Saturday 28 July 2018

Smart contracts through blockchain are real game changers in the new digital world

By Nou Vada

Blockchains that support Smart Contracts are interesting. Smart Contracts are computer scripts that can store an exchangable item of value or a medium of exchange.

This is made possible by the existence of crypto-assets, which can be stored and transferred between smart contracts.

Even though the tech is at its early stages, the notions it enables is revolutionary. Entire legal, regulatory, transactional, commercial and economic relationships and value chains can be digitised, and securely interfaced on a blockchain.

Imagine a digital land title certificate that had the GPS co-ordinates of its section and lot area on the surface of the earth coded into a piece of code. And imagine if you called this piece of code from your google chrome browser, this code could return to you a digital copy of a land title whose details could only be changed by the transparent action of all its relevant parties, and that all transactions by these parties that resulted in state changes to the properties of the title could be publicly scrutinised by anyone with internet, and that all resultant changes could also easily be seen.

Because this title “code” had multiparty signatures from all legal parties required to toggle changes, and was living on decentralised blockchain (no central server), you couldn’t bribe someone in some back office to create a duplicate paper title. Even if you did, anyone could search the records on the chain and verify if a piece of paper purporting to be a title was genuine.

This platform would eradicate duplicate titles of land, and the resultant land disputes which costs the state and its citizens millions of Kina in money and thousands of hours in lost administrative and judicial resources.

This is an example of what blockchains can do. I might add that this is a pretty basic, low level example as well. We haven’t even scratched the surface.

#DarkRisk.





1 comment:

  1. A great piece that sheds much needed light on some of the great theoretical/ideological debates in the contemporary crypto space. At CleanApp Foundation, we appreciate the emphasis on pragmatism, and emphasis on Blockchain/DTL/Crypto projects that offer real social utility. Looking forward to engaging more with your crew!

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