Since 2015, I am a Tenured Researcher at Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS), France, and a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman-Klein Center. Since 2017, I am also a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, and at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

My fields of interest focus on legal challenges raised by decentralized technologies, their potential to design new governance models and participatory decision-making, and the concept of governance-by-design.

I graduated from Bocconi University of Milan, with a Bachelor and Master in Economics & Management. I had a Master on Intellectual Property Law from the Queen Mary University of London, and a PhD from the Law Department of the European University Institute. During my graduate studies, I was a visiting scholar at Yonsei University in South Korea,  at the University of Berkeley in California and at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

I am a co-founder and Director of a non-profit organization (COALA), aimed at promoting interdisciplinary research on blockchain technology. This organization has acquired international recognition within the blockchain ecosystem and gathers today some of the most influential innovators and leaders in the space. Through COALA, I coordinate the Dynamic Coalition on Blockchain Technology of the United Nation Internet Governance Forum, and the W3C’s Blockchain community group. COALA has initiated the “Blockchain Workshops” series (10 international conferences and 15 internal workshops organized in prestigious universities around the world) and has coordinated the drafting of several reports on blockchain governance and regulation.

I am also contributing to other international organizations: I am the French Chapter lead of Creative Commons, and a member of the stakeholder board of the P2PFoundation, one of the key civil society organizations exploring the use of peer-to-peer technology for collaborative production.

From 2016 to 2018, I was as member of the Global Future Council on Blockchain Technologies at the World Economic Forum.

I have published many scientific papers on the legal aspects of blockchain technology. My monograph “Blockchain and the Law” published in 2018 by Harvard University Press (co-authored with Aaron Wright) is the first academic book on the topic.

Finally, I have a tendency to use art as a means to illustrate my research. I am the main instigator behind the Plantoid project: a blockchain-based life-form aimed at illustrating through artistic practices the legal challenges raised by blockchain technology.