Blockchain Based Residential Smart Rent

GDPR-compliant blockchain-based residential rental platform, designed to allow landlords and tenants to establish and digitally sign rental contracts and make rental payments through stablecoins with a high level of security and transparency.

Master Thesis in Computer Science and Engineering

Author

• André Proença - GitHub

Supervisors

• Miguel Correia - Instituto Superior Técnico Full Professor - Blockchain and Cybersecurity Specialist
• Tiago Dias - Unlockit Founder and CEO

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Table of Contents

1. Blockchain Based Residential Smart Rent
2. Author
3. Supervisors
4. Cooperation
5. More about Unlockit
6. Introduction
7. Expected Results
8. Desirable knowledge for further reading
9. Abstract
10. Demo
11. Used Technologies
12. Getting Started

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Cooperation

The Thesis idea was provided by Instituto Superior Técnico in cooperation with Unlockit, a DLT-based company operating in the real estate industry.

More about Unlockit

Unlockit - Real estate made simple

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Introduction

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The real estate market is fragmented and real estate mediation processes are considered extremely complex, inefficient, and opaque. This complexity and lack of transparency results from the current process of buying and selling a property, involving a large number of actors with different responsibilities and objectives, which often leads to a conflict of interest, resulting in a lack of trust between the parties. The current solution to this problem is the use of intermediaries such as banks, real estate agencies, notaries and law firms.

However, this intermediation makes the process slower and more expensive due to the process and communication inefficiencies. Blockchain technology helps to solve the intermediation problems and in the verification and traceability of multistep transactions needing verification and traceability.

It can provide secure transactions, reduce compliance costs, and speed up data transfer processing. Companies and governments alike are now investing heavily in DLT technology to offer better services and products to people.

Expected Results

• Study the state of the art on blockchain technology (permissionless and private DLTs) and solutions that apply to the real estate market.
• Identify the main challenges currently faced by Real Estate rent processes;
• Understand and study blockchain solutions which apply to real estate smart rent;
• Implement a smart rent PoC and evaluate it;
• Write the thesis and an academic paper.

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Desirable knowledge for further reading

• Blockchain Fundamental concepts
• Real Estate concepts
• Programming Basic skills

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Abstract

 Show more

The real estate market includes complex and inefficient mediation processes. Renting a property envolves multiple entities with different responsibilities and interests. Therefore it is imperative to establish a trustful relationship between parties through intermediaries such as notaries, banks or real estate agencies to avoid eventual disputes. Although an intermediary ensures trust, the current process still has some drawbacks concerning efficiency, costs, transparency, bureaucracy and data security. The blockchain technology aims to reduce this issues by providing transparent and secure real estate transactions. We propose a GDPR compliant blockchain-based residential smart rental platform, designed to allow both landlords and tenants to establish rental contracts and make rental payments securely.

Index Terms – Blockchain, Smart Contracts, Real Estate, GDPR

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Demo

Unlockit.mp4

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Used Technologies

• Hyperledger Fabric - A Blockchain Platform for the Enterprise;
• React - The library for web and native user interfaces;
• MongoDB - The Cloud-Native Database;
• Google OAuth 2.0 - OAuth 2.0 protocol for authentication and authorization;
• TypeScript - A strongly typed programming language that builds on JavaScript;

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Getting Started

The thesis process requires writing 3 documents:

1. Project
2. Dissertation
3. Paper