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Many developing countries don't have a working system of tracking property rights, and what they do have can be fragile and incomplete. In Haiti, for instance, a large earthquake in 2010 confirming many small farmers' ownership of the land they worked. Even years later, many farmers . People are .

This sort of problem – caused by natural disasters or not – is widespread, causing financial hardship for families in the developing world. Without an official, enforceable legal title to their property, people can't resolve disputes over who can use which land for what – like who can farm where. They also to invest in their homes, businesses or communities. The value of those properties, and the lost economic opportunities for owners of assets without formal documentation, has been worldwide.

From blockchains and cryptocurrencies for the past three years, I have become convinced that these technologies have the potential to fight – including by securely recording property ownership.

I'm far from alone: Blockchain-based land registries have started up in , , , , , , and . The problems these efforts are addressing are significant.

Current challenges in land registries

Across the world, land registries are inefficient and unreliable – or even downright corrupt. In Honduras, some government officials altered the country's land ownership database, .

In many African countries, more than . In Ghana, , and the country's courts have a long backlog of .

In India, millions of rural families . The lack of secure land ownership is a in the country than the caste system or a high illiteracy rate.

Brazil has no single centralized land registry. Instead, about . The system is confusing, with many different documents created in different historical periods. Most land documents on property boundaries. Little wonder, then, that the system is plagued by – two formal documents each saying someone else owns a piece of land.

These fragile and incomplete property rights systems in the developing world can affect the entire planet. In Brazil's Amazon rainforest, illicit land grabbers forge deeds and use violence and bribery to , often under fake names, which the locals call Then they , which has . Having , these land thieves then are . This cycle has repeated for years, contributing to widespread Amazon deforestation.

How blockchain-based land registries work

Using a blockchain system to record transactions could help solve these problems. A blockchain is a secure database that's stored in a distributed – but connected – set of computers around the internet. It's not susceptible to tampering, and every addition to the database must be , making clear who's changing what and when. So instead of a system with multiple conflicting documents, some of which may have been forged or altered, there's only one record with a clear history of modifications, including who did what when.

Blockchain transactions can include all kinds of information, including geographic boundaries or serial numbers and an owner's identity. In Ghana, for instance, the nonprofit Bitland runs a with a written description of each parcel of land as well as GPS coordinates of boundary points and satellite photos of the area.

A collaboration between a U.S.-based blockchain startup and a Brazilian real estate registry has created a record-keeping system for land in the . Its blockchain database contains details like the property's address, the owner's name and contact information, zoning rules and a unique identification number for the property itself.

Blockchain can provide other advantages too. For instance, when transferring land in the republic of Georgia, the buyer and the seller go to a public registry house and pay a fee between $50 and $200. Moving this process onto a blockchain .

Remaining challenges

Just starting a blockchain-based database isn't enough to solve these problems, though. Data must be accurate when it's entered, and records must include enough information to be authoritative about the properties they're referring to. A new technological system won't fix much in countries where it's in the first place. Also, bureaucrats may object to new record-keeping systems that .

However, in places where governments or others who create the systems are viewed as and run a transparent process, blockchain-based land registry systems could give many of the world's poorest people their first real asset. Once they have straightened out complex, corrupt and contradictory registry systems, people can safely invest in, borrow against and truly improve their properties, helping lift themselves out of poverty.

This article was originally published on . Read the .