The lost-tool problem is not about trust. Both parties are acting in good faith and both parties forget. The item leaves on a Saturday, gets used once, goes in a garage, and is genuinely invisible from that point on.
A loan has a state, and the state changes
What makes lending trackable is treating it as something with a lifecycle rather than a note: offered, accepted, out, returned. Each of those is a real transition, and the useful ones are the boring middle steps — knowing something is out is what a note in your phone never quite tells you.
The awkward part is the asking
Most people will not chase a neighbor over a hedge trimmer, which is exactly why it stays gone. A shared record removes the social cost: the reminder comes from a ledger both sides agreed to, not from you deciding to bring it up.
The value of a lending record is that nobody has to be the person who remembers.