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Comment by illiarian | Hacker News Reader

> The elimination of the need for municipalities to maintain proprietary databases to hold property deeds

Of course it doesn't eliminate the need. Who's going to enter those records and enforce them?

> Standardized and globally interoperable property records across municipalities and potentially countries

Just because it's on blockchain doesn't mean it's standardised, or interoperable.

> Easy to prove and verify ownership of properties, which could be used to grant access to third party services for homeowners.

Yup. Until a corrupt government official puts his friend as the owner of your house and evicts you. Look, the proof is in the blockchain, and it's irrefutable, and cannot be amended.

> Dapps could allow property owners to post the NFT deed as collateral and automate the loan application process to reduce processing costs.

This is just a string off made-up terms that make no sense

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> Of course it doesn't eliminate the need. Who's going to enter those records and enforce them?

The staff still does what they do today, but they no longer need to maintain their own database and IT application.

> Just because it's on blockchain doesn't mean it's standardised, or interoperable.

Once it is on a blockchain it is conforming to a published standard for NFTs for that particular blockchain and others can interact with it and build additional systems that interoperate more easily.

> Yup. Until a corrupt government official puts his friend as the owner of your house and evicts you. Look, the proof is in the blockchain, and it's irrefutable, and cannot be amended.

Because corrupt government officials have never doctored official records that weren't on the blockchain?

> This is just a string off made-up terms that make no sense

No, it's not. A Dapp stands for a "decentralized application" and posting property deeds as collateral is a real thing. Further, being able to do that digitally will likely lower processing costs.

> The staff still does what they do today, but they no longer need to maintain their own database and IT application.

That's a very minor thing to maintain as compared to the multiple issues that blockchains bring into the mix.

And of course they will need to maintain an IT application: they will need secure wallet implementations, data entry applications to interact with blockchains, security audits for the shitty programs people keep calling "smart contracts" etc.

> Once it is on a blockchain it is conforming to a published standard for NFTs

Ah yes. It automagically conforms to some standard. Just because it's on blockchain.

> Because corrupt government officials have never doctored official records that weren't on the blockchain?

And how is blockchain helping you in this case? Or in the cases I linked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27212564 and that you even failed to understand.

> And of course they will need to maintain an IT application: they will need secure wallet implementations, data entry applications to interact with blockchains, security audits for the shitty programs people keep calling "smart contracts" etc.

Most likely a third party company will provide a standardized overlay that government's can tweak to suit their needs, but the bulk of the important data is now stored securely on chain. This should help reduce the security footprint and FTE overhead for governments.

> Ah yes. It automagically conforms to some standard. Just because it's on blockchain.

No magic involved. If you want your NFT to work say on the Chia Blockchain, then you need to conform to this standard -> https://www.chia.net/2022/06/29/1-4-0-introducing-the-chia-n...

> And how is blockchain helping you in this case? Or in the cases I linked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27212564 and that you even failed to understand.

I've already explained this in another comment. No one is claiming blockchain is helping in that situation and that's okay! :)

> Most likely a third party company will provide a standardized overlay

So, we're squarely in the realm of magic and wishful thinking.

Some third party (who?) will provide some standardised way (which standards?) that governments will tweak (what? if tweaked, it's no longer standard).

> but the bulk of the important data is now stored securely on chain.

Of course not. Storing anything in bulk on-chain is prohibitively expensive. All you're proposing to store is a hash of off-chain data

> No magic involved. If you want your NFT to work say on the Chia Blockchain, then you need to conform to this standard

Why would government want a) NFT to b) work on Chia?

On top of that, you are literally saying: "You will just need to store a hash of the off-chain data on chain". What's the standard for that hash?

> I've already explained this in another comment.

You haven't

> No one is claiming blockchain is helping in that situation and that's okay! :)

No, it's not okay. You keep saying that blockchain is some solution for something, but every single case runs into "no, you don't use blockchain for that".

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