Stanford Security Lunch

Abstract: Blockchain systems, like all complex digital infrastructures, are vulnerable to exploitation. Attackers may take advantage of flaws in smart contract logic, oracle design, or the economic incentives embedded directly into protocols. What makes these incidents uniquely challenging, however, is that the conduct involved may fully comply with the code itself. This raises a fundamental question: If an action is technically permitted by a protocol, can it nonetheless be illegal? This talk will explore this question through four major case studies: The DAO hack (2016), The Mango Markets exploit (2022), The Platypus case (France, 2023), The Peraire-Bueno prosecution involving MEV infrastructure (2025). Together, these cases expose deep tensions between blockchain’s “code is law” ethos and traditional legal concepts. We will examine how legal doctrine applies to code-based behavior and ask whether technical possibility should ever be equated with legal permissibility.

Bio: Florence G’sell is a visiting professor at Stanford University (Freeman Spogli Institute). She is a full professor of private law at the University of Lorraine (France), a member of the AI and Society Institute (ENS-PSL, France) and an affiliated researcher at the Digital Law Centre of Singapore Management University.