Smart contracts and contracting's position in the Italian civil law: technology for the benefit of the individual contracting party in the perspective of a human-centred society

In an era characterised by a strong interaction between man and technology, the need to place man at the centre of society and to put technology at the advantage of the individual is evident. In particular, in the vision of the 5.0 society, as a society aiming to give shape and substance to a conception of a future in which technology and human values combine to raise the quality of life of each person and in which services and applications exchange data with the aim of pursuing social welfare and not a future controlled and monitored by artificial intelligence and robots, the phenomenon of wealth circulation also acquires a special significance. In this direction, the recovery of the centrality of man can take place in the area of contracting through the use, to the benefit of the individual, of the new technologies and new operational tools that are emerging. The reference is to the phenomena of blockchains, distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and smart contracts. The paper therefore analyses the instrument of smart contracts, which, due to the operational advantages they bring, could be a useful tool to give an impetus to the humanisation of legal transactions, albeit with some caution.