Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company, has recently filed a patent application for administrative access of a blockchain system. The company is seeking this patent specifically to stop illegal transactions in smart contracts, according to the patent application.

The patent points out that when a user normally does something illegal, a court order can freeze their account, but this cannot easily be done with smart contracts. The patent argues there is a need for an administrative tool to directly intervene in these circumstances.

This tool would send, "operation instruction to a node in the blockchain network, causing the node in the blockchain network to invoke a smart contract corresponding to the designated account upon receiving the operation instruction, and to execute an operation according to the operation content on another account corresponding to the to-be-operated account information," according to the patent application.