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Land registry systems, voting systems, asset transfer and settlement systems, tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), etc etc Essentia

Land registry systems, voting systems, asset transfer and settlement systems, tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), etc etc Essentially anything where trust and/or potential corruption might be an issue.

root_axis 9y ago
I've heard all these suggestions before and never had a practical example detailed to me. > Land registry systems This won't work. In most places a centralized system works fine, but in places where corruption is an issue the blockchain system is still useless because corrupt officials will just disregard whatever the blockchain says or use coercion to force you to give up the private keys. There are also many other impracticalities that preclude its use such as situation where keys are lost or stolen. What happens when the owner of the keys dies and the keys cannot be found? What happens when the state needs to force transfer of ownership from an unwilling party to another based on a judgement of the courts? Ultimately, the government is the final arbiter on any question of land ownership rights and any system that does not give the government overriding control of land ownership registrations is untenable. Of course, if the government has overriding control of the system, a blockchain is pointless. > voting systems This does not solve any problems that aren't already solved using a centralized system that employs cryptographic signatures. If we can trust a message signed by a citizen's private key, then all we need is a signed message with their vote; adding in a blockchain serves only to introduce needless complexity and resource waste. > asset transfer and settlement systems This is a solved problem. Asset transfer works fine today and actually functions better in a centralized system where the institutions can safeguard assets from unacceptable failure scenarios such as having hundreds of millions of dollars irrevocably wiped out or stolen. > tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), Pointless. Copyright violators will just ignore the blockchain and if you have to petition the government to enforce a copyright claim that lives on the blockchain then there's no benefit to using one since this already happens now with a centralized database of copyright claims. "Tokenization" of things like music IP is especially absurd considering the intractable layers of ambiguity in determining which aspects of a complex artistic work fall under the copyright. There isn't even a meaningful way to map ownership of a specific piece of art to a copyright holder's private key since artistic expression is not measured in discrete streams of bytes which can appear digitally distinct while looking or sounding practically identical. Blockchains just don't solve any of these problems.

root_axis 9y ago

I've heard all these suggestions before and never had a practical example detailed to me. > Land registry systems This won't work. In most places a centralized system works fine, but in places where corruption is an issue the blockchain system is still useless because corrupt officials will just disregard whatever the blockchain says or use coercion to force you to give up the private keys. There are also many other impracticalities that preclude its use such as situation where keys are lost or stolen. What happens when the owner of the keys dies and the keys cannot be found? What happens when the state needs to force transfer of ownership from an unwilling party to another based on a judgement of the courts? Ultimately, the government is the final arbiter on any question of land ownership rights and any system that does not give the government overriding control of land ownership registrations is untenable. Of course, if the government has overriding control of the system, a blockchain is pointless. > voting systems This does not solve any problems that aren't already solved using a centralized system that employs cryptographic signatures. If we can trust a message signed by a citizen's private key, then all we need is a signed message with their vote; adding in a blockchain serves only to introduce needless complexity and resource waste. > asset transfer and settlement systems This is a solved problem. Asset transfer works fine today and actually functions better in a centralized system where the institutions can safeguard assets from unacceptable failure scenarios such as having hundreds of millions of dollars irrevocably wiped out or stolen. > tokenisation of (certain) assets (e.g. music IP, royalty flows), Pointless. Copyright violators will just ignore the blockchain and if you have to petition the government to enforce a copyright claim that lives on the blockchain then there's no benefit to using one since this already happens now with a centralized database of copyright claims. "Tokenization" of things like music IP is especially absurd considering the intractable layers of ambiguity in determining which aspects of a complex artistic work fall under the copyright. There isn't even a meaningful way to map ownership of a specific piece of art to a copyright holder's private key since artistic expression is not measured in discrete streams of bytes which can appear digitally distinct while looking or sounding practically identical. Blockchains just don't solve any of these problems.