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The document discusses the potential of blockchain technology, specifically Ethereum, to address liquidity and transparency issues in real estate investments through tokenization. By creating security tokens that represent fractional ownership of real estate, the investment process can become more accessible and efficient for retail investors. The paper outlines the benefits of tokenization, including increased liquidity, reduced transaction costs, and enhanced transparency.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
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Tokenization_of_Real_Estate_Using_Blockchain_Technology1

The document discusses the potential of blockchain technology, specifically Ethereum, to address liquidity and transparency issues in real estate investments through tokenization. By creating security tokens that represent fractional ownership of real estate, the investment process can become more accessible and efficient for retail investors. The paper outlines the benefits of tokenization, including increased liquidity, reduced transaction costs, and enhanced transparency.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain Technology

Chapter in Lecture Notes in Computer Science · October 2020


DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-61638-0_5

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Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain
Technology

Ashutosh Gupta1 , Jash Rathod1 , Dhiren Patel1 , Jay Bothra2 , Sanket


Shanbhag1 , and Tanmay Bhalerao3
1
VJTI Mumbai, India
{avgupta b17,jsrathod b17}@ce.vjti.ac.in,
{dhiren29p,sanketshanbhag}@gmail.com
2
HSBC, London , UK
[email protected]
3
Autodesk India Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, India
[email protected]

Abstract. Real estate is by far one of the most trusted investments


that people have preferred, being a lucrative investment it provides a
steady source of income in the form of lease and rents. Although there
are numerous advantages, one of the key downsides of real estate invest-
ments is lack of liquidity. Thus, even though global real estate invest-
ments amount to about twice the size of investments in stock markets,
the number of investors in the real estate market is significantly lower.
Blockchain technology has real potential in addressing the issues of liq-
uidity and transparency, opening the market to even retail investors. Ow-
ing to the functionality and flexibility of creating Security Tokens, which
are backed by real-world assets, real estate can be made liquid with the
help of Special Purpose Vehicles. Tokens of ERC 777 standard, which
represent fractional ownership of the real estate can be purchased by an
investor and these tokens can also be listed on secondary exchanges. The
robustness of Smart Contracts can enable the efficient transfer of tokens
and seamless distribution of earnings amongst the investors. This work
describes Ethereum blockchain-based solutions to make the existing Real
Estate investment system much more efficient.

Keywords: Blockchain · Real Estate · Ethereum · Tokenization · Secu-


rity Token · Special Purpose Vehicle.

1 Introduction
Real estate is a unique and complex asset class. The commercial real estate
market makes up a significant economic global segment in terms of the asset
base and the transactional activity. Although the investment market for real
estate is huge, it has been dominated by a relatively closed network of firms
and organizations able to make large investments which are not liquid. Real
estate is different from various other asset classes as it involves high transaction
costs, land use regulations and other barriers to entry. These characteristics of
2 A. Gupta et al.

real estate have implications for the overall efficiency of the market. While there
have been improvements in the information flow and transaction set up and
completion – we are only at the initial few steps in terms of digitization [14]. A
significant portion of the digitized information is hosted on disparate systems,
which results in a lack of transparency and efficiency, and a higher incidence
of inaccuracies that creates a greater potential for fraud. There is still a lot of
improvement that can be made in real estate when it comes to the use of digital
technology and the representation of physical assets in digital forms.
Blockchain technology could enable the real estate industry to address these
inefficiencies and inaccuracies. Simply said, a blockchain is essentially a shared
and distributed database or ledger. Transactions are processed and bundled in
blocks and the blocks encrypted and cryptographically linked in a chain. The
processing takes place within a network of nodes – either public or private – with
a consensus design intended to decentralize authority such that no single source
is the sole decider of transactional integrity. Rather authority is decentralized
across the operators of the nodes, with each node validating and maintaining
verified copies of the ledger [18]. By recording and combining transactions into
a decentralized, secure ledger, a blockchain network creates a “chain” of chrono-
logical data that no one party has control of or can change and such that each
block and the individual transaction can be verified via cryptography. The trans-
action records are further protected by the replication of the data across nodes
allowing for multiple and verifiable sources of truth. The main contributions of
this paper are:

– Providing an approach for Real Estate Asset tokenization by using Ethereum,


thus making it liquid, secure and efficient.
– Extend the approach to provide an automated solution for the transfer of
tokens and distribution of earnings to investors.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the


existing system and its flaws. Section 3 discusses the preliminaries for this work.
Section 4 describes the proposed workflow and Section 5 elaborates on the im-
plementation architecture. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper and suggests
directions for future scope.

