Blockchain and Land Title Registration - Fighting Corruption and Inefficiency One Block At A Time.

April 29, 2019

In April last year, the Georgian Government launched a project to register land titles via a private blockchain. It is the first time a national government has used blockchain to secure and validate official actions and has now signed a new memorandum of understanding to expand the service to purchases and sales of land titles, registration of new land titles, demolition of property, mortgages, and rentals, as well as notary services.

See the full story here.

Applied to property and land titles, blockchain technology stands out in several ways. In a blockchain-based ledger, records are time-stamped, as are subsequent changes to those records. This would allow enabling people interested in a specific property to see and verify the date of past transactions on their smartphones.

Data on blockchains can be made private or public. In this case, the details of the real estate transactions are placed on a private blockchain network run by known computers, and then, in order for citizens to verify the authenticity of certificates, that data can be turned into a cryptographic “hash” that are made public on the blockchain which is run by thousands of computers worldwide. The hash is a type of digital fingerprint that enables anyone to verify that the data matches what’s on the blockchain without seeing the data itself.

The technology also brings security to real estate transactions because there’s no central point of failure and the transaction can’t be changed once it has been made.

Blockchain isn’t going to replace the government concerning how land is registered and monitored. But it will make the governance of land registration the simplest and most corruption free and secure as possible.

To understand the potential of a blockchain land registry system, you must first understand how property changes hands.

When a purchaser seeks to buy property today, he or she must find and secure the title and have the lawful owner of the property then sign it over.

This seems simple on the surface, but it rarely is and it’s all about the details. For a lot of residential mortgage holders, flawed paperwork, forged signatures, and defects in foreclosure and mortgage documents have made proper documentation of property ownership difficult or sometimes impossible to prove.

Fake land titles are usually copies of genuine land titles made by unauthorized persons. Currently, there is no way of quickly verifying if the land title you are looking at is a true and correct document. With graphical editing tools readily available, editing a document has never been easier.

VeriDoc Global has developed a solution that involves embedding a QR code on a land title with a unique digital hash inside the QR code. The hash holds a string of information that is then placed on the blockchain network for security, verification, and most important end-user validation.

Using any QR code reading app, scan the QR code on the land title and the app will show you the true document produced by the issuer. This allows you to compare and see if the land title is an original or a fake. Our solution allows you to verify that the land deed you are looking at is the true and correct deed. It aims to secure land rights as well as eliminate the ability for fraudsters to create duplicate land titles that can be sold to another party.

“When people and organizations do not have to worry about the legitimacy of their investments in property, they will have no problem investing in increasing the value of their properties,”

Blockchain doesn’t solve all the problems, but it is the best tool we have to fight corruption and inefficiency and at VeriDoc Global, we have developed a finished verification system that leverages blockchain technology and smart contracts, that can be used right now.

Please check out our Land Titles Explanation Video here for a better understanding.

To learn more about our finished solutions and explore how VeriDoc Global’s anti-fraud software can be of benefit to you or your organization, please visit our website at www.veridocglobal.com Content by Greg G.