Research claims ‘poorly understood’ blockchain technology cannot solve land rights issue

Blockchain technology has been touted as a solution for a variety of industries since its rise into the mainstream over the past decade, but land ownership is not one of them according to new research.

Tim Robustelli of New America, a non-partisan think tank, said that blockchain technology is poorly understood by governments and that it is not a solution to the world’s biggest problems, contrary to popular belief.

“There’s a general notion that blockchain is a magic bullet that can save the rainforest or solve world hunger – that’s not true,” he said at a World Bank conference in Washington DC this week, via Reuters.

“It cannot, for example, make up for sloppy or incomplete data collection,” he said, before claiming that using blockchain for land records would be a “huge bureaucratic and logistical task”.

Blockchain technology is, in simple terms, an immutable ledger that tracks and verifies data and transactions.

Aanchal Anand of World Bank said the lack of adoption from governments alludes to a tendency of “expecting too much” from the technology.

“Tech can look big and flashy, and like it can solve all our problems… but the Big Mac burger never matches up to the one in the ad,” she said.

“There’s a lot of other pieces to the puzzle, like cultural barriers to improve access to land.

“And if you don’t have any data, what information are you going to put into your analytics?”

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