The State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted the bill on digital rights in the third and final reading. This bill is supposed to introduce the concept of "digital right" into the Civil code of Russia and adjust the definition of smart contracts as well as a number of other definitions in the digital economy, including big data.

The new provisions of the law will enter into force on October 1, 2019. The term "digital right" is a legal analogue of the term "token". Due to the consolidation of the concept "digital right" in the Civil code, transactions will be protected when citizens and legal entities deal with the digital rights.

The principles of entering into contracts with digital rights are now established by law. Transactions made remotely by electronic or other technical means are proposed to be equated to a written form of contracts. These transactions have two requirements: the given technical means must be reproduced in tangible media; only those methods must be used that allow to identify the person who expressed the will.

The bill legalizes smart contracts and clarifies the fields of their use. For instance, it is not allowed to make a will using electronic or other technical means. The law resolves the issue of legalization in terms of collection and processing the significant amounts of anonymised information (big data).

In comparison with its original version, the chapter on "digital money" (cryptocurrencies) was excluded. "The amendments adopted in the Civil code do not contain definitions of digital money and smart contracts which are the key concepts for the crypto economy".

Yuri Pripachkin, head of the Russian Association of Crypto Industry and Blockchain, expressed his attitude to the adopted law. He urged the government that the participants of the decentralized market would not be able to work effectively within the Russian jurisdiction and would be forced to build their business in other countries due to the lack of clear definitions.