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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.

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Worst idea ever by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No reason to use a blockchain here. A blockchain is great because it is a public database without the need of a trusted entity.

    If you consider the government to be, and always remain, a "trusted entity", then you are correct. If you think that corruption is possible, and public records may be destroyed or altered someday, then a blockchain makes that more difficult.

    The tradeoff is, it is extremely inefficient.

    Blockchains are not inherently inefficient. Cryptocurrencies are designed to be inefficient to throttle the generation of new coins. But there is no reason for a county clerk to use the same algorithm.

  2. That was premeture by sdinfoserv · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Hard to hack"... well, ummm...apparently not...
    https://www.theverge.com/2019/...
    Additionally, there's hsitory:
    1- Parity Freeze Hack : 512K ETH
    2- Party multisig wallet Hack : 150K ETH solen
    3-The DAO hack: 15% of ALL in circulation stolen
    Stop calling this nonsense secure......