Couldn’t you say the same thing about the deed for a house?
A digital signature on a blockchain somewhere means nothing. How do you connect it with the real property? All of the other above things go some way to demonstrating a real connection to the property. A block chain does not. It's the same problem all blockchain solutions have: verifying the data at the point of entry to the block chain. If that is distributed and can not be trusted and verified remotely, then the existence of it in a block chain does not help.
I'll create PropertyBlock™ blockchain tomorrow and sign a block with your property address it over to myself. Worthless.
In the UK ownership is determined by a centralised land registry, and it must be registered if ownership is to change hands.
I'm not sold on the idea of a society without a central government, but I think the blockchain would help — or even enable — such an experiment.
Why should my band of armed thugs defer to what it says on the blockchain when they could instead hit you with a $5 wrench until you vacate the premises? https://xkcd.com/538
That feels a bit like saying that everyone will pitch in to stop mugging since we all carry physical cash in the same way. Maybe some civilians would intervene some of the time, but most will not risk their own bodily autonomy to defend another's property.
Issuing deeds and currency feels like the easy part of creating an agreed upon land registry or economy. I have a printer and know how to use SQLite, so nothing is stopping me from issuing my own physical currency or deeds today. I could even save paper and put them on my own personal blockchain. Convincing others to honor my currency or deeds sounds like the hard part.
The big thing about blockchains is that it allows people to all agree on a certain asset, without giving control of that asset to a single party. That is big news for anyone group wanting to live in a decentralized society, because it was one of the big problems.
If the local government and population is on your side, then you're fine.
If however you're a minority that's now deemed to be the enemy, then what supposedly belongs to you doesn't matter one bit. You can prove it as mathematically as you want, and you can have your neighbors on your side, but if a bigger army of goons shows up to take your stuff, they'll take it.
Ultimately this is an entirely political problem, and the blockchain will simply be completely ignored if things go to shit.
1. The developers. Somebody has to develop the software, and no matter what, this ends up being a very select group. If you have multiple groups, that's still not a lot of people and they'll have to cooperate somehow, which will result in some sort of system you're not involved with.
2. The miners. They group up into pools, and there's not that many of them that are big enough to matter.
Those two groups are the ones truly in control, and they're unelected, unaccountable, and have their own interests and agendas. If you think the banks are bad, then using a system made of a cabal distributed among the globe is hardly better.
Not in the way needed. You probably means git, which yes, allows for distributed development in that unlike previous systems it doesn't rely on a central server to exchange code.
But that doesn't mean people don't organize. I review people's code. People review mine. There's a list of people that's been agreed that are in control of a project. There's somebody who owns the domain, somebody who builds installers and makes releases, somebody who can say "no" to adding some code.
> Besides, as long as you speak the same protocol and use the same data, lots of people can roll out their own software.
Cryptocurrency is to a huge extent about the contents and management of this data. So nearly anything interesting will need cooperation. This means a small group getting together and figuring out how to change the protocol.
> But indeed, if a small enough percentage of the population control enough of the mining power things could collapse or at least degenerate back to a centralized society.
It already is centralized. The decentralization is more theory than practice.
> It is up to the members of a decentralized society to do their share of mining and be in the lookout for that not to happen.
They already failed, then. And no wonder, because 99.9% of the world is not even capable of having opinions here. Like if you show a random person a diff from the bitcoin git, they couldn't tell you what it does, let alone if it's a good or bad thing.
Even if you can, there's lock-in. If you already put a significant amount of effort and money into say, BTC, there's a cost to pulling out. So a lot of people will stick around even if things aren't exactly to their liking. This means there's a variety of changes that can be made for the worse with impunity on the part of the people in control.
> In order for a society to be decentralized and remain so, a big majority has to want that and hold it as one of their values.
Then it's an outright impossibility. It's the downfall of all libertarian schemes, the idea that everyone is passionate about governance. The vast majority of people want to lounge on the sofa, not to attend regular meetings with their neighbors to discuss a variety of issues like roads and sanitation.
Really, a democracy offers lots of ways of participating that the vast majority doesn't use. I don't see crypto changing that.
Except for when it breaks spectacularly every now and then.
Log4j and npm are bad enough as they are; who wants them in control of their home and money?
I may even be inclined to write down some rules and introduce a process to resolve conflicts without unnecessary damage to people and property.
(In this hypothetical scenario any form of land registry is only as valid as I say it is.)
Thereby reinventing the police
> I may even be inclined to write down some rules and introduce a process to resolve conflicts without unnecessary damage to people and property.
and the courts.
But maybe that was your point?
With a big enough population at least one government and a basic bureaucracy will be formed by someone.
