Public notaries are all those government institutions through which the records and certifications of all types of legal activity (contracts) are carried out, all with the main objective of preventing fraud within a given society.
Within this cluster of legal activities, the following stand out: sworn statements, stamps and signatures of legal documents, acts of faith of a legal act, constitution and notarization of companies, emanation of powers and trusts, and of course the validation of sales of assets.
Consequently, entities are consumed with clusters of physical documents (files) of all the transactions that have been carried out for decades, even centuries in their jurisdictions and facilities.
Nigeria does not escape this situation. Although some progress has been made in recent decades in the African country, there is still a long way to go, as legislative processes are usually quite slow and bureaucratic.
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For example, to buy a land property in Nigeria, You will have to apply for a long process so that it can be yours. You have to “perfect” your property title, as stipulated by Nigerian Law.
This process of perfection of the title deed involves (1) Sealing, (2) Registration, and (3) Obtaining the consent of the Governor on the newly acquired land. Under the Nigerian Land Use Law, the Governor’s approval gives validity to the act of alienation of any interest in the land. Let’s imagine for a moment how long this process can take.
Why not bring all these legal processes and records to the consensual smart contracts of blockchain technology? This would undoubtedly optimize (among many legal activities) the administrative procurements and sales.
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There are already several examples of notaries public that are beginning to experiment with blockchain technology:
Spain
The College of Registrars of Spain and the Alastria Association (the world’s first national regulated network based on blockchain), are designing methods to streamline the management of the millions of documents processed by the said college through the use of blockchain. These documents are related to property commercial and real estate registries.
Japan:
The government of Japan is developing projects on the blockchain for property registration and all real estate procedures. This makes Japan one of the nations that have adopted blockchain into their public and private sector.
The consolidation of this data and its availability to all competent bodies through the blockchain pursues the following purposes:
- Promote the reuse of land.
- Promote buying and selling.
- Control redevelopment
- Optimize tax collection.
- Design plans for natural disasters
Find out how the application of blockchain technology will affect the government.
Sweden:
In this exemplary Nordic country, the use of the blockchain in the real estate sector is quite advanced.
Lantmäteriet, the Swedish land ownership body, has its records 100% digitized. However, the registration processes usually take between 3 to 6 months. With the blockchain, such processes can take only hours.
Lantmäteriet has been experimenting with the blockchain since 2017 using small samples of the land and real estate market. The pilot test which resulted in a purchase-sales cycle that was successful in 2018.
Lantmäteriet is only waiting for small legal adjustments to apply blockchain technology in the vast land and real estate market in Sweden.
“… from a technological point of view, everything is already in place“.
Mats Snäll, Digital Director of Lantmäteriet
Similarly, projects of this nature are being carried out in the United Kingdom, Australia, Georgia, Brazil, India, China, Mexico, and Ghana.
The Problem
Under what scheme would digital public notaries be established through blockchain technology?
Blockchain technology is applied for the first time with the birth of Bitcoin, since then, countless projects called altcoins through their platforms have brought very interesting proposals. Therefore, it is not surprising that today we already have decentralized autonomous organizations that are planning to become legal and decentralized digital public notaries. An example of this is the NEM platform. The NEM blockchain platform offers a wide range of solutions, including the protection of share ownership, safe storage of intellectual property, and other vital legal documents. So, we can deduce that among other things, NEM seeks to become a decentralized digital registry.
Theoretically, these sound very nice, but what if we want to validate a property that is a physical asset such as a house or land, or even an immaterial property?
These assets and properties have a local physical jurisdiction which is specific to each country, and that is the government. At this point, a dilemma arises. And that is the relativity of legality between blockchain governance and traditional governance systems. What is legal for a blockchain platform such as NEM or Ethereum (to mention just two) is not necessarily so for a government with a specific jurisdiction, be it a country, state, or grassroots.
Here is the problem:
There is a clash of paradigms between the conventional governing systems and the new model of decentralized public governance proposed by decentralized platforms like Ethereum, NEM, EOS, Tezos, etc.
Solutions
This is how four models of digital notaries based on blockchain technology have emerged today:
- Blockchain digital notaries public absolutely controlled by governments. Said governments hire independent companies, or independent professionals capable of assembling a technological infrastructure, based on the blockchain. A promising example of this is the Chinese government’s project already underway (political regime) in the city of Suzhou. The network will be called “Sozhuo Notary Chain, “administered and executed by the Sozhuo Municipal Market Supervision Office, and the Sozhuo Municipal Justice Office.
The following article by Remitano will interest you: Malaysia’s First “Blockchain Village” + 10 Other Government Initiatives
- Blockchain digital public notaries that are managed by private companies and government entities. In this case, we use the association between the State of New South Wales of Australia with the company ChromaWay to digitize property transactions as an example. The same relationship exists between the governments of Sweden and India with ChromaWay.
- Blockchain digital notaries public associated between decentralized autonomous organizations and governments. The Bitland project fits perfectly as an example since it executes various pilot tests in Africa, specifically in Ghana and Kumasi. As written on its official portal, the organization seeks “infrastructure in developing countries to unlock miles of millions of dollars in untapped property rights.” The project is an idea that seeks to combat corruption, register landowners, and help local governments resolve disputes, especially in places where they do not have access, all through the Openledger blockchain “Bitshares”; a decentralized financial platform.
4. Fully decentralized blockchain digital notaries public. Under this modality, the dream of a blockchain digital notary is gathered under the main decentralized platforms in the world such as NEM, Ethereum, EOS, Tezos, Cardano, a fact that for now lacks legality since it is the governments and the States who provide the legal character in Each geographical jurisdiction in the world, however, small experiments are already being carried out on these levels of decentralization in the so-called “autonomous crypto-cities” that are already beginning to develop around the world.
Although blockchain technology was applied for the first time as the Bitcoin operating system, humanity has begun to adopt it for all kinds of use cases and decentralized applications. The transactions of purchase and sale of tangible and intangible goods or properties are one of these cases of use. At present, it is being used under the four modalities mentioned above.
Let’s fervently hope that soon the blockchain can be used as the base technology for all legal notarial systems globally and that Nigeria will be one of the first countries to adopt its use and application.
Would you dare to register all your properties of purchases and sales of both tangible and intangible goods through blockchain technology? And which of the four mentioned modalities previously would you prefer?
