A few years ago, I was looking for work and willing to do anything. I ended up working in a warehouse – but never stopped searching for other sources of income. Becoming a notary public came across my table, and I thought, “hmm here’s something easy and useful I could do”. While I never became one, I have used them on multiple occasions – and as I began to become more involved in the blockchain and crypto worlds, I couldn’t get the similarities out of my mind.

What is a Notary Public?

In the United States, and most other English Speaking countries, a Notary Public is a Common Law officer who’s main function is to serve as witness to and administer oaths, affidavits, declarations, aid in document prep and authenticate documents – among other duties. By country, province and state, the functions and power of Notary Publics can vary widely. However these are their common duties.

Specifically in the United States, a Notary Public most commonly serves as a witness to the signing of documents and must record these in a ledger that they carry. The ledger then serves as proof that documents were signed, witnessed and notarized between parties.

Quite literally, their job is to “act as an impartial witness”. Sounds familiar right?

Notary Publics are a human representation of Blockchain tech. Decentralized witness which provide an impartial means to record and confirm documents being signed and report those in their ledger while taking a commission to perform the service.

So how can the blockchain help?

Although the legality of transferring Notary duties to the blockchain may face hurdles – lets hypothesize how it could work by following the “5 Steps to a Proper Notarization” as outlined in the National Notary Association below.

1. Require a personal appearance

Depending on the format of this new hypothetical notarization – we may still want to assume there will need to be a personal appearance. Why is this important? This allows the notary to confirm the identity of both signatory parties. Anonymous signatories invalidate the entire point of notaries. We must be able to prove that we are real and approve of whichever document is being signed.

However, I do envision a BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) program, which would assign signatory ID’s (in otherwords, a private key) to users of the program after that user has verified their identity, in the same way we verify our identities now in order to trade on exchanges.

However, the key could be used as digital signature tied to a public record of the document being signed.

2. Look over the Document

The notary as an intermediary would scan and approve the document being signed. As a notary, they would add their own public notary key to the document as a confirmation that the document meets notary standards and has been properly notarized.

3. Screen the signer and verify facts.

As an addendum to point number 1 – an in-person appearance would still be crucial to the function of the notary – as they would need to verify identities and confirm that the signatories are not acting under duress. Even the most advanced technology can not stop evil and people who seek to take advantage of others.

4. Record your journal entry.

This is where the Blockchain would really shine (and improve the process)! Every notary must keep a journal or are at least encourage to – in order to track and verify all notarizations. In doing this, they often record both party’s signatures, the document and other information which would be crucial to verifying a notarization.

So, imagine with me for a second – two people with private “signatures” “send” their signatures to a notary who “receives” theirs and adds their own to a “contract” which is created and stored on the blockchain. To take it even one step further – a photo or digital copy of the notarized document could be added with its own “address” and stored in a blob storage container or other cloud hosted format, or even directly on the block chain – so that any document is searchable, and any signatory is confirmable at anytime and anywhere.

Lawyers and companies would no longer need to hunt down notaries or documents, they could simple run a search by key or address and find the blockchain committed “transactions” of those documents.

And, as a method of payment – tokens or coins could be exchanged on the platform to be used to pay the notary. These could be purchased in app, to ensure, and possibly even encourage, the confirmation of identity.

It seems to me to be a perfect digital to solution to one of the oldest professions in the world!

5. Complete, sign, and seal the notarial document

At this point, the notary would complete their physical duties as a notary, and, having confirmed the payment and signatures in the block chain, be able to present the notarized document to the signatories.

In theory, if this was an app, similar to many other wallets out there, the parties could all process the ledger aspect digitally and only the stamp of the notary and physical signatures of both parties would be needed on the signed document.

And now, with how advanced the cameras in our smart phones have become – taking a clear and easily usable photo of a document that is then stored in a decentralized manner would make the visibility of docs for signatories easy to find and use.

Privacy issues?

Obviously, a decentralized notary presents some issues of privacy, which in theory, blockchain tech seeks to solve. However, assuming that documents are stored digitally, and “transactions” are committed to the blockchain – safety and privacy would be no issue. How?

Every person has a private key, and a confirmed identity in the system. That key is only searchable if you know the key. Only a notary’s key is publicly listed and searchable, but, you would also need to know their key and any corresponding keys on a document in order to identify it. Every signatory receives a digital confirmation of a signed document and that document’s assigned key/id/address which is stored locally in-app and published worldwide on the blockchain ledger. The document can only be viewed if the person searching is a signatory on the document itself, or has provided “power-of-attorney” to another person. The system would then recognize this “power-of-attorney” keyholder as a valid opener linked to the original signatory. And, since the document for declaring power of attorney would be on the blockchain, it would be verifiable by both keys. When searching, even if someone were to have access to all keys for a related document, they would only be able to view the transaction record, not the document itself. How? Through biometrics. A fingerprint scan could be utilized in this hypothetical app to unlock the document. Similar to how BRD uses a fingerprint to unlock their app.

These steps would ultimately protect the transactions and actual digital records of the documents themselves, while still making the transactions public on the ledger for anyone to see.

In Conclusion

Obviously this may all sound a bit clunky, but, I believe that given the right design, blockchain tech could very easily integrate with existing Notary services world-wide, and provide an international, decentralized notarization system that is accessible and searchable by all parties.

What are your thoughts? Would this be an improvement on current Notary practices? Would this help companies and private citizens with tracking and recognizing documents?

Let me know below!

-KC