A BLOCKCHAIN-
BASED LAND
TITLING PROJECT IN
THE REPUBLIC OF
GEORGIA
REBUILDING PUBLIC TRUST AND LESSONS FOR
FUTURE PILOT PROJECTS
QIUYUN SHANG AND ALLISON PRICE
Land and property rights are at the center of development challenges.
According to the World Bank, 多于 70 percent of the world’s population
lacks a “legally registered” title to their land.1. Only one-third of countries
worldwide track property ownership digitally, which is critical for effective land
management.2. Without formal access to a land registry, people struggle to
justify ownership of their own property and thus live in fear of losing their land
and the source of their economic livelihood in times of crisis. Poor land
management also adversely impacts society’s long-term prosperity; insecure
land rights have long been considered a major driver of global poverty,
不等式, and political instability. Past disputes over land ownership have in
fact led to social unrest and violence. According to Global Witness, A
nongovernmental advocacy organization, “in 2015, more than three people
were killed each week, on average, defending their land from extractive and
other industries.”3.
The challenge for countries without
adequate land management is not simply
to build a land registry system but to
create a system that is trustworthy,
efficient, 和
腐败.
According to Transparency International,
free of
土地
20 的百分比
service users
worldwide admitted that they have paid a
bribe in order to register their property or
verify land ownership information.4. 这
reduces the efficiency of service delivery
and undermines public trust in the
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政府. 而且, corrupt officials
in the opaque government system can
到
easily
manipulate land title data without risk of
detection.
their positions
leverage
的
能
和
历史
immutable
政府
harness
Blockchain technology to address these
挑战. 这
和
transparent nature of Blockchain could
curb forgery of land titles, create an
土地
unmodifiable
交易,
real-time
verification of land ownership. A few
countries—the Republic of Georgia,
the Republic of
Ukraine, 巴西,
Honduras, 和
the United Arab
Emirates, among others—have pioneered
the adoption of Blockchain technology to
improve their land registry and transfer
processes.5. While there is not a single
allow
preferred framework, solutions often
involve a hybrid Blockchain solution,
where land information is first recorded
in a private Blockchain that creates
hashes, a fixed-length bit string generated
from variable length input, then posted
on a public Blockchain. This solution is
believed to guarantee the privacy of user
data and
这
immutable nature of public Blockchains.6.
As Michael Graglia and Christopher
Mellon wrote in their report, “Blockchain
and Property in 2018,” while
土地
documents have to be stored somewhere,
current public Blockchains are not able to
handle large amounts of land data, 这样的
as deeds, titles, and maps.
effectively
leverage
To highlight a use case of a hybrid
Blockchain for land registry, this paper
A
discusses
the development of
关于作者
QQiiuuyyuunn SShhaanngg is a Research Associate at the Blockchain Trust Accelerator at New America,
where she supports pilot projects and research on global Blockchain applications. She has pub-
lished pieces on China’s Blockchain development and the adoption of Blockchain technology in
healthcare and pharmaceutical supply chains. Shang holds a master of arts degree from the
School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she focused on inter-
national economics and China studies.
AAlllliissoonn PPrriiccee is the Executive Director of the Blockchain Trust Accelerator at New America. 前
diving into the global Blockchain community, Price served in senior public affairs positions with
美国. Department of Justice and the Peace Corps. She also has worked for Obama for
美国, the Center for American Progress, Gillibrand for Congress, and Stonebridge
国际的. She earned degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of
经济学.
The Blockchain Trust Accelerator (BTA) provided Bitfury with strategic support for the development
of this project, including stakeholder coordination and communication outreach. The BTA is a
leading global platform designed for harnessing Blockchain for social impact and governance.
Established in 2016, the BTA brings together governments, technologists, civil society
组织, and philanthropists to build Blockchain pilots that benefit society. The BTA is a
project of New America, a non-for-profit organization, and it is managed in collaboration with
Bitfury and the National Democratic Institute, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation.
© 2018 Qiuyun Shang and Allison Price
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Qiuyun Shang and Allison Price
Blockchain-based land titling system in
the Republic of Georgia, a pilot project
developed in collaboration with the
Bitfury Group, the National Agency of the
Public Registry
这
Blockchain Trust Accelerator. 通过使用
Blockchain technology, the Georgian
government aims to be a leader in
governance and security and to restore
民众
和
相信
government agencies.
(NAPR), 和
机构
在
挑战
The land registry system in the Republic
of Georgia was previously managed by
the Bureau of Technical Inventory and
the State Department of Land
管理. These two agencies had
significant functional overlap, as each
ran its own system of land registry that
was generally opaque.7. This enabled
government officials to illegally change
land records in the system for their own
benefit, as such misconduct was diffi-
cult to detect or identify.
It was not until the mid-2000s that
the Republic of Georgia began to combat
腐败, when President Mikheil
Saakashvili’s administration launched a
series of reforms to reduce bureaucratic
red tape and increase the transparency of
government work.8. 在 2004, the NAPR
was created to replace the Bureau of
Technical Inventory and
the State
Department of Land Management. 这
new agency
到
simplify the land registry process, allowed
more stakeholders to participate in land-
related services, and facilitated legislative
reforms to the processes of drafting and
certifying property
在
添加, the NAPR created NAPReg, A
digitized database that included land
registry information such as property
titles and satellite photos.9. Thanks to this
land property
数据库, details of
introduced policies
交易.
information such as name, 地址, 和
cadastral code can easily be found. 这
reforms also dramatically cut the time
and cost of land registration.
然而, building a digital NAPR
database for land titles did not fully solve
the public trust crisis in government
机构, as officials could still alter land
记录. As Georgia’s justice minister
Thea Tsulukiani stated, despite the
benefits of the NAPR database, “there was
a general distrust towards politicians in
Georgia and people felt that politicians
could influence transactions. When you
have shadows of distrust wandering the
streets, the whole system is in question.”10.
此外, the centralized database was
vulnerable
hackers. 尽管
improvements were made over the
previous system, Georgia still had the
challenge of ensuring data integrity and
protecting the system from internal
manipulation and external cyberattacks.
到
BLOCKCHAIN SOLUTION
Blockchain is a distributed ledger tech-
nology that empowers anyone with an
Internet connection to transfer any-
thing of value (currency, 数据, survey
答案) with unmatched security and
integrity. Trust is embedded in the
Blockchain architecture—a decentral-
化的, cryptographically secured data-
base that can be seen and downloaded
by everyone on the network. 因为
every
A
Blockchain maintains a full record of
the transactions run through the net-
工作, there is no central point of attack
或者
failure. A paradigm-shifting
approach to security, Blockchain pre-
vents fraud by requiring verification
from every source computer before a
transaction is approved.
(电脑) 的
“node”
The Georgian government has shown
strong interest in adopting Blockchain
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A Blockchain-Based Land Titling Project in the Republic of Georgia
数字 1. Blockchain-Based Land Titling Project Workflow Chart
registry and
technology as part of its effort to restore
public trust in government agencies.
Papuna Ugrekhelidze, former chairman
of the NAPR, said in a 2016 statement
那, “by building a Blockchain-based
财产
满的
advantage of the security provided by the
Blockchain technology, the Republic of
Georgia can show the world that we are a
modern, transparent and corruption-free
country that can lead the world in
changing the way land titling is done and
pave the way to additional prosperity for
all.”11.
采取
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
technology between
Following a series of discussions about
Blockchain
这
technical provider, Bitfury, 和
Republic of Georgia, the two parties
formed a partnership in April 2016 到
create a one-year pilot project to move the
country’s land registry system to a
Blockchain platform. Headquartered in
阿姆斯特丹, Bitfury
full-scale
Blockchain technology company that
started out as one of the earliest Bitcoin
mining companies. It has transitioned
into a Blockchain software and hardware
service provider. Hernando de Soto, A
renowned Peruvian economist, serves as
is a
an advisor and supporter of the Georgia
pilot project.
There are several key reasons why
Bitfury and Georgia entered into this
partnership. 第一的, Bitfury had already
established strong ties with the Republic
of Georgia; by the time the cooperation
memo was signed, Bitfury had opened
three data centers in the country. 但,
more importantly, Georgia has been able
to maintain an accurate account of land
titles in its current NAPR database, 哪个
is crucial for the success of a Blockchain
项目. The quality of data determines
the success of the project. 实际上, 这
World Bank has recognized the Republic
of Georgia for the quality of its land
registry service. According to the World
Bank’s report, “Doing Business 2016,” the
Republic of Georgia was ranked third
之中 189 countries in ease of property
registration.12. The report showed that it
took only one day to register property in
Georgia and the registry cost accounted
for merely 0.1 percent of the total
property value.13. The Republic of
Georgia’s land registry efficiency far
exceeds that of developed countries such
as the United States and Germany, 在哪里
it took on average 15.2 和 39 天,
分别, to register properties.14.
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Qiuyun Shang and Allison Price
数字 2. Blockchain-Based Land Titling System in the Republic of Georgia
来源: Bitfury Group
Since it was announced in 2016, 这
Georgia land titling pilot project has had
two phases.
PHASE ONE
The first phase of the project started in
四月 2016 and lasted for one year. 这
goal of the first phase was to apply
Blockchain technology to Georgia’s
land registry system. It should be noted
that this project did not set out to build
a brand new Blockchain-based land title
registry system for the Republic of
乔治亚州. What Bitfury created was a
Blockchain-based timestamping layer
on top of the NAPR’s existing digital
land registry system.
According to the Harvard Business
审查, a team of seven people from
Bitfury and the NAPR worked on the
项目, with the NAPR in charge of
deciding the system content. 数字 1
shows how the Blockchain-based land
registry system worked in the Republic of
乔治亚州. The user interface was not
modified after the Blockchain technology
was implemented; users log into the same
NAPR system to register their land
certificates with the government. 变化
were made primarily to the backend of
这
系统, where certificates are
timestamped and hashed in the Bitcoin
Blockchain, one of the largest and most
secure public Blockchains.
According to Bitfury, one of the most
significant benefits of timestamping is to
“add immutability and allow the owner of
the document to prove to anyone that the
receipt existed no later than the time of
timestamping, and that it was authorized
by NAPR.”15. 此外, to minimize the
amount of data written onto
这
Blockchain and further improve privacy,
Bitfury uses a special data structure,
Merkel Tree, to pool and aggregate
hashes. During the process, the NAPR is
responsible for adding the Blockchain
Application Programming Interface call
in its registry software and providing
guidelines for stakeholders who need to
check it.
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A Blockchain-Based Land Titling Project in the Republic of Georgia
一般来说, 公民, investors, 和
government agencies could all benefit
from an efficient and
transparent
Blockchain-based land titling system that
includes the steps the NAPR took with
timestamping. A sample system is shown
图中 2.
PHASE TWO
efficiency
Impressed by
和
这
transparency of Phase One, the Georgian
government decided to expand the
project and signed a memorandum in
二月 2017 to initiate Phase Two.
While Bitfury and the Republic of
Georgia’s government are still finalizing
the design of Phase Two, Blockchain
technology is expected to be integrated
further in order to improve the process of
land sales and transfers.
指出
Former NAPR chair Ugrekhelidze
有
那, with Blockchain
技术, Georgian citizens will be able
to access their property information on
the NAPR website and put it up for sale.
The nodes of the network will verify that
the buyer has sufficient funds and that the
seller owns the property before the
transaction is concluded. With the new
技术, all land sales and transfer
information will be accessible to the
public and it will not be easily altered by
government agencies. To realize this
想象, Bitfury suggests using Exonum, A
这
private Blockchain
company developed that anchors data to
the Bitcoin Blockchain. Anchoring is the
process of storing a fingerprint (a hash) 的
a system to a public source. Bitfury
explains that “anchoring removes the
need to trust the administrator(s) of an
Exonum Blockchain unconditionally; 在
同一时间, it keeps sensitive data
private.”16. Exonum was still being tested
as of September 2018, while Bitfury has
begun discussions with other agencies
框架
interested in participating in Phase Two
of the Georgia project.17.
结论
According to Forbes, the Georgia pilot
project marks the first time a national
government used the Bitcoin Blockchain
to record land titles.18. The project has
significantly improved the government’s
efficiency and helped restore public trust
in national agencies. 作为 2018, a total of
1.5 million land titles in the Republic of
Georgia were published on
这
Blockchain, which ensures the security
immutability of the data.19. 在
和
十一月 2017, Bitfury presented its
findings from the Georgia Land-Titling
Project to students at Harvard Business
School.20.
The success of the Georgia project
was the result of two crucial elements—
education and data quality. For a
Blockchain-based project to succeed, 全部
stakeholders must be educated about
Blockchain technology and the challenges
it can address. Tomicah Tillemann,
founder of
the Blockchain Trust
Accelerator, said of the Georgia project
that “education and public engagement
are as crucial as the technical side of the
工作. Technology is not going to take
care of itself. People and the government
need to know why they are using this
technology and what problem it can
solve.”21. Throughout the project, 这
NAPR helped the Georgian people
understand how Blockchain technology
can ensure the immutability of land title
data without sacrificing privacy.
More importantly, the existence of
high-quality data helped guarantee the
validity of the project. Without accurate
数据, the power of a Blockchain-based
solution for a land registry would have
been greatly limited, as poor-quality
information posted on the Blockchain
would make third-party verification of
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Qiuyun Shang and Allison Price
8. Weiss and Corsi, Bitfury.
9. Weiss and Corsi, Bitfury.
10. Weiss and Corsi, Bitfury.
11. Shin, Laura. “Republic of Georgia to Pilot
Land Titling on Blockchain with
Economist Hernando De Soto, BitFury.”
Forbes, 四月 21, 2016. 可用于
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/201
6/04/21/republic-of-georgia-to-pilot-land-
titling-on-Blockchain-with-economist-
hernando-de-soto-bitfury/.
12. Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory
Quality and Efficiency. World Bank, 2015,
p. 211. 可用于
https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0667-4.
13. Doing Business 2016, p. 211.
14. Doing Business 2016, p. 251.
15. “Answer Notes from Bitfury’s Head of
Exonum Gleb Palienko,” 十二月 2018.
16. Exonum website, 十二月 2018.
Available at https://exonum.com/.
17. “Answer Notes.”
18. Shin, Laura. “The First Government to
Secure Land Titles on the Bitcoin
Blockchain Expands Project.” Forbes,
二月 7, 2017. 可用于
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/201
7/02/07/the-first-government-to-secure-
land-titles-on-the-bitcoin-Blockchain-
expands-project/.
19. Weiss and Corsi, Bitfury.
20. “Bitfury Trumpets Blockchain Land
Registry with Republic of Georgia at
Harvard and UN.” International Business
Times UK, 十一月 9, 2017. 可用于
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitfury-
trumpets-Blockchain-land-registry-
republic-georgia-harvard-un-1646616.
21. Tillemann, 时间. Personal Interview, 七月 7,
2018.
land titles difficult. The high quality of the
NAPR data was a consequence of the
political reforms pursued by the Republic
of Georgia before the project. This speaks
to an important truth of Blockchain-
based solutions for governments: 尽管
the technology can ensure the security
and immutability of information, 它
cannot be a substitute for the institutional
基础设施
为了
ensuring the quality of data.
is essential
那
1. “Why Secure Land Rights Matter.” World
Bank text/HTML, 行进 24, 2017.
可用于
http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/land.
2. Deininger, Klaus. “For Billions without
Formal Land Rights, the Tech Revolution
Offers New Grounds for Hope.” Let’s Talk
Development text, 行进 15, 2018.
可用于
http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttal
k/billions-without-formal-land-rights-tech-
revolution-offers-new-grounds-hope.
3. Jochnick, Chris. “Land Rights and Global
Development.” Foreign Affairs, 二月 7,
2017. 可用于
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/201
7-02-07/land-rights-and-global-
发展.
4. Avramov, Yuriy Valentinovich et al.
“Registering Property: Using Information
to Curb Corruption.” World Bank,
十二月 1, 2017. 可用于
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/e
n/270331513854675950/Registering-
property-using-information-to-curb-
腐败.
5. Graglia, 迈克尔, and Christopher Mellon.
“Blockchain and Property in 2018: 在
End of the Beginning.” Innovations 12, 不.
1-2 (2018): 90-116. 可用于
https://doi.org/10.1162/inov_a_00270.
6. Graglia and Mellon, “Blockchain and
Property.”
7. 韦斯, 米切尔, and Elena Corsi. Bitfury:
Blockchain for Government. 哈佛
Business School Case 818-031, 哈佛
Business School, 十月 16, 2017.
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