Delaware Judge Urges Investors to Protect Votes on the Blockchain
A Delaware judge is urging institutional investors to use the blockchain as a way of protecting their voting rights, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Last month, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster, presented a speech at the Council of Institutional Investors advising shareholders that the blockchain could help to remove the middleman when it comes to how shares are held and voted. According to Laster, the current system is outdated and too complex making it difficult to determine who actually owns a share and how it’s used in corporate decision making. At present,....
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A judge for the Delaware Chancery Court has advocated for blockchain-based proxy voting as a means to put more power in the hands of shareholders. Chancery Court Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster spoke late last month during a meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors, a nonprofit organization dedicated to institutional investment issues. In his speech, Laster took aim at the business ecosystem for proxy voting – services that enable shareholders to cast votes on corporate decisions – arguing that “the current system works poorly and harms stockholders”. He argued that issues with....
In a highly symbolical moment indicating the realization across the world of blockchain’s potential to create more equitable and efficient trading relations, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster told the Council of Institutional Investors to “start a takeover.” “I want you, the institutional stockholders of America, to take back the voting and stockholding infrastructure of the U.S. securities markets.” – said the Delaware judge. After giving a scathing critique of the current stockholding infrastructure over which he presides in adjudicating cases, Laster stated that the blockchain allows for....
Delaware to amend its corporate laws to allow implementation of blockchain technology for tracking stocks. Delaware, one of the hottest jurisdictions for incorporating companies, and the home to some of the leading corporates plans to streamline corporate governance by promoting blockchain adoption. According to a regional media outlet, the Delaware General Assembly could soon make necessary amendments to the state’s corporate law, facilitating the inclusion of distributed ledger technology for keeping track of stock owners. The plan to promote the adoption of blockchain technology among....
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A blockchain voting project netted $10,000 in a recent contest organized by cybersecurity firm Kapersky Labs. Dubbed Votebook, the proposed system connects voting machines via a private blockchain run by, say, a local elections authority. The Votebook concept would enable constituents to check that their votes were actually counted, according to the team, which hails from New York University. As the team behind the project explained in their pitch, hosted on the website of The Economist: “Votebook not only satisfies the requirements of an acceptable voting system, it is also realistically....