







Estonia, Gibraltar, Malta… Romania? Romania has never been on any shortlist of European blockchain hotspots, but the situation may be ripe for change.





In recent weeks, some 50,000 Romanians have taken to the streets against what they described as entrenched corruption in the country. The protests have rumbled on for over a year now with little sign the people’s complaints will be resolved, and Romania's President Klaus Iohannis, leader of the governing Social Democratic Party (PSD), appears unlikely to step down or reverse the decisions that sparked the protests.





Many Romanian expats living abroad have returned to the country to take part in demonstrations, angry that much of the US$4 billion they collectively send home each year to one of the European Union's least developed countries is being squandered.





But if people felt confident that money being returned to the country was not automatically being embezzled, the situation could be defused. This presents an opportunity for blockchain technology, which is widely associated with transparency and accountability.





“I just want to know money I’m sending back home to my family is being used right. I don’t know anything about blockchain but if it helps then I’m all for it,” Elena, a Romanian expat living in London, told LongHash. One Bucharest resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said they spend hundreds of dollars each month on bribes. “It’s just accepted. But it shouldn’t be. This money should be going towards infrastructure and our children’s future, but it’s going into people’s pockets.”





Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger that allows people and organizations to record assets, transfer value and track transactions, ensuring the transparency, integrity and traceability of data without a central authority to authenticate the information.





Blockchain technology can counter both corporate and government corruption because records and transactions are certificable without the use of a central database, and the data cannot be erased or altered without someone else taking note. Information on a public blockchain is visible and accessible to the public, potentially allowing citizens to see the sources of government funds as well as their destination.

“Blockchain's evolution from the financial sector to the public sector is inevitable, and it is already happening,” said Carlos Santiso of the Inter-American Development Bank, who has worked in some two dozen countries to help to combat corruption with public policy. “It is happening in the space of digital identity, with refugees, of asset registries, and property registries, and in public contracting with the tracking of transactions through smart contracts.”





Earlier this year, Romania’s neighboring Poland (which is also wrestling with its own political crisis) moved banking records onto a blockchain.





Izabella Murawska-Deneau, a spokesperson for blockchain tech company Billon, which worked with the Poland’s banks on the credit histories project, said she expects countries like Romania to eventually move records and even government transactions onto blockchains.





“The size of the country is important. At the moment you’re far more likely to see smaller countries opting to move records onto blockchains,” Murawska-Deneau said. “Romania could end up being faster to implement blockchain than Poland.”





Elsewhere, Sweden is running a trial for a blockchain-powered land registry that will make visible the details of real estate transactions to all interested parties. Georgia has made good progress in registering land titles using blockchain technology, while Ukraine is looking into the same to reform its land registry process, which is riddled with red tape. Honduras has also tried to create a decentralized database of land titles using blockchain.





The difference between these countries and Romania, however, is that many of their leaders proactively seek to improve transparency and fight corruption. “The issue of corruption in Romania has been building for some time, and this is why people are so frustrated,” said Niklas Kossow of the Hertie School of Governance, who specialises in the use of digital technologies in the fight against corruption.





“Blockchain technology would certainly be a novel approach, but I would not expect to see it in the near future: further development of the technology is needed, people are not as aware of it as they’d need to be, and the country’s PSD [Social Democratic Party] would resist the plans.”





Santiso agrees and believes many blockchain experiments have failed in countries where the

underlying legacy systems are broken.





“The countries which have the most to gain from blockchain-based solutions to fix broken legacy systems and anchor integrity in high-risk areas, such as public registries, or government processes, including public procurement, will also have the hardest time using it effectively,” Santiso said. “However, blockchain could add a layer of security to records and transactions that are particularly exposed to corruption.”





Billy Bambrough is a London-based writer.







