Ricardian contracts

Ricardian contracts were initially proposed in the paper, Financial Cryptography in 7 Layers, by Ian Grigg, in the late 1990s.

This paper is available at https://iang.org/papers/fc7.html.

Ricardian contracts were initially used in a bond trading and payment system called Ricardo. The fundamental idea behind this contract is to write a document that is understood and accepted by both a court of law and computer software. Ricardian contracts address the challenge of the issuance of value over the internet. A Ricardian contract identifies the issuer and captures all the terms and clauses of the contract in a document to make it acceptable as a legally binding contract.

A Ricardian contract is a document that has several of the following properties:

• It is a contract offered by an issuer to holders
• It is a valuable right held by holders and managed by the issuer
• It can be easily read by people (like a contract on paper)
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