- Ripple’s deal with the National Land Registry of Colombia has been killed by the government
- Ripple had signed a deal to put land registry details on the blockchain in July
- However, a new government has canned the project
Poor Ripple just can’t catch a break. After watching the fork created by their erstwhile co-founder, Stellar, take its spot as Moneygram’s blockchain transmitter, its deal with the Colombian land registry now seems to have fallen through. Ripple’s ledger was supposed to be used by the National Land Registry in a landmark partnership that was supposed to showcase the Ripple’s blockchain’s versatility, but the incoming government has shelved the plan.
Project is “Politically Dead”
Ripple announced its deal with the National Land Registry two months ago, with the system, developed by Peersyst, aiming to allow the agency to issue land adjudications for citizens and ensure that the records are accurate, immutable and easy to view. However, despite an apparently successful trial to digitise land registry records, a very recent change in government has brought a change in policy, and the project appears to have been ditched.
Juan Manuel Noruega Martínez, interim director of the National Lands Agency, told Forbes this week that, “This isn’t one of the projects defined in the PETI [Strategic Plan for Information Technologies].”
Mauricio Tovar, co-founder of Blockchain Colombia, a community of crypto and blockchain entrepreneurs and academics in Colombia, added that, “It’s very possible that the project is now politically dead.”
Ripple Goes Back to Square One
If it had gone ahead, the proposed initiative would have seen land deeds added to the Ripple ledger, with Peersyst adding the details to the blockchain after the government finalised land reconciliation processes and sent over supporting documents. Peersyst would then have created a certificate with a QR code that anyone could scan and see the documents associated with the adjudication process, making verification easy.
However, with the deal now seemingly dead, Colombia can go back to paper records and Ripple can go back to focusing on its court case against the Securities and Exchange Commission.
