That's fine - I understand that you don't see why we're doing it this way.
But if you actually try to implement a system that does what we do, you'll pretty quickly discover why we do it this way.
A lot of your questions here seem to make fundamental assumptions which aren't true: if you're interested in how our tech works, see http://mattereum.com/lp which is a paper from a few years ago which outlines the legal/technical strategy in a bit more detail.
With that noted:
(1) the NFT is a faster, cheaper, easier way of doing the transaction.
(2) executing legal contracts in an atomic way is harder than updating databases in an atomic way. Believe me on this.
The NFT purchase triggers a set of legal contracts to be executed, and identifies the buyer. Without the legals the NFT does nothing. But with the legals alone you're looking at months of legal paperwork to transfer a property, rather than a single purchase on a site like OpenSea.
> (2) executing legal contracts in an atomic way is harder than updating databases in an atomic way. Believe me on this.
I believe you, but Ethereum doesn't help you for the legal part, it can only help you with the database part, so it's still unclear why you're using it if you're talking about some legal atomicity, whatever that means.
> The NFT purchase triggers a set of legal contracts to be executed, and identifies the buyer. Without the legals the NFT does nothing. But with the legals alone you're looking at months of legal paperwork to transfer a property, rather than a single purchase on a site like OpenSea.
If the NFT purchase only "triggers" these legal contracts, what prevents you from triggering it anywhere else?
I don't understand how "triggering" these legal contracts the traditional way requires months of paperwork but "triggering" from an NFT wouldn't.
The SPV can, in theory, commit fraud and transfer ownership of the asset out from under the SPV owner.
If it does that, the directors are in Deep Shit.
The transactional architecture is basically: paperwork is prepared as a set of legal warranties. NFT purchase also pays for all of those warranties giving a very strong set of legal protections to the NFT purchaser.
The key is simultaneous execution of all the contracts as a single atomic transaction without any chance of mis execution or somebody changing their mind half way through.
Think of it as a vending machine for legal obligations. Automated obligation.
Smart contract.
Everything is a Turing machine in the end. Everything can be done on paper. All that really changes is defect rate and transaction cost.
I'm still struggling to understand it. The blockchain in this case _doesn't_ provide a single source of truth. As you yourself said, it can be invalidated or a legal system can override it. So I can't just "check the blockchain" and know the actual ownership. So aren't we just back to where we were but with an extra step of enriching some miners/stakers?
What we're moving around on the blockchain, _fundamentally_ is liability. The blockchain is an accurate register of who's holding precisely which bag if something goes wrong. When money changes hands and the NFT moves, the risks move around - a new person is being protected, the new owner of the NFT.
There's a lot more to transacting property than title - condition of the place, planning permission, 50 other factors. All of that is being represented as claims, and liability if those claims are inaccurate.
But if you actually try to implement a system that does what we do, you'll pretty quickly discover why we do it this way.
A lot of your questions here seem to make fundamental assumptions which aren't true: if you're interested in how our tech works, see http://mattereum.com/lp which is a paper from a few years ago which outlines the legal/technical strategy in a bit more detail.
With that noted:
(1) the NFT is a faster, cheaper, easier way of doing the transaction.
(2) executing legal contracts in an atomic way is harder than updating databases in an atomic way. Believe me on this.
The NFT purchase triggers a set of legal contracts to be executed, and identifies the buyer. Without the legals the NFT does nothing. But with the legals alone you're looking at months of legal paperwork to transfer a property, rather than a single purchase on a site like OpenSea.