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Could property ownership be automated?
Image via flickr.
What’s extraordinary about a smart contract is that it gives blockchain the power to not only record property rights but enforce them. Once deployed, a dozen lines of computer code can fulfill the same role as the county records office, the courts and the police. You can have “the function of a trusted bureaucracy without the expense of putting together a trusted bureaucracy”, Waldman explains.
— the Guardian
The homeowner posts a price for the rental. The renter sends the money through her smartphone. Inside the front door is a very small computer connected to the internet. The computer knows when the renter is allowed to enter and unlocks the door for her when she pushes a button on her phone.
Smart contracts run on blockchain ledgers, the same technology that enables Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. For more on the possible spatial ramifications of this technology, check out some past Archinect coverage: