Dude, I've already linked you to the full Smarter Contracts report that Sir Vos was referencing and explained to you how much of it isn't even referring to blockchain technology at all. I know you're a VERY busy CEO, but you could at least try and directly address some of that?
I looked at your comments. They read broadly as a total failure of imagination: the kind of thinking that would have looked at email and said "this is not better than a fax machine because I can fax 40 million people, but only email 5000."
If that's how you see the world, me going point by point is not going to change your fundamental "but only 5000 people have email accounts."
Here's 550 pages of the UK Law Commission (govt legal think tank) discussing how to integrate digital assets into UK law.
Why do you think this kind of labour is going into the digital asset space?
Crypto is a massively compelling proposition to working transactional lawyers at all levels of seniority but it's especially compelling to the most senior. They know their business. As do I.
Decades of experience doing real world transactions makes the utility of the blockchain obvious. To people without that experience, maybe the point is harder to see?
But the serious types get it. That's the lived experience in the field.
> Why do you think this kind of labour is going into the digital asset space?
Sunk cost fallacy, libertarian ideology, the fact it's become a cult of prosperity for the tech class and the fact that to argue against it meaningfully you have to have a strong understanding of finance, technology and law. Very few people have enough expertise in all three areas to explain why it's a bad idea.
But let me ask you. Since it's been the 'internet of the early 90s' for 15 years, why isn't it the 'internet of the mid/late 2000s' yet?
First of all, there's no such thing as "the UK head of civil justice". England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are three separate legal jurisdictions.
Most of the uses of blockchain cited are not Web3, but examples where a private blockchain has been used in place of a traditional database. Notably, there are no examples of 'smart contracts' replacing legal contracts; there are references to e-signatures replacing paper ones, but that's not a blockchain technology.
I've gone through each chapter in the report and looked at three things: one, whether any of the examples cited use blockchain at all; two, whether that blockchain is actually doing something that couldn't be accomplished without blockchain and three, whether it's actually the type of blockchain that is part of the Web3 ecosystem (i.e. permissionless and public). The results do not actually look great for the narrative you're trying to promote, Mr Gupta.
Electronic signatures
This is not a blockchain technology. Next.
Contract automation and management
The chapter summary says: "They may apply blockchain and smart legal contract technology, depending on user requirements." However, not one of the six case studies described in this chapter actually use blockchain. They use electronic signatures on legal documents that are stored in traditional databases. So, while the chapter summary makes a passing mention that some of these platforms can use blockchain if the user requires it for some reason, they haven't been able to find an example where the user actually required blockchain.
Financial services
This chapter looks at the Aurora platform created by Nivaura. A few interesting quotes:
"Nivaura established a digital framework for the use of smart legal contracts in the creation and management of tokenised financial instruments. MIFID and CASS compliance was required to be able to custody money and assets, create stablecoins and tokenised assets, and issue instruments. When conducting these transactions, Nivaura identified that, although the use of blockchain can deliver improvements in respect of clearing and settlement activities, much of the inefficiency in the process occurs before the settlement system is needed - in the structuring and execution of the transactions."
"Nivaura decided to focus on building a foundation within the Aurora platform: developing the technology to generate the documentation and the transaction workflows first, while remaining agnostic to where the instrument is created and managed; in other words, combining traditional methods with the potential use of blockchain technology."
"integrates seamlessly with other platforms through APIs or decentralised blockchain infrastructure using the open specification Aurora protocol"
"the Aurora platform offers the ability to push the data into a blockchain based infrastructure to execute tokenised transactions both traditionally through the clearing systems, as well as through blockchain infrastructure"
Of the three case studies, only one involves the use of a blockchain. This was Santander's September 2019 issuance of a $20M bond on Ethereum. What the report didn't mention is that this bond was redeemed early in December 2019, and Santander since haven't done anything else on Ethereum. Essentially, it was a proof of concept that they did one time and then didn't touch again.
So Aurora is essentially a 'you can connect it to blockchain if you really want to' platform, but there are scant examples of anyone actually needing or wanting to do so.
Insurance
This chapter concerns parametric insurance contracts. Again, it is mostly not about blockchain, but one bullet point does state: "Blockchain technology may enhance the operations of contracts when buyers, sellers, and other stakeholders seek to share data and computational resources across a distributed network, enabling access to verified data at the same time."
The blockchain in this case would be private, not a permissionless public ledger - so not Web3. And there really is no reason to use blockchain for that kind of distributed network, they can just use a private cloud and digital signatures.
