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Back to the point of this article: if someone steals my private key, do they now own my house? What about liens? Will I as the owner agree to let an unpaid con

by yojo 5y ago

Back to the point of this article: if someone steals my private key, do they now own my house? What about liens? Will I as the owner agree to let an unpaid contractor put a lien against my title? Or can they somehow do it without my consent? If so, how do you stop bad actors from putting liens on everything? The court is the authority on this. Title companies provide the valuable service of ensuring the state of the world matches what the seller claims. We don’t need blockchain for this, a regular DB is sufficient.

arberx 5y ago
There can be mechanisims for recovery. Social recovery wallets, multi-sign wallets, DAOs all can be part of the solution to loss of keys. The question really is: is this all necessary? And are inefficencies/issues/costs with current centralized gov systems worth replacing?
- yojo 5y ago
  There are undoubtedly technical solutions for resyncing the block chain to reality. But once you need them, you’re effectively saying the block chain is not the source of truth, and it’s governed by the same inefficient system that managed titles before. At this point it is effectively a complicated solution to a simple problem - record all bits about property ownership in a publicly available place. It is unclear to me what properties the block chain has that makes it superior to a database with backups. So I would argue that it’s not necessary and makes a complicated system more complicated, not less so. What would really help is digitization of the records, which is a political and bureaucratic problem more than a technical one. There are undoubtedly better/worse implementations, but a block chain solution feels like it’s probably on the “worse” end of the spectrum.
tshaddox 5y ago
> Back to the point of this article: if someone steals my private key, do they now own my house? > We don’t need blockchain for this, a regular DB is sufficient. If someone makes you sign over your car title to them under duress, do they then own your car? In most jurisdictions (let's use the USA for now), of course not. Assuming you have reasonable access to fair treatment by the legal system, that transfer would not be considered valid, and in fact the whole act would likely be a very serious crime. This is true regardless of how the ownership is officially represented: whether a blockchain, or a government database, or a pink slip with names written on it, etc.
- yojo 5y ago
  If the block chain is not the source of truth, and an external body can enforce changes on it, how is it in any way better than a database under control of the state?
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Sufficiently powerful external bodies can always use force to do things regardless of what any particular database says. This isn't a problem with any particular type of database.
    - Analemma_ 5y ago
      Exactly, so what is gained by switching to blockchain if it can't solve this issue?
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        It's absurd to expect any software change to somehow physically prevent people from taking your things. This "vulnerability" isn't worth talking about when evaluating software.
        mdoms 5y ago
        So the eternal question remains, what problem is blockchain solving here?
        yongjik 5y ago
        ...Lack of blockchain adoption?
        yojo 5y ago
        It is almost impossible for someone to physically steal my house. Certainly improbable. And it would be easy to recover with the help of the police. It is by comparison easy for someone to steal crypto keys, or for them to be lost. If we add a solution that allows us to fix the stolen or lost keys issue, then we eliminate the primary values of the block chain, decentralized trust and immutability. So now we’re using a really complex database (potentially with POW energy use) for something that seems equally well solved by simpler tech. So why would we want to use the block chain for this?

by yojo 5y ago

arberx 5y ago

There can be mechanisims for recovery. Social recovery wallets, multi-sign wallets, DAOs all can be part of the solution to loss of keys. The question really is: is this all necessary? And are inefficencies/issues/costs with current centralized gov systems worth replacing?

yojo 5y ago
There are undoubtedly technical solutions for resyncing the block chain to reality. But once you need them, you’re effectively saying the block chain is not the source of truth, and it’s governed by the same inefficient system that managed titles before. At this point it is effectively a complicated solution to a simple problem - record all bits about property ownership in a publicly available place. It is unclear to me what properties the block chain has that makes it superior to a database with backups. So I would argue that it’s not necessary and makes a complicated system more complicated, not less so. What would really help is digitization of the records, which is a political and bureaucratic problem more than a technical one. There are undoubtedly better/worse implementations, but a block chain solution feels like it’s probably on the “worse” end of the spectrum.

tshaddox 5y ago

> Back to the point of this article: if someone steals my private key, do they now own my house? > We don’t need blockchain for this, a regular DB is sufficient. If someone makes you sign over your car title to them under duress, do they then own your car? In most jurisdictions (let's use the USA for now), of course not. Assuming you have reasonable access to fair treatment by the legal system, that transfer would not be considered valid, and in fact the whole act would likely be a very serious crime. This is true regardless of how the ownership is officially represented: whether a blockchain, or a government database, or a pink slip with names written on it, etc.

yojo 5y ago
If the block chain is not the source of truth, and an external body can enforce changes on it, how is it in any way better than a database under control of the state?
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Sufficiently powerful external bodies can always use force to do things regardless of what any particular database says. This isn't a problem with any particular type of database.
  - Analemma_ 5y ago
    Exactly, so what is gained by switching to blockchain if it can't solve this issue?
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      It's absurd to expect any software change to somehow physically prevent people from taking your things. This "vulnerability" isn't worth talking about when evaluating software.
      - mdoms 5y ago
        So the eternal question remains, what problem is blockchain solving here?
        yongjik 5y ago
        ...Lack of blockchain adoption?
      - yojo 5y ago
        It is almost impossible for someone to physically steal my house. Certainly improbable. And it would be easy to recover with the help of the police. It is by comparison easy for someone to steal crypto keys, or for them to be lost. If we add a solution that allows us to fix the stolen or lost keys issue, then we eliminate the primary values of the block chain, decentralized trust and immutability. So now we’re using a really complex database (potentially with POW energy use) for something that seems equally well solved by simpler tech. So why would we want to use the block chain for this?