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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 lar

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.

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.