California DMV Is Putting Its Titles on the Blockchain

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in California is running a project to digitize all of its titles and put them on a blockchain. The project, which will use the Tezos blockchain and has the assistance of Oxhead Alpha, a crypto dev company, aims to allow users to transfer titles as NFTs in the future.

Innovation Comes to the DMV in California

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in California is working to bring innovation to its tasks by decentralizing its functions. The institution is currently in the process of moving all of its registered titles to the blockchain, according to Ajay Gupta, the chief digital officer of the DMV in the state.

The project, which started back in 2020 and stopped progress due to the pandemic, will produce a “shadow ledger” of all of the vehicle titles in the state, to modernize its registry and operations. The new system will be established on top of the Tezos blockchain and will be built in partnership with Oxhead Alpha, a cryptocurrency development company.

The system will be managed by the DMV in a privately managed instance of the Tezos blockchain, which is already running with nodes validating operations, Fortune Crypto reports.

Title Transfers on the Blockchain

The DMV of California hopes to finalize the setup of the system in the next three months and start building apps that offer various functionalities for customers.

One of the touted benefits of having a digitized, persistent registry is that vehicles sold as lemons, meaning they were sold with significant defects, will remain registered as such, protecting future buyers. This was not possible with the current system, which allows cars registered in other states to be sold without this designation.

Another application of this system would be to link it with similar systems from other states to build a global registry of cars in the country, but this would depend on how interested other areas might be in implementing a blockchain system.

One of the most significant applications projected is to allow customers to transfer titles as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using a consumer app managed by the DMV, given that the users comply with all of the requirements to do so. This kind of functionality is on the horizon, per Gupta’s statements. However, he did not give a time frame for the launch of this feature.

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