First American is going to have to first convince the various legislatures that it is in their best interests to turn over their land records recording business to private industry.  This technology, not only puts abstractors out of work, it also gets rid of recording offices.  Recording offices with their recording fees and transfer taxes are a major source of revenue for local and state governments.  If you thought the war over MERS Assignments of Mortgages was something, wait until you see the chorus of elected officials when their revenue source is attacked.   If First American fails at getting rid of recording offices, then all block chain becomes is an expensive parallel electronic filing cabinet, which may or may not be a good substitute for the public record.  The courts would then have to chose which set of records to believe when the challenges to title begin to flood the court dockets.    

When blockchain was unveiled as a currency a few years ago, it was going to replace cash and credit cards, but now that the trading price of bitcoin is a fraction of what it was at that point, that sort of talk has been getting quieter.  I suspect blockchain for titles will as well.  Like bitcoin, it will become the currency  of choice for people hijacking computer systems, and general international electronic fraud. The consumer is not going to be too well protected once the first fraudulent title hits the Internet and becomes a permanent chain of title.   It is a shame to see a major international underwriter become involved in such an undertaking.  One would have thought they would have been more circumspect.