Renewable energy
This chapter opens with: "Blockchain technology-based smart legal contracts underpin ‘microgrids’, which enable peer-to-peer and peer-to-grid trading of small amounts of renewable electricity."
It provides three case studies, each one of which uses a private, permissoned blockchain - so again, not Web3. And again, blockchain isn't even necessary for this use case and I don't see what it adds over just using a traditional database.
Trade
The first part of this chapter looks at electronic trade documents, not a blockchain technology.
The second part looks at supply chains: "Supply chains are one of the most promising use cases for digitalisation and blockchain technology, which are already addressing previously unsolvable problems and are a key component of the future of digital trade"
I'm skeptical of this claim - it just seems like another example of using blockchain for the sake of using blockchain. But regardless, the three examples (TradeLens, Provenance and Chainvine) all use private, permissioned blockchains. So again - not Web3, not Ethereum, not cryptocurrency.
Sale of goods and services
Is this a chapter about cryptocurrency transactions? No, it's about DocuSign CLM. Not a blockchain technology.
Logistics and transportation
This chapter is about Amazon Quantum Ledger Database. A private, permissioned blockchain (although Amazon prefers to call it a 'ledger database' in which 'changes are chained together as blocks' - rather telling that they don't even want to touch the word). So yet again: a database that is part-blockchain, sure... but it's not Web3.
Digital representation and ownership of physical assets
This chapter is about Mattereum, a company that ties NFTs to legal contracts called the Matterium Asset Passport. Essentially, since you can't actually change the legal ownership of physical goods solely by trading NFTs, the sale is instead facilitated by the Matterium Asset Passport, which uses a private dispute resolution mechanism instead of the courts in 170 countries that allow for this. An interesting system... if it weren't BS that nobody needs. Because you could do this with digital signatures on legal contracts without involving NFT marketplaces at all. They've made it possible to do a thing with NFTs that people have been doing without NFTs for decades. Another instance of the technology looking for the use case, rather than the use case requiring the technology.
Sport sponsorship
This chapter describes Hunit, which uses digital legal contracts (not smart contracts) for which the signatures are stored on a private, permissioned ledger. Again, not Web3 (noticing a pattern here?) and again just seems to be another case of using blockchain for the sake of using blockchain.
Home buying and selling
Is this a chapter about selling your home as an NFT? No, it's another chapter about the digitisation of legal contracts and signatures. Again there are a few examples here of a private permissioned blockchain being used for data storage, but yet again in all of these cases any form of secure distributed database could be used and blockchain isn't necessary - and regardless, yet again, it's not the type of blockchain that's Web3.
Digital Company
This chapter looks at The Digital Company project, which is mostly about the digitisation of legal contracts and signatures. As in the previous chapter, a private permissioned blockchain is used in place as a database but yet again it appears to be an example of blockchain being used simply for the sake of using blockchain - and yet again, not the type of blockchain that's Web3.
1) it takes four months on average to transfer real estate in the UK. It’s about the same in most other counties.
2) with our system that is reduced to one KYCAMLCTF/source of funds check, and an atomic swap on Ethereum.
Two days and most, and instant if you pre-clear the money.
3) getter a property legally ready for that transaction takes some time of course, but that work is mostly reused in subsequent transactions.
4) this is of most utility to large property companies not invisible house buyers. Developers and REITs for example.
5) no, you cannot do this with a database, a database can’t clear a $1.2m payment in real-time or create legally binding digital signatures on electronic versions of paper contracts, at least not without a vast amount of middleware. It’s a real blockchain use case.
Right now there is no meaningful electronic trading venue for real estate. The closest you get is listed REIT stock on stock exchanges.
Roughly three trillion of transactions a year for real estate. It’s a worthy market.
Not, I think you’ll find, a solution looking for a problem. A very large market indeed which has so far not found an electronic trading system that suits its operational and commercial needs.
As MICA in the EU and other similar legislation around the world clear out the pirate finance people the blockchain will simply normalise as a standard technology for doing transactions. If we also see central bank digital currency — it seems certain in at least some jurisdictions - that removes another set of uncertainties.
The UK Law Commission recently published a 550 page consultation document on digital assets in the UK. As that rolls into legislation the grey area will evaporate and we would expect mass adoption for B2B use cases to begin.
That’s certainly the government’s intention.
Yes there are a lot of naive grifters in the blockchain space. There are also a lot of world class technologists and lawyers. There are people breaking the law, or breaking laws which should exist! And there are people creating the enabling legislation.
Because you’ve been listening to propaganda not thinking for yourself, you have pre-judged the situation without understanding what the legislative agenda from the larger governments will enable. And I don’t mean USA here, that’s just a mess, but the world is bigger than just America.
1) Did you read the Smarter Contracts report I linked to for yourself? There's a full chapter on how the process of conveyancing will be significantly streamlined by digital ID, digital signatures, automation and interoperability between data stores. No blockchain required.
2) By KYCAMLCTF/source of funds, I'm assuming you're referring to what happens when someone buys ETH on an exchange? The problem is that only covers trading on the exchange. Once it leaves the exchange it leaves that regulatory environment, and it becomes impossible to prevent things like wash trading in NFT marketplaces. Are you really trying to tell me that exposing the property market to that is a good idea?
3) What you're actually saying here is that what Mattereum does isn't actually equivalent to conveyancing. In order to make doing this with NFTs work, you've created an inferior legal framework to actual property law, based solely around contract and arbitration law, that you expect people to use instead. The trade of the NFT is faster than conveyancing, not because it's doing the same thing more efficiently, but because it's not actually doing the same thing at all.
4) Large property companies will want actual conveyancing, not your substitute for it. They also don't want to trade property like NFTs. They'll be pleased about digital contract solutions that streamline the process of actual conveyancing.
5) A database can clear a $1.2m payment in real time. In the UK we have near-instant, free bank transfers with a limit of £1 million per transaction - to send more it can just be split into multiple transactions. Neither a database NOR a blockchain can create legally binding signatures on e-contracts without middleware like DocuSign or Adobe Sign. For electronic conveyancing, the answer is to... just use that middleware, it's fine. Transfer of an NFT does not count as a legally binding signature (isn't that the whole reason Mattereum exists)?
"Right now there is no meaningful electronic trading venue for real estate." Maybe - here's an idea - property shouldn't actually be traded like NFTs are? Maybe property law isn't just useless red tape and it exists for a reason? Maybe high frequency trading of property on a pseudonymous marketplace is actually NOT a good idea?
Speaking of Mattereum, I note the article on your website from April 16 2023 claiming that you have tokenised a "prime beach-front property on England’s south coast". Although the article uses a stock image of a building, the property is actually just a land parcel. Just curious, why was the NFT burned and recreated four months ago? It wasn't because the property sold. Why is it only now possible to buy the NFT by emailing Tokenised Properties to be added to a whitelist? Doesn't that rather defeat the purpose of what you're trying to do?
"DISCLAIMER: The land is sold as is without any planning permission. Images are for reference only for possible uses. Buyers are to make their own investigations and due diligence." Hmm, an empty plot of land with no planning permission... not exactly a house, is it?
"[...] the required searches, title deed and reference media for due diligence are displayed accurately and transparently so that the NFT purchaser can sell on the property without the next purchaser needing to go through the process all over again. What the NFT purchaser gets for their money is an interest in the property. If they wish to take full ownership of the property itself, they simply pay an extra pound, and full legal title is transferred to them, they can then do as they wish with the property and the NFT is burned."
Wait, one moment it's a property, the next it's just an interest in the property? What is your NFT actually adding here? If they take full ownership of the property, say, to build something on the land and sell it on, they're actually going to have to start that whole process over again, right?
I see absolutely no upside to tokenising property interests as NFTs and plenty of downsides, such as the potential for market manipulation, scams and thefts. Which is probably why the Smarter Contracts report focused instead on technological developments to fully digitise the traditional conveyancing process that already exists under property law.
But you've hitched your wagon to public permissionless blockchain ledgers like Ethereum and marketplaces for trading NFTs, so you have a vested interested in convincing us that this is the proper technology for the use case. Yeah, there are a lot of naïve grifters in the blockchain space - and you're one of them.
You are a little behind the times on the status of digital signatures, smart contracts etc.
Our project
The Law Commission was asked by the Lord Chancellor to include work on smart legal contracts as part of our Thirteenth Programme of Law Reform. In November 2019, the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (“UKJT”) published its legal statement on cryptoassets and smart contracts. The UKJT Legal Statement concluded that, in principle, smart contracts are capable of giving rise to binding legal obligations, enforceable in accordance with their terms.
Following this, the Ministry of Justice asked us to undertake a detailed analysis of the current law as it applies to smart legal contracts, highlighting any uncertainties or gaps, and identifying such further work as may be required now or in the future.
Advice to Government
We published our advice to Government on smart legal contracts on 25 November 2021. It was informed by the detailed responses we received to the call for evidence, published in December 2020.
We have concluded that the current legal framework in England and Wales is clearly able to facilitate and support the use of smart legal contracts, without the need for statutory law reform.
Um, okay? None of that refutes anything I said in my summary of the Smarter Contracts report.
All the Law Commission essentially said is that there doesn't need to be any new legislation created for the courts to be able to deal with what they call 'smart legal contracts'.
In their summary report the Law Commission also said:
"Solely code smart legal contracts are likely to be rare in practice, given that commercial contracts are typically too nuanced to be reduced solely to code."
Their definition of a 'smart legal contract' includes traditional natural language contracts in which the implementation of some of the aspects is automated by code.
Note also that in this context, 'code' is not confined to 'smart contracts' on blockchains. A web server that automates some contractual activities by connecting with an API, for example, would count as part of a 'smart legal contract' by the definition that the Law Commission is using here.
I'm not sure what point you're actually trying to make by linking me to this Law Commission report. Maybe my brain is just not wide enough / too deep to understand? But if you're trying to convince me that the Law Commission said that we're increasingly going to be using blockchain smart contracts for things, you're seriously misrepresenting the conclusions of their paper.
"I see absolutely no upside to tokenising property interests as NFTs and plenty of downsides"
People have said things like this about every new technology -- both the successes and the failures. Will it succeed or fail? We shall see -- I think the former, you think the latter, that's fine: you have no skin in the game and are entitled to your opinion.
But here's the bottom line: there's no electronic trading system for real estate right now, other than things like REIT equity on exchanges.
So whoever cracks that wins big. Is that a reasonable risk for a commercial enterprise to take?
Absolutely.
Is the first one done the same as the five thousandth one? No, we'll learn, improve, refine. We'll build commercial infrastructure and commercial partnerships.
But the prize is large enough to do some actual work on, because if we're right, we wind up winning big.
If the legals are a little confusing, I suggest going over it with a lawyer, assuming you aren't one!
"But here's the bottom line: there's no electronic trading system for real estate right now, other than things like REIT equity on exchanges."
Yes, but the reason for this is not because it would be impossible to implement with existing technology. There's absolutely no reason that you couldn't set up a traditional database to do that. The reason for this is that there's actually a lack of demand for a system that would allow individual properties to be day traded like individual stocks.
Seriously, who the fuck looks at day trading and thinks "wouldn't it be great if we could do this with houses?" And on top of that, proposes a system in which it would be totally pseudonymous? lol, lmao.
I suggest that you seriously reassess your business model if you're counting on people using Mattereum for houses.
I'm not a lawyer but I've read the Smarter Contracts report from LawtechUK - you know, the one Sir Vos was citing - and it lays out quite clearly how technology is going to streamline the process of conveyancing. This is what's actually needed, not trading property like NFTs.
"There's absolutely no reason that you couldn't set up a traditional database to do that."
Everything is equivalent to a Turing machine.
The question is costs.
"clearly how technology is going to streamline the process of conveyancing. This is what's actually needed, not trading property like NFTs"
These statements say the same thing: a perfectly efficient conveyancing process is seamless, so the property can change hands like an NFT. An atomic swap with cash in one direction and the title etc. in the other.
I`ve talked to blockchain bro`s since day one about this stuff. "Houses as NFTs" etc etc. It`s a simple grift, an empty scam, substituting a woo-woo-tech "solution" to obscure the fact that the basic idea is houses as bearer bonds.
Transfer the NFT? O.k, what happens if the wrong NFT is transferred and the person refuses to give it back?
What happens if someone hacks your wallet and steals your apes and your house. Do you have to move out?
What happens if the wrong data gets entered and an apartment block has one less floor of apartments than actually exists?
What is your blockchain solution to the boring everyday errors and fraud that occur in real life?
Here`s the problem. My shiftless nephew put a key logger on my computer and transferred my house NFT to his own wallet. Now he`s claiming I gave it to him and is aiming to sell it. Walk me through the process resolving this, step by step. .
No, trading an NFT is not the same as the process of conveyancing.
Conveyancing includes checks to comply with property law. Trading an NFT doesn't.
Have a nice day.
P.S.: You've already admitted on the Mattererum website that the NFT isn't actually legal ownership of the property itself, but an interest in the property, and an extra step is still required to convert that into legal ownership.
If you wanted to build digital a marketplace for property interests to be speculated on like NFTs with a traditional database you could - and no, it wouldn't be more expensive. It's not been done because the demand isn't there.
