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The digital legal infrastructure company named Monax is launching a new platform—called “The Monax Platform” as coincidence would have it—that employs blockchain technology to allow users to track and automate contractual obligations in real-time.

“Through the use of cutting-edge technology, we are decentralizing business collaborations, which will allow global scale and a transformation in how contracting works in the digital age,” said Monax co-founder and CEO Casey Kuhlman in a press release.

Based out of Edinburgh, Scotland, Monax specializes in blockchain and smart contract technology. Kuhlman told Legaltech News that while companies have deployed management systems to help keep track of inventory or how many vacation days an employee has in the bank, contracts have been fuzzier proposition thanks to the limitations of paper and PDFs.

“Basically nobody knows where are we within our contracts, and when I say that I mean nobody understands what have we agreed to do and what has actually happened in the real world from the perspective of a contract,” Kuhlman said.

Monax's new platform is split into two components: the Monax Dealspace and the Monax Studio. Dealspace is where the parties involved with a contract can automate recurring tasks, track the status of obligations imposed by the agreement and coordinate approvals. The studio is a drag-and-drop environment where users can graphically create and visualize their obligations workflow.

“It gives us an ability not only to track where are we within our digital contracts, but it also gives us an ability to understand graphically, 'Here's a map of where we're going, and here are the driving directions to get to success in this relationship,'” Kuhlman said.

Both components were built on the back of The Agreements Network, a decentralized and open-source blockchain that Monax co-founded in 2018 that is designed for connecting and managing different workflows to streamline the collaborative process.

Touted among all of the bells and whistles of the new platform is the ability to “gain collaborative insight” into the relationships and parameters that govern a particular contract, such as the distribution of responsibilities. The system's environment is also adaptable to changing conditions within the agreement.

Kuhlman used the example of a typical sale of goods arrangement. Using the Monax platform, the receiver of goods might be sent an email that prompts them to approve or disapprove of a recent shipment via the click of a button. A signal would be sent back to the shipper via blockchain notifying them that the need to either remedy the situation or send an invoice.

“The ability to basically go right or left based upon a decision point and then have the workflow adapt to that is something fundamental that you can't really do with other solutions,” Kuhlman said.

A video posted to the Monax website provides a more detailed look at the platform's dashboard, which is divided between upcoming tasks in need of attention and a color-coded status wheel representing the total number of agreements that a given business entity has in circulation at any time. The colors correspond to various contract stages like “executed,” “formulated,” or “draft.”

A “top collaborators” tab can also rank an organization's business partners according to the number of contracts that are in place.

This story was updated from its original version with comments from Monax co-founder and CEO Casey Kuhlman.