Here is a great question we have been asked several times followed by our response.
So how does an individual prove ownership initially before it is put on the blockchain and what is to stop someone from claiming ownership to someone else's property ?
Response - Great question. So this is only a "potential" short term issue. Initially the platform will be released for consumers to register their existing assets to validate the technology, with the end goal being for companies, registrars, etc. to register the assets at the point of production so ownership is transferred upon purchase thus eliminating the need for people to register anything. Of course this is the long-term vision as it will take a couple decades for assets to be phased out of their life cycles.
Short-term the situation you mentioned could in theory occur if someone had the unique ID of someone else's asset. But then you need to look at incentive behind it, since it will take effort (intangible value) and a network fee (tangible value). Someone could do this just to make someone else's life more difficult, which may occur in extremely rare circumstances, but other than that what would incentivize someone to take this action? A sale or other distribution would still involve the delivery of a physical asset, which the seller (person who fraudulently claimed ownership) could not complete.
Any dispute that arises would be handled through a consensus protocol (planned to be similar to OpenBazaar's dispute resolution), but based on limited incentive as outlined above, this is not planned to be a major component of the platform that is used often, just implemented as a fallback for rare situations.
If you have any other questions or this response was not an adequate answer, please join our Slack community (
https://slackin.mybit.io) and we would be happy to have a discussion!
