Of course, if you go to any notary's office, the chances are that they still have their usual ways of working, but technological advances already augur a promising future. The notary is a very necessary professional in some tasks for citizens: deeds, wills... And if this professional is already a guarantee of security in itself, imagine how much more so if blockchain technology is added to their activity. Security and transparency in its purest form.
That said, let's tell you how Smart Contracts revolutionise this professional sector. Ready?
Smart Contracts in the notary's office
Although we speak of them as 'smart' and 'contracts', they are neither contracts nor are they intelligent. What they are is obedient. As the notary Francisco Rosales points out, "it is a computer programme that allows a consequence to be produced in the event of any circumstance foreseen in advance".
It has undoubtedly become an alternative that we can already describe as 'effective' for self-protection of citizens' contracts and an alternative for the administration of justice. We are facing the notary of the 21st century, who has become familiar with terms that were unknown until recently, such as big data, Smart contract or crowdfunding.
As proof of this evolution, some initiatives to apply blockchain technology to land registries have already been made public, for example: the Spanish Association of Registrars has reached an agreement with Alastria to start investigating how they can work with this technology.
what does blockchain have to do with this?
It is still too early to talk about blockchain as the new notary, but there is already talk of apostilling some of its documents. In legal terms, an apostille serves to certify the authenticity of a document and prevent it from being forged.
Recent news about Smart Contracts show that the notary's office could be a new sector in which to apply the blockchain. In this sense, it should be taken into account that with its operation, the document is not stored as such, but what is stored is the hash. In this way, we can speak of the blockchain as a registration technology, which is why the European Union itself is already evaluating it for its future. The blockchain is already demonstrating that it can perform some notarial functions, such as the registration of data.
Conclusion on Smart Contracts in our era
Smart Contracts are part of the blockchain technology. They are capable of being executed automatically, so if we take into account that they are agreements between two or more parties, they can be self-fulfilling. Although many professionals still doubt their true potential, Smart Contracts are managing to avoid bureaucracy, censorship or custody, and all thanks to their distributed nature.
Who would have thought that the invention of Nick Szabo, a lawyer and cryptographer, in 1995, would give rise to what we know today as Smart Contracts. Did you know that Bitcoin already has some smart contracts already created that are executed by default?
There is even talk of possible products or applications that could be developed based on this new technology, as well as sectors in which it could be applied, for example: distributed markets that could make P2P contracts and trading, automation of inheritances by allocating assets after death, insurance, etc. In short, thanks to distributed and immutable transactions, maximum security and transparency is achieved.
Licences, patents, commercial registers, etc., are getting closer and closer to the implementation of this technology. What about you? Are you not yet part of the blockchain ecosystem? What do you need to do it? We can guide you.
