Tokenizing Commercial Real Estate and the Promise of Liquidity
Notes from:Tokenizing Commercial Real Estate and the Promise of Liquidity
by Alexander Kanen
https://cointelegraph.com/news/tokenizing-commercial-real-estate-and-the-promise-of-liquidity
Real Estate Registry on Blockchain: Promise Land or Wishful Thinking?
... none of the existing projects could offer a complex solution to address issues with inheritance, lost private keys, co-ownership, delegation of rights and a bunch of legal issues that arise from blockchain immutability.The only scenario you can find is permissioned decentralized ledger technology (DLT), which is just yet another centralized technology — or blockchain with “smart” applications on top but which are centralized in their core design.
... all peer-to-peer transactions on the blockchain between parties make no sense, as far the last word is on the side of the one who controls the central registry:
A centralized system is an antipode to uncensored distributed public technology of blockchain. Any attempts to make friends with these two, in which centralization reserves a leading role, are doomed to failure because the blockchain loses all benefits.Without shifting from centralized to distributed architecture, any attempts of disruption turn into mimicking the existing system.
In fact, nothing more happens than digitizing bureaucracy and middlemen.
Prosperous and highly developed societies often fail to find reasons to change the existing system. What for, if it works, though imperfect?
It must make extraordinary sense for changes, especially at the scale of a whole country.And it is clear that the Swedish government has no incentive to let go of its monopoly on political power over centralized cadastral registry.
... looks like yet another real estate broker’s platform that has no relation to any land title registry.
How did the revolution come tumbling down?
To explain why the mentioned projects failed to revolutionize real estate (some did not even promise that, but many believed in it because they used the magic word “blockchain”), we should clarify the most important conceptual inconsistency of the blockchain and traditional legal system.
The problem is the immutability of blockchain records.The last 2,000 years since Roman law appeared, people developed lots of legal doctrines to protect property rights. All of them have been based on an imperfect nature of people’s relationships and the need to fix problems when they arise.
#Blockchain appeared ill-prepared to deal with the theory of law and state — and actually, nobody designed the technology with these prerequisites.
How exactly can blockchain technology be applied?In general, blockchain beyond cryptocurrency can be used to:
- Insert arbitrary user’s data (for example, hashes).
- Create tokens.
- Manage tokens with smart contract.
- Develop so-called decentralized applications (DApps).
Related: Blockchain-for-Land: What We Are Getting Wrong and How to Fix It
Hashing cadastral records
Hashing records of deeds
Smart contracts with title tokens
Notes from:
Real Estate Registry on Blockchain: Promise Land or Wishful Thinking?
by Oleksii Konashevych
https://cointelegraph.com/news/real-estate-registry-on-blockchain-promise-land-or-wishful-thinking
