Over the last decades domestic and international legal frameworks have successfully coalesced to limit corrupt behavior worldwide. However, despite their success, current regulatory tools are not sufficiently well-equipped to address corruption in modern economic settings. These mechanisms can often be too costly to implement, too cumbersome to induce compliance, politically manipulatable, and may disincentivize foreign investment and internal corporate monitoring efforts. To address such drawbacks, policymakers should consider the introduction of blockchain-based tools in developing future anti-corruption efforts. Blockchain can serve as a foundation for structures that can make it more attractive, easier and cost-efficient to monitor economic transactions, to effectuate necessary compliance measures, and to reduce opportunities for corruption to occur. Blockchain’s inherent advantages could help establish more transparent, widely trusted, and ultimately more democratic governance systems that are better aligned with modern economic and social relations. Public-private partnerships, along with multiparty cooperation between countries and international organizations, should encourage the adoption of blockchain-based tools, assuage concerns over their use, and ultimately lead to the design and implementation of more effective anti-corruption regulations.