2 Existing System and its flaws

Real estate is real and tangible property made up of land as well as anything on it
including natural resources, flora and fauna, and buildings. Any real estate falls
into one of the three categories - Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. One of
the traditional methods to invest in real estate is to buy land or property directly
through a real estate broker. Some of the advantages of real estate investments
are competitive risk-adjusted returns, high tangible asset value, and attractive
and stable income returns in the form of rent and leasing fees. Fig. 1 depicts the
various ways to invest in real estate.
Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain Technology 3

There are numerous drawbacks to traditional real estate investment. First of


all, the initial cost required to buy property is very high. Most of the investors are
not able to meet this required amount and hence cannot invest in real estate.
The system also suffers from a lack of liquidity. Real estate investments are
highly illiquid. To keep earning rental income from the underlying property,
the owner also has to find suitable tenants. One cannot sell a fraction of their
asset and have to sell the entire underlying asset. Moreover, there are generally
numerous intermediaries such as brokers, lawyers, etc. involved in the system.
The transaction costs associated with the real estate market are high and it
takes a lot of time for a real estate deal to get finalized. All these factors make
the system cumbersome and unattractive to a retail investor [2].
Another alternate method to invest in real estate is through Real Estate
Investment Trusts (REIT). A REIT is a trust, corporation or an association
that owns, or finances income-producing real estate and can be publicly listed
or privately owned [6]. The income of a REIT is generated through rent earned
from its owned-asset portfolio, interest earned by financing real estate assets or
sale proceeds upon sale of assets under management.

Fig. 1. Investment through A. REITs B. Traditional System C. Crowdfunding

Although REITs help to mitigate the problem of illiquidity in real estate,


they have several disadvantages. Historically, public REITs have had lower re-
turns than private REITs. They also trade on an average at a premium to the
underlying Net Asset Value. The total value of the commercial real estate assets
value captured by the REITs is significantly smaller than the total Commercial
Real Estate market. Hence, a large number of commercial real estate is out of
reach for investors. Moreover, the retail investors are also dependent upon the
REIT managers and do not have the option of customizing their real estate ex-
posure. An investor might want access to a specific type of asset in a specific
geography and currently, REITs do not provide the benefit of such a granular
level of investment. Some REITs also incur high management and transaction
fees, leading to lower payouts for investors [13].
4 A. Gupta et al.

Crowdfunding is defined as a collection of equity and debt to be invested


in several kinds of projects through a web-based platform able to create op-
portunities by matching lenders and sponsors. The capital raised in real estate
crowdfunding is used in order to purchase, develop or refurbish a Real Estate
asset with the aim of subsequent use or transaction [1].
Real estate crowdfunding has failed to take off for multiple reasons. One of
the biggest reasons is the quality of assets listed on the crowdfunding platform.
When assets that were unable to raise capital through traditional means of the
financing end up on crowdfunding platforms. Other issues with crowdfunding
are multi-year lock-in periods required. This locks investor capital and even
with some platforms providing a secondary market for these assets this reduces
overall liquidity. Certain platforms allow investors to sell their holdings after one
year but these secondary markets are siloed [13]. All these factors make REITs
and crowdfunding undesirable for retail investors.

