JustChain, a startup based in the United Arab Emirates focused on implementing distributed ledger blockchain solutions for justice and public safety, announced Sunday a legal notary platform called NotaryChain.

This development follows the recent approval of regulations from the UAE Cabinet on digital signatures and the application to notary services in line with the UAE’s Vision 2021 involving digital technology.

Using NotaryChain, legal documents can be notarized digitally and securely from anywhere, which will provide cost savings for notary publics and customers. The digital documents can be witnessed and then saved in high-quality formats to an enterprise-grade distributed ledger and protected with cryptographic keys in a tamperproof chain of custody.

The platform is designed to provide notary capability for legal documents such as power of attorney, memorandum of association, contracts and marriage certificates.

“NotaryChain represents a new era of accessibility, convenience, and productivity for the notary public,” said JustChain Chief Executive Mohammed Akbar Farook. “Based on blockchain technology, the platform offers a secure and tamperproof digital alternative to the traditional process of having to hand-deliver and notarize documents.”

Llegal documents can get lost, threatened with fraud or forgery or destroyed. Even authentic documents stored at courthouses, which exist to be compared for verification, can be destroyed. With a blockchain ledger, digital copies are stored across multiple nodes in the cloud across the globe to make this likelihood almost impossible.

Blockchain technology secures information in a historical chain of transactions that uses a cryptographic hash to prove that the block has not been tampered with. Since the previous block is signed by the following block’s hash, any change to the subsequent block would change the value of that hash and thus would reveal tampering. The ledger itself is also distributed between many operators, which means that if any copy differs, it’s instantly revealed that it has been changed.

“This is in line with the UAE’s national strategy for blockchain as well as the Dubai Paperless Strategy that is being implemented throughout government entities in the emirate,” said Farook.

NotaryChain is available as a cloud and an on-premises solution and provides advanced features such as a single-sign-on national identity login using UAE Pass, digital signatures, electronic seal, verification for Emirates ID, Quick Response code-based instant verification of notarized documents and built-in templates for documents.

JustChain also launched a blockchain application in 2020 that anonymously tracked COVID-19 patients. The application shared real-time critical case information securely with health care providers, clinicians, government authorities, medical suppliers, laboratories and researchers so immediate care and attention could be provided.

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