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Real estate deed ownership database - immutable distributed database spread around regional government offices. Speaking from my experience, the records are be

Real estate deed ownership database - immutable distributed database spread around regional government offices. Speaking from my experience, the records are being kept horribly over here, there were many projects to cenralize it but the original data is in such sorry state that it is basically impossible. Not to mention that it is very profitable for some that it is in such sorry state. They key idea is that you are unable to modify who owned what in the past, only change ownership in the current time, and the records, as per current system, are spread all over the local government entities. Same thing for financial ledgers - immutable record of transactions to which only banks can write to. I think that stocks are too volatile, but it is a such shock to me that you can only find out who actually owns a specific stock at T-2 .. In both cases there is no competition for who solves the next block faster, so costs of computation costs can be kept low. I'm more attached to immutability of such databases, than distributed trust, but one cannot exist without other in blockchain.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> you are unable to modify who owned what in the past So we throw out the entire body of law around fraudulent conveyance?
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Yes. Many proponents of blockchain speak with glee at how doing so will "cut lawyers out of the process". Lol. In every generation there is someone who thinks they can do away with the legal profession. Lawyers have walked the earth for thousands of years and shall continue to do so for many more.
  - tehlike 6y ago
    This very much like the back and forth we have on microservices vs monolith. Every generation likes the cool thing only to revert back to mean. People will go decentralized, then centralized, then decentralized, etc. We built centralized government bodies for a reason. The aspect of blockchain + bitcoin that's pretty appealing is limited supply & formulated inflation & cryptographic guarantees. Applying this to all other domains is stretching it a bit.
- Xelbair 6y ago
  In local laws over here only the current state of deed book matters. Whatever gets there, input by trusted and certified notary, IS the current legal standard of law. No exceptions. If legal proceeding happens that wants to restore ownership, a new state is written into that book - it does not return to the previous state. if fraud happens you can clearly see who, when did it, and can do another change restoring it to proper current state. While also recording who fixed that mistake.
  - MockObject 6y ago
    > In local laws over here Pet peeve: posts in a global forum that mention "here". Which one did you mean?
    - Xelbair 6y ago
      Eastern european country, as i'm proposing a solution for problems that happen over here. We, thankfully, do not operate under Common Law.
DebtDeflation 6y ago
>the original data is in such sorry state How does Blockchain solve that problem? It's the same issue with using it for supply chain verification, it's dependent upon the point of initial data entry. The Central American farmer enters the tomatoes that he just received via container ship from China into the Blockchain application as "organically grown domestic produce" and from that point forward consumers can rest assured about the tomatoes' authenticity and provenance. Or not.
- simias 6y ago
  Right, authority-less blockchain is only intrinsically trustworthy for purely digital goods. If you want to track software licenses it might work (although 99% of the time a centralized solution will be simpler and vastly more efficient). And this immutability can arguably be a detriment. Laws and rules are messy and can be exploited, not having any recourse if you get scammed is not necessarily a huge pro. The whole idea that you could import all the rules, laws and regulations of the real world into a computer program without any bug or unforeseen issue is probably one of the most ridiculous aspect of that whole blockchain industry. Especially since we already have a fairly consequential list of "smart contracts" that have been exploited in the wild despite being fairly basic compared to IRL regulations. "Oh you lost your house because somebody found a weird edge case between two smart contracts that let them buy it for $1? Ah man, that sucks, but then THE CODE IS LAW so... Tough luck. Maybe try buying DOGE coins? I hear it's gonna moon soon. They used rocket emojis, so you know it's serious."
  - mason55 6y ago
    > Laws and rules are messy and can be exploited, not having any recourse if you get scammed is not necessarily a huge pro. Yes, many times things like T+2 settlements on trades or taking three days for a transfer to fully clear are a feature, not a bug. You start with Bitcoin being like cash, where once it's gone it's gone, unless a court can find the person and get it back. Then you don't want grandma to get scammed, so you build bank-like entities on top of the blockchain who re-create the three day window for transfers. In theory you could have different entities that have different settlement times as a tradeoff, but the modern system could do that now. The reason they don't is you need both parties to have the same rules or else your bank will get bogged down trying to figure out the rules of every other bank. Maybe you add an instant, non-revocable transfer like a SWIFT equivalent to go along with your 3-day ACH equivalent and, congrats, you've recreated the modern banking system.
hertzrat 6y ago
It’s only immutable if you get the whole world burning energy 24/7 to avoid a 51% attack. That solution is a little bit unreasonable, isn’t it? Apparently there has already been 51% attacks: https://btcmanager.com/privacy-coin-firo-51-attack/ https://btcmanager.com/privacy-coin-firo-51-attack/
- kindofajsdev 6y ago
  Isn't that why some coins are moving to proof of stake instead of proof of work? Solves the energy crisis. Idk if proof of stake prevents 51% attacks though.
  - madmax96 6y ago
    Proof of stake doesn't prevent 51% attacks. It eliminates the incentive. If an attacker controls 51% of coins, why would they attack the network? That would be attacking their own wealth.
    - Jasper_ 6y ago
      Not if they can attack the network without anybody knowing. If an attacker secretly controls 51% of the coins (by, say, having three separate entities that each control 15-20%) and can manipulate the market in their favor by rejecting transactions that would hurt them, that's a big incentive.
  - thesz 6y ago
    Proof of stake does not offer any resistance to Cybil attack or (part time) collusion of stake holders. In the case of such attacks the victims will find themselves in a situation that can be described as "shadow ban" - their transactions are not accepted or accepted too late, etc.
- Xelbair 6y ago
  If you read closely i'm proposing government use only, where each governing body participating in the system has access to it. You can keep compute systems down - i'm more interested in immutability and distributed nature than the trust issue of blockchain.
darkerside 6y ago
If you were rebuilding government from scratch as a decentralized entity, then sure. But all the living spaces on earth already have a jurisdiction, and they're not looking to disrupt themselves.
dnautics 6y ago
that's not a blockchain though. That's just a linked list or (low tx/sec) timeseries database with a hash.
nradov 6y ago
There's no valid reason to claim that stocks in general are too volatile. Or you could equally say that stocks aren't volatile enough. What's the optimal level of volatility? Reducing stock settlement times below 2 days wouldn't impact volatility. Those are orthogonal issues. And current blockchain technology isn't scalable enough to handle even a fraction of stock transactions.
- Xelbair 6y ago
  I'm talking about how fast the ownership of stocks change, not the volatility of a specific stock - hence it was about scalability only.
poulsbohemian 6y ago
>Real estate deed ownership database Real estate broker and former software developer here... I recall having this conversation with an investor type about three years ago. We could find no scenario where Blockchain was a meaningful improvement over a generic database. Same goes for every asset management scenario I've discussed with similar people over the years. This is not to say there aren't tons of opportunities to fix many of these real-world problems, just that Blockchain doesn't appear to add anything but does add to the complexity of the solution.
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
A block-chain deed database would be completely useless. The deeds that matter are the ones stored by the people who will send around men with guns to kick you out if your name isn't on the deed that they have.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> you are unable to modify who owned what in the past So we throw out the entire body of law around fraudulent conveyance?

