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Some Nevada Governments Are Using Blockchain For Public Records (apnews.com)
Some northern Nevada counties are using blockchain, the online ledger best known for helping secure virtual currencies such as bitcoin, to store digital versions of government records like birth and marriage certificates. From a report: The Reno Gazette-Journal reports that as of December in Washoe County, about 950 couples had received secure digital marriage certificates to home computers and smartphones since the program debuted in April 2018. The newspaper found that Elko County is trying similar technology for certified digital birth certificates. Phil Dhingra at San Francisco-based Titan Seal said the Washoe County digital marriage certificate program uses the Ethereum blockchain because it has computing power that makes it hard to hack. He said he believes the number of digital certificates per year in the United States could at least match the billions of paper records that get a certificate or embossed seal of some kind.
No reason to use a blockchain here. A blockchain is great because it is a public database without the need of a trusted entity. The tradeoff is, it is extremely inefficient.
When you are issuing a birth certificate, you already have an entity that must be trusted to issue birth certificates (the state, and doctors). There is thus no benefit for putting that info in a blockchain, you might as well use a standard database.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
and 1 more nugget O fact..... a study last year found 0% success rate for ANY blockchain project.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
Keep in mind, one thing blockchains provide is a historical audit trail. Even if the single authorized writer can change values, all the previous inserts and changes are still examinable. This actually makes it a pretty good tool for public records since you can both see what currently is and what it looked like at every historical point.
The audit trail is provided by making the list public. You can make any list public and then anyone who has a copy can check whether you changed something.
Hash trees/lists make integrity checking quicker, and revision a bit harder. If I want to change an earlier entry in a regular list I just do it. If I want to change an earlier entry in a hash list I have to recalculate and update the hashes from that point forward.