There are a few recognized blockchains; perhaps the most famous one is BitCoin. The block chain can be used for many things, not just real estate, and not just notary-related information.
Of the things we are used to working with, the one most like the blockchain is our journal. Imagine you're in a state where you don't have to collect the signer's signature in the journal, just the information about the docs and the ID. Lets say you wanted to fake an entry for December 31, but you have 20 pages of entries before Dec. 31 and 5 pages after. You could fake it by copying the earlier 20 pages into a fresh journal, inserting the fake entries, and then copying the remaining 5 pages. That's enough work to discourage fake entries.
That would be a lot of work. The block chain collects entries not just for one person or company, but the entire world. Also, it's designed on purpose to use lots of computing power. So reconstructing the BitCoin blockchain on March 12, 2018, to insert a fake entry on December 31, 2018, would require an overwhelming amount of computing power; even if you had 50% of the computers on earth under your control, you wouldn't be able to do it.
I have to run off and do a recount of an election; I can add more details later. |