A few people in the Blockchain space seem to think that technology can fundamentally change that.
I'm hopeful that when the Ponzi schemes fade away, we'll end up with a slightly more informed populace that has inadvertently received an introduction to political science, state-building, the origins of power, etc. Civics teachers take note! :)
What measures?
That's beside the point, though. I'm just noting that the possibility of have distributed deeds does make it possible to have some of the benefits of a centralized government: deeds and currency, without having one. That obviously only works if everyone in the society has come to the agreement that those things are valuable (just like in case of central governments too). But the point is just that you don't need a central person with all the power of issuing them.
No - it is the point.
> I'm just noting that the possibility of have distributed deeds does make it possible to have some of the benefits of a centralized government:
No, it doesn’t make anything possible unless there is an enforcement mechanism.
> No, it doesn’t make anything possible unless there is an enforcement mechanism.
I was trying to say it solves some of the problems, though I may have worded it awkwardly.
Blockchains do nothing at all to help anything about this situation. You could use a blockchain to manage ownership, but it would be far more efficient to use a central database of some kind that is held by whatever organization is responsible for enforcing property rights. In the end you are not going to care how your ownership is managed, you are only going to care that, if someone tries to violate your rights, the police will come and protect you. You need to trust that the enforcement will actually be applied, but what difference does it make if you use a blockchain?
That does require that most of the society agrees on some set of principles, but that's true of a centralized government too: most of the society has to agree they are legitimate. Going back to the decentralized society, everyone would agree that the blockchain determines ownership and currency. So, an organization that accept those is viewed as legitimate, one that doesn't is illegitimate. In that scenario, illegitimate organizations would be less stable than legitimate ones.
So, the existence of a system that allows people to all agree in things like currency and ownership without giving that power to one specific organization is a step forward into making decentralized societies possible. Is it sufficient? Most likely not.
Ah yes. Because it's a well-known fact that it's so easy for everyone to agree on something.
What, did you read Snow Crash as u- in stead of dystopian? What's to say they'll all agree?!?
The important point is what happens when two of those organisations disagree. What happens when I have Mr Chen's Robot Dog Republic saying I own a property -- because they have the blockchain to prove it -- and evicting you on my behalf, while you have the Cosa Nostra Pizza Delivery Co. saying you own it -- because they have the blockchain to prove that -- and evicting me on your behalf?
Civil war, that's what happens.
Decentralising stuff that everyone needs to agree on sucks.
Right, gotcha. But doesn't that work just as well with only a centralised government?
Once everyone agrees on anything, they can agree to have a centralised real estate ownership registry. Or a whole centralised government.
Your idea seems to be a thought experiment with weird priors. (Feels like that makes it rather meaningless.)
A Blockchain without the ability to initiate (and complete) such a process is worthless for questions of real world ownership.
Of course a Blockchain could be empowered to do that....through a law.
Gets even more interesting when people can buy puts and calls on someones liquidation via options dex.
A few of the ex-mil people in a DAO i'm apart of are really interested in this space growing for services like that, for obvious reasons.
How does the blockchain know that said access has been secured? Is it up to the original requestor to confirm this? If so, what if they're malicious and don't want to do so as to not give up their collateral? If it's down to a neutral third-party acting as an oracle, what prevents said third-party from being bribed/coerced/hacked into providing false data to the blockchain?
All of this can be solved by the law (eventually escalating to people allowed to use deadly force), but at that point why do you even need a blockchain?
Blockchain only works for assets that live entirely on the blockchain, such as cryptocurrencies. Anything that lives in the real-world is a bad use-case for blockchains as you now need a centralized, trusted third-party to sync the state of the blockchain with the state of the real world, at which point you may just do away with the blockchain entirely and let the third-party run a good old database.
Auger[0] has something like this:
"Reputation (REP) and (REPv2) is a cryptocurrency, used by reporters during market dispute phases of Augur. REP and REPv2 holders must perform work, in the form of staking their REP or REPv2 on correct outcomes, to receive a portion of the markets settlement fees. If you do not report correctly, you do not get the fees. If you report incorrectly, you lose your REP or REPv2. If you don’t participate in a fork (when the network has a very large dispute over an outcome), you permanently lose your ability to migrate your REP or REPv2 to a forked universe, making it functionally useless within the used version of the Augur Protocol, and in theory making it worthless. Passive holders of Reputation (REP or REPv2) that are not using their Reputation (REP or REPv2) within the Augur protocol to stake on disputes and forks are penalized. The treatment of REP and REPv2 within the Augur protocol is governed not by the Forecast Foundation but by the protocols smart contracts as described in the Augur white paper and documentation."
