3 ms·

With regards to the land markers. You could have a database at the government land authority. If markers in the field don't match up with records, the land aut

With regards to the land markers. You could have a database at the government land authority. If markers in the field don't match up with records, the land authority will ask police to correct the issue. If neither police nor land authority can be trusted to keep records and uphold the law, who is going to help you when a marker in the field doesn't match up to some distributed database? Big land owner will say "I don't know anything about that record in the sky. But look at this land marker on the ground. That's reality!" and with no police, who is going to help you?

aaron695 4y ago
jeremyjh 4y ago
Well suppose you nominally have the support of local government and police, but in practice they can bought cheaply, and suddenly the records match what the large landholder says instead of the markers you used to have. An immutable record would help solve this, but the point stands that it is not convincing that you need a blockchain or that it would solve the problem. How would you get local government to buy into it in the first place? If the national government is willing to force them, they could just manage a database with immutable records.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  An immutable record adds problems. What do you do when a river moves? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_... Who owns new land in Hawaii when the volcano meets the sea? https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/who-owns-the-land-created-by-the-kilauea-eruption/ https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/who-owns-the-land-created-... What happens when someone makes a surveying mistake and enters that permanently into the blockchain?
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    Sorry, by immutable records I do not mean that data is never changed, only that the records of such changes are immutable. The current state can always be computed by applying a log of changes, and when you make a change you'd be recording who made the change and why. Invalid changes could still be made, but you'd have a record to expedite appeal processes or litigation. This is why I don't think blockchain helps, because government authorities still have to be trusted to do their job when the facts are clear. So any kind of centralized cryptographic ledger (such as AWS QLDB) would work.
- jasonhansel 4y ago
  You don't even need a database with immutable records. You just need to make the contents of the database public, so that people can archive a copy and thus easily tell when the data has been altered.
pornel 4y ago
Imagine that the govt and the police actually treated the blockchain record as the infallible final source of truth, without any ifs and buts, without any traditional database on the side overriding what the blockchain says. If an attacker came to your house, kicked your ass until you give your private key, and then transferred the land to themselves on the blockchain — the land would be fully legally theirs now! It's a valid transaction, and the courts can't reverse it — there's one source of truth, and it's cryptographically unchangeable without the private key. That's what the blockchain says, and the police will evict you from your own house. (and then to prevent that you build enough off-chain trust systems, escrows, and side databases on top, and courts gain ability to dictate changes, and the actual blockchain becomes an irrelevant implementation detail).

aaron695 4y ago

jeremyjh 4y ago

Well suppose you nominally have the support of local government and police, but in practice they can bought cheaply, and suddenly the records match what the large landholder says instead of the markers you used to have. An immutable record would help solve this, but the point stands that it is not convincing that you need a blockchain or that it would solve the problem. How would you get local government to buy into it in the first place? If the national government is willing to force them, they could just manage a database with immutable records.

ceejayoz 4y ago
An immutable record adds problems. What do you do when a river moves? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_... Who owns new land in Hawaii when the volcano meets the sea? https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/who-owns-the-land-created-by-the-kilauea-eruption/ https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/who-owns-the-land-created-... What happens when someone makes a surveying mistake and enters that permanently into the blockchain?
- jeremyjh 4y ago
  Sorry, by immutable records I do not mean that data is never changed, only that the records of such changes are immutable. The current state can always be computed by applying a log of changes, and when you make a change you'd be recording who made the change and why. Invalid changes could still be made, but you'd have a record to expedite appeal processes or litigation. This is why I don't think blockchain helps, because government authorities still have to be trusted to do their job when the facts are clear. So any kind of centralized cryptographic ledger (such as AWS QLDB) would work.
jasonhansel 4y ago
You don't even need a database with immutable records. You just need to make the contents of the database public, so that people can archive a copy and thus easily tell when the data has been altered.

pornel 4y ago

Imagine that the govt and the police actually treated the blockchain record as the infallible final source of truth, without any ifs and buts, without any traditional database on the side overriding what the blockchain says. If an attacker came to your house, kicked your ass until you give your private key, and then transferred the land to themselves on the blockchain — the land would be fully legally theirs now! It's a valid transaction, and the courts can't reverse it — there's one source of truth, and it's cryptographically unchangeable without the private key. That's what the blockchain says, and the police will evict you from your own house. (and then to prevent that you build enough off-chain trust systems, escrows, and side databases on top, and courts gain ability to dictate changes, and the actual blockchain becomes an irrelevant implementation detail).