Comment by c7b
1 day ago
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.
You can have decentralization without blockchain. A defining feature of blockchain is that each node depends on the precise ordering of prior nodes which is a huge liability if you have network disruptions, etc, in a bureaucracy.
A git repo with cryptographically signed commits solves all the same problems without the headache.
Agreed that you don't need total ordering and hence consensus for pure asset transfers. But if you want to make any changes at all, like updating the list of nodes, you do. So in practice, you do need it. Every other proposal will fall short in a critical and avoidable way. Amending your git proposal with the necessary parts will turn it into a blockchain.
Disagree. We're talking real estate here. The time between transactions is months to years, not seconds to minutes. A git history will work fine. If there are racing transactions against the same piece of real estate, that's probably fraud, not something that should be automatically resolved.
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You can't do any real money/real estate transactions without canonical order (chain of events). that's why git analogy is not applicable here. You'd need "main" branch to be canonically finalized for each and every participant.
What? Sure you can. All you need is confidence in the current owner. You don't need the whole history. Can you imagine the poor store clerk trying to say "sorry sir I can't accept that $20 bill unless you can name every prior owner in order".
Not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse here but this isn't an issue with the cadence of real estate transactions. Real estate ledgers do not need to support HFT.
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If every notary is a node, you need some mechanism to ensure they perform only legitimate transactions and constantly monitor them. It is easier to just have a central authority.
You need that anyway. It's not technology that's stopping notaries from falsifying transactions in the current system.