About

Kleros is a decentralized dispute resolution protocol built on Ethereum that uses crowdsourced jurors and economic incentives to settle disagreements. The system works as an autonomous third party that can arbitrate disputes in any kind of contract, from simple escrow transactions to complex commercial agreements.

When a dispute arises, a pool of jurors is randomly selected from token holders who have staked PNK (Kleros' native token) in the relevant court category. Jurors review the evidence submitted by both parties and vote on the outcome.

Those who vote with the majority earn arbitration fees and tokens, while those who vote against the majority lose a portion of their stake. This incentive structure is designed to encourage honest, well-reasoned voting.

Kleros was co-founded by Federico Ast, who holds a PhD and has written extensively on decentralized justice. The project was incubated by Thomson Reuters and received the European Union's Blockchains for Social Good award from the Horizon 2020 research programme.

In practice, Kleros has been used primarily for curated token lists and compliance verification, though its potential applications extend to e-commerce disputes, insurance claims, freelancing disagreements, and content moderation. A notable milestone came in 2020 when a Kleros decision was recognized and enforced in a Mexican court as part of a real estate leasing contract, demonstrating that blockchain-based dispute resolution can have real legal standing within existing judicial systems.

The platform is open and permissionless, meaning anyone can serve as a juror by staking tokens in the courts they feel qualified to judge. Stanford Law School has published a case study analyzing Kleros as a socio-legal experiment in decentralized justice.