.
Changes in this version
- EU: Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2531 on qualified electronic ledgers, applicable since January 2026, and its consequences for public blockchains; EDPB Guidelines 02/2025 on blockchain.
- France: the Marseille decision (AZ Factory v. Valeria Moda) set out in full, including the bailiff's verification that corroborated the blockchain record.
- Germany: OLG Jena (2018) on the probative value of screenshots. Italy: Article 8-ter of Law 12/2019 read with Civil Code Article 2712.
- China: the pre-chain authenticity rule (Online Litigation Rules Art 18), the 2022 SPC Opinions, and divergent court treatment of trusted timestamps.
- United States: the D.C. Circuit's affirmance in Sterlingov (September 2026); status of draft FRE 901(c) and proposed FRE 707.
- India: Pune Bar Association v. Union of India (May 2026) on the hash-value certificate.
- New in §12: public, consortium and private ledgers compared, with the statutory definitions and decisions that separate them.
- New §13: eight design criteria for court-grade digital evidence, each tied to the authority that motivates it.