Other protocols may handle things differently.
> All of this can be solved by the law (eventually escalating to people allowed to use deadly force), but at that point why do you even need a blockchain?
Assuming if the law in all jurisdictions around the world were as sufficient for all cases presently and into the future. Also this assumes that its not the enforcers of a particular law aren't also the ones that the on chain claimant wants to take action against (again, the payout would need to be high enough for those to incentivize action against a particular jurisdictions enforcers, which need not necessarily mean engaging on the property, but anything to get the enforcers to back off even going after friends and family and their property in retaliation [which is more doable in jurisdictions who databases with such sensitive information have been compromised])
> Assuming if the law in all jurisdictions around the world were as sufficient for all cases presently and into the future.
Are you saying that there should be one global jurisdiction and law? That is a completely separate can of worms.
At the moment the only law that matters is the law that can be enforced, which is generally the law of the country where you reside or have assets that can be seized, and this system appears to work well enough for everyone involved.
The law can also be changed if needed. I'm not sure how a blockchain can account for all future use-cases without changes either.
Well according to how auger has it, those people will lose their funds they had to put up as collateral to vote on a particular market dispute outcome either through proof of their wrong decision or by a network fork if many people are in disagreement on an outcome and the many people don't bother migrating over to the forks ("you permanently lose your ability to migrate your REP or REPv2 to a forked universe, making it functionally useless within the used version of the Augur Protocol, and in theory making it worthless"). Seems like those people will have to continually pay for tokens that will be worthless as the network keeps forking as other non coerced reporters do not.
> Are you saying that there should be one global jurisdiction and law? That is a completely separate can of worms.
No, many contracts may operate simultaneously, and some even over shared claims in market disputes (at least what i get from how auger describes itself as enabling). I don't dissagree that it can be of worms though, but people can be incentivized during every step of the way in a variety of different ways. I just wanted to point that it is possible now with the tools that are viable that don't need to rely on a particular jurisdictions laws.
> The law can also be changed if needed. I'm not sure how a blockchain can account for all future use-cases without changes either.
The way to change laws may or may not be compatible with someone uploading a new contract and particular protocols users agreeing to abide by it with their assets at stake on market disputes.
> many contracts may operate simultaneously, and some even over shared claims in market disputes
Potentially - I don't disagree that the tech can technically do this, but ultimately it's still down to 1) people choosing to use it (as opposed to traditional contracts enforced by judges & subsequent law enforcement personnel) and 2) that whatever outcome reached by the blockchain can successfully be enforced in the real world - you'd need a government with jurisdiction upon the disputed assets to recognize the blockchain's outcome as legitimate and enforce it. People are unlikely to do "1" if they're not confident that "2" will happen especially if the problem can be solved by existing legal contracts who unlike blockchain-based solutions have a track record of being enforced.
Ultimately I don't think we'll ever reach an agreement here so I think the best course of action is that we stick to our opinions and either of us can tell the other one "told you so" in a decade as we see how the situation evolved.
What if it's a majority that is coerced (or bribed, frightened, etc) into lying? Then it's the truth that will be left behind as "reality" forks in favour of the usurper, isn't it?
Do you think I should risk my life to enforce your property rights? I have two kids and I want to watch them grow up, I can't die because someone with a gun claimed ownership of a stranger's house.
Without an organized government of some kind, society does not scale beyond about 200 people. We just cannot keep track of relationships and trust and whatnot beyond that. I live in metropolitan area with a population of 25 million people; a distributed group of vigilantes enforcing property rights is not even remotely workable here, and this is not even the largest city in the world. My in-laws live in a suburban area with a lower population density -- their town has a population around 20 thousand, and that disorganized group is not going to work there either.
I have no expectations of you personally if you wanted to protect my property rights (if i had claims on such and had a tx posted for someone to secure such), but I cannot control if an address controlled by a multisig of psuedoanons sends a tx to a contract where they provide proof that something has been secured according the rules of decentralized AMM market settlement contract and they get their payout. I cannot also control whether people make leveraged side bets on that happening or not, and I cannot control if those making leveraged side bets try to collude with the multisig that submitted the a tx for settlement.
> I live in metropolitan area with a population of 25 million people; a distributed group of vigilantes enforcing property rights is not even remotely workable here, and this is not even the largest city in the world. My in-laws live in a suburban area with a lower population density -- their town has a population around 20 thousand, and that disorganized group is not going to work there either.
I'm pretty sure that if they pay is high enough for the people that controls the multisig, and they have the skills and resources to execute, they can get where they need to be, and be gone when its finished, while accepting some risk that who they are up against may be prepared for it.