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Comment by koonsolo | Hacker News Reader

History of second hand cars. (Repairs, accidents, maintenance, original options, paint, etc)

Currently, there are various parties that try to collect this info, but it's still full of holes. Plus, it's not a single party, even for the same area (eg EU). It gets more complicated for import/export.

Let's say you can "solve" this by having a single worldwide party that handles it. Do you really want such a monopoly? How much will you pay then to get the data?

Why not solve it with a ledger protocol?

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Since there currently is no such world-wide central party, why would a blockchain based solution be successful if the central party is (apparently) not?

In this specific example: are car dealers not participating because they don't trust the central party (case for blockchain) or because (lazy|not in their interest|inconvenient|...)? If the latter, then blockchain is not solving the actual problem.

You have a few parties now that collect this info and sell it. They are pretty successful. But as a buyer, you pay around $50, and the amount of info highly depends on the car and the party collecting it.

Right now, selling a car with an official maintenance book is always a benefit.

The real benefit is of course on the buyer side, who wants to verify what he is buying. So a car with an "official" log would be more valuable than without. When this is the case, it of course is better for the seller to have such a log.

I've been in this space for a short while, and I can definitely see it working.

But if the benefit is to the buyer, what incentive is there for anyone to enter information about the car's history into this blockchain? The person who owns the car isn't going to since it has a chance to reduce the value. And the company that's selling the info wouldn't start putting the info into the blockchain if it meant not being able to sell the data anymore.

An incentive to keep track of a car history is not really under discussion, since it's already happening right now. It's just really cumbersome right now and using very old tech (stamps in a books, etc). It's all made up of bits and pieces in every way.

When you buy a car right now, you expect it to come with at least a maintenance log. So that part is not an unknown.

Everything I mention already exists, it's just that it would be way easier and more complete when it would be handled by a 'standard protocol', ie a blockchain.

The same can be said for supply chain applications. But the second hand car industry has even more trust issues. Selling a car for $8000 and getting around $2000 extra because you can prove it has a proper history is not fantasy.

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