Comment by bilekas
1 day ago
I would be less comfortable with my land registry tied to a blockchain, as soon as I lose it (who is much more likely to) it's impossible to get my land back.
What's wrong with paper records backup up a digital record and audit trail. This all seems like a solution for a non-problem to me.
A blockchain isn't stopping you from doing any of those things, if anything it's facilitating different backup models by different parties. A paper record is so much more susceptible to various kinds of risks, adversarial and otherwise. I recommend to look past the hype or hate at the technology. A blockchain is the logical extreme of where you end up when you think about how to sync backups, and you recognize that it comes with certain mathematical limitations on how much disruption you can handle.
> A blockchain is the logical extreme of where you end up when you think about how to sync backups
It's not. Blockchains are only eventually consistent among nodes. They're designed for synced backups among adversarial peers.
There's no reason for a government agency to use one internally. There are better ways to sync backups when the people with access to make updates are also authorized to do so.
Internally, you don't need it, agreed. But that is centralization risk exemplified in this incident. Which isn't necessary. Every notary could be a node. It would be a lot more resilient, and it would look a lot like a blockchain (not necessarily with a crypto currency though) if you do it properly.
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