Blockchain: Can it make marriage easier?

According to this article on Wharton, the argument was that blockchain can fill the "trust deficit" that exists. Although the merits of this argument go beyond the post, what can be agreed is that - at its core - blockchain facilitates trust in a trustless environment.

The central feature of the bitcoin blockchain is that it allows anyone to confirm that the person sending the bitcoins actually has those coins in their wallet and they haven't sent it to someone else.

However, how can this help with marriage?

Well, it's actually more about issuing the actual marriage certificate and not actually resolving actual marriage disputes.

I recently discovered the intricacies involved in issuing a marriage certificate, which I needed in a timely manner. The following must happen before the certificate gets issued:

1. Get a marriage license: The municipality must issue a marriage license. To get this license, the municipal clerk needs to verify your identity. 
2. Get someone to officiate the ceremony: Another person must then officiate the marriage ceremony. Normally, this is a religious person. But it could also be anyone who is recognized by the province to officiate such ceremonies. Let's just call them "officiator" for the purposes of this post. 
3. Send documentation to the government: the "officiator must send the documentation to the government. 
4. The government then issues the marriage certificate to the marriage couple: This is actually not issued by the municipality but a government office in Thunder Bay, which can't be accessed in a reasonable time by a land vehicle from the Greater Toronto Area. (Rumour has it there are a handful of people that process thousands of certificates a day)

So how can blockchain help with this process?

To be a bit more specific, this is the permissioned blockchain (unlike bitcoin which is a public blockchain) that is implemented between trusted parties. As noted in the process described above, there are many parties involved - the bride and groom, the municipal clerk, the officiator and the government - all these parties would need to be on-boarded through a KYC process that would give each participant a private key that enables them to "sign" the "digital paperwork" at each phase of the process.

This would then allow "digital marriage certificates" to be issued instantaneously at a Service Ontario instead of having to wait for the mail to arrive from Thunder Bay.

Ultimately, the use case illustrates that the blockchain can facilitate a processing of "decentralized paperwork" in a more timely manner. Such an approach would also encourage people to get their digital IDs, which then could be leveraged for other processes.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else