sandworm101 6y ago
Yes. Many proponents of blockchain speak with glee at how doing so will "cut lawyers out of the process". Lol. In every generation there is someone who thinks they can do away with the legal profession. Lawyers have walked the earth for thousands of years and shall continue to do so for many more.
- tehlike 6y ago
  This very much like the back and forth we have on microservices vs monolith. Every generation likes the cool thing only to revert back to mean. People will go decentralized, then centralized, then decentralized, etc. We built centralized government bodies for a reason. The aspect of blockchain + bitcoin that's pretty appealing is limited supply & formulated inflation & cryptographic guarantees. Applying this to all other domains is stretching it a bit.
Xelbair 6y ago
In local laws over here only the current state of deed book matters. Whatever gets there, input by trusted and certified notary, IS the current legal standard of law. No exceptions. If legal proceeding happens that wants to restore ownership, a new state is written into that book - it does not return to the previous state. if fraud happens you can clearly see who, when did it, and can do another change restoring it to proper current state. While also recording who fixed that mistake.
- MockObject 6y ago
  > In local laws over here Pet peeve: posts in a global forum that mention "here". Which one did you mean?
  - Xelbair 6y ago
    Eastern european country, as i'm proposing a solution for problems that happen over here. We, thankfully, do not operate under Common Law.

DebtDeflation 6y ago

>the original data is in such sorry state How does Blockchain solve that problem? It's the same issue with using it for supply chain verification, it's dependent upon the point of initial data entry. The Central American farmer enters the tomatoes that he just received via container ship from China into the Blockchain application as "organically grown domestic produce" and from that point forward consumers can rest assured about the tomatoes' authenticity and provenance. Or not.

simias 6y ago
Right, authority-less blockchain is only intrinsically trustworthy for purely digital goods. If you want to track software licenses it might work (although 99% of the time a centralized solution will be simpler and vastly more efficient). And this immutability can arguably be a detriment. Laws and rules are messy and can be exploited, not having any recourse if you get scammed is not necessarily a huge pro. The whole idea that you could import all the rules, laws and regulations of the real world into a computer program without any bug or unforeseen issue is probably one of the most ridiculous aspect of that whole blockchain industry. Especially since we already have a fairly consequential list of "smart contracts" that have been exploited in the wild despite being fairly basic compared to IRL regulations. "Oh you lost your house because somebody found a weird edge case between two smart contracts that let them buy it for $1? Ah man, that sucks, but then THE CODE IS LAW so... Tough luck. Maybe try buying DOGE coins? I hear it's gonna moon soon. They used rocket emojis, so you know it's serious."
- mason55 6y ago
  > Laws and rules are messy and can be exploited, not having any recourse if you get scammed is not necessarily a huge pro. Yes, many times things like T+2 settlements on trades or taking three days for a transfer to fully clear are a feature, not a bug. You start with Bitcoin being like cash, where once it's gone it's gone, unless a court can find the person and get it back. Then you don't want grandma to get scammed, so you build bank-like entities on top of the blockchain who re-create the three day window for transfers. In theory you could have different entities that have different settlement times as a tradeoff, but the modern system could do that now. The reason they don't is you need both parties to have the same rules or else your bank will get bogged down trying to figure out the rules of every other bank. Maybe you add an instant, non-revocable transfer like a SWIFT equivalent to go along with your 3-day ACH equivalent and, congrats, you've recreated the modern banking system.

hertzrat 6y ago

It’s only immutable if you get the whole world burning energy 24/7 to avoid a 51% attack. That solution is a little bit unreasonable, isn’t it? Apparently there has already been 51% attacks: https://btcmanager.com/privacy-coin-firo-51-attack/ https://btcmanager.com/privacy-coin-firo-51-attack/

kindofajsdev 6y ago
Isn't that why some coins are moving to proof of stake instead of proof of work? Solves the energy crisis. Idk if proof of stake prevents 51% attacks though.
- madmax96 6y ago
  Proof of stake doesn't prevent 51% attacks. It eliminates the incentive. If an attacker controls 51% of coins, why would they attack the network? That would be attacking their own wealth.
  - Jasper_ 6y ago
    Not if they can attack the network without anybody knowing. If an attacker secretly controls 51% of the coins (by, say, having three separate entities that each control 15-20%) and can manipulate the market in their favor by rejecting transactions that would hurt them, that's a big incentive.
- thesz 6y ago
  Proof of stake does not offer any resistance to Cybil attack or (part time) collusion of stake holders. In the case of such attacks the victims will find themselves in a situation that can be described as "shadow ban" - their transactions are not accepted or accepted too late, etc.
Xelbair 6y ago
If you read closely i'm proposing government use only, where each governing body participating in the system has access to it. You can keep compute systems down - i'm more interested in immutability and distributed nature than the trust issue of blockchain.

darkerside 6y ago

If you were rebuilding government from scratch as a decentralized entity, then sure. But all the living spaces on earth already have a jurisdiction, and they're not looking to disrupt themselves.

dnautics 6y ago

that's not a blockchain though. That's just a linked list or (low tx/sec) timeseries database with a hash.

nradov 6y ago

There's no valid reason to claim that stocks in general are too volatile. Or you could equally say that stocks aren't volatile enough. What's the optimal level of volatility? Reducing stock settlement times below 2 days wouldn't impact volatility. Those are orthogonal issues. And current blockchain technology isn't scalable enough to handle even a fraction of stock transactions.

Xelbair 6y ago
I'm talking about how fast the ownership of stocks change, not the volatility of a specific stock - hence it was about scalability only.

poulsbohemian 6y ago

>Real estate deed ownership database Real estate broker and former software developer here... I recall having this conversation with an investor type about three years ago. We could find no scenario where Blockchain was a meaningful improvement over a generic database. Same goes for every asset management scenario I've discussed with similar people over the years. This is not to say there aren't tons of opportunities to fix many of these real-world problems, just that Blockchain doesn't appear to add anything but does add to the complexity of the solution.

TheCoelacanth 6y ago

A block-chain deed database would be completely useless. The deeds that matter are the ones stored by the people who will send around men with guns to kick you out if your name isn't on the deed that they have.