3 Preliminaries

3.1 Blockchain

Blockchain technology is a type of distributed ledger technology that uses a


Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network model consisting of immutable and time-stamped
records of data. This work employs the use of Ethereum blockchain. As the name
suggests, Blockchain is an append-only chain of blocks that are back-linked. It
was first introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in [11]. Some of the main advantages
of this technology are security, immutability, decentralization, and transparency.
It uses public-key cryptography as the base for identifying users and granting
them access to their assets on chain stored in these wallets. Cryptographic hash
functions, or simply hash functions, are known to be one way, i.e., the input
cannot be deciphered from the hash value of the input. These are used to create
a tamper-proof record of any form of transactions on the ledger.
A blockchain system consists of users or computers which are called nodes
[11]. These nodes form the peers in the network. Any communication or sharing
of resources between two peers is called a transaction, like, in Bitcoin blockchain,
the transfer of bitcoins is called a transaction. A block is a collection of transac-
tions that are verified and added to the blockchain. A block consists of a block
header and a block body. The block header consists of a previous block hash as
one of its elements, which serves as a link to the previously added block and the
block body consists of the transactions. The validation of the transaction is done
by miners on the blockchain. These miners contend to solve a cryptographic hash
algorithm-based difficult mathematical puzzle. A consensus protocol enables all
the nodes of the network to reach a common agreement and ensures that there
is only one version of the truth that is agreed upon by all the nodes in the
Blockchain.
When a transaction occurs, it is broadcasted to the entire network. The
nodes in the network validate the transaction and the user’s status. A set of
Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain Technology 5

verified transactions is considered to be added to the block. Miners solve the


mathematical puzzle and the one who solves it first broadcasts it to the entire
network and mines the new block on the blockchain. This new block is permanent
and unalterable. The new state of the blockchain is updated in the ledger present
with each node, and it is distributed to each and every node on the network, it
makes it decentralized.

3.2 Ethereum
Ethereum is a global, open-source platform for decentralized applications. It is a
specific blockchain-based software platform that enables the possibility of build-
ing and running smart contracts and Distributed Applications (DApps) [10].
Ether is the cryptocurrency asset employed in the Ethereum blockchain. In some
extent, Ether is the fuel for operating distributed applications over Ethereum.
Using this cryptocurrency, it is possible to make payments to other accounts or
to the machines executing some requested operation. Ether thus enables running
DApps, enabling smart contracts, generating tokens during Initial Coin Offer-
ing (ICOs), i.e., a type of funding using cryptocurrencies, and also for making
standard P2P payments.
A transaction on Ethereum consists mainly of five elements [17], namely,
From (sender), To (Receiver), Gas (fees to be paid for performing operations),
Data/Input (message), and Value (amount transferred in Wei). A consensus al-
gorithm is a procedure through which all the peers of the Blockchain network
reach a common agreement about the present state of the distributed ledger.
Consensus algorithms hence achieve reliability in the Blockchain network and
establish trust between unknown peers in a distributed computing environment.
Proof of Work (PoW) is a consensus algorithm that aims at solving a costly
and time-consuming mathematical puzzle for a new block to be added to the
blockchain and at the same time easy for other nodes to verify it. Proof of
Stake (PoS) concept states that a person can mine or validate block transac-
tions according to how many coins he or she holds. This means that the more
cryptocurrency owned by a miner, the more mining power he or she has. At
present, Ethereum is using Proof of Work. But, it is transitioning into using
Proof of Stake eventually.

3.3 Smart Contracts


Smart contracts are portions of codes where the logic is implemented. Ethereum
provides a Turing complete programming language e.g. Solidity that allows cre-
ating programs and running them on the blockchain. When users send the trans-
actions, the portion of code is executed [8]. The execution of a smart contract
occurs when a miner includes a transaction in a block and re-run by every re-
cipient of this block upon arrival. These are open to all other users and once
the transactions are completed, they cannot be reversed. In this way, the mer-
its of the blockchain of immutability and cryptographically provided security
are further strengthened by the efficacy of smart contracts. Smart Contracts on
6 A. Gupta et al.

the Ethereum Network are generally written using the programming language
Solidity. This Solidity-based smart contract is compiled using Ethereum Vir-
tual Machine (EVM) bytecode and subsequently executed and deployed on the
Ethereum Blockchain [16].

3.4 Tokenization
The tokenization of assets refers to the process of issuing a blockchain token
(specifically, a security token) that digitally represents a real tradable asset [7].
Tokenization is in many ways similar to the traditional process of securitization.
These security tokens are created through a type of initial coin offering (ICO)
sometimes referred to as a security token offering (STO) to distinguish it from
other types of ICOs, which can produce different tokens such as equity, utility, or
payment tokens. An STO can be used to create a digital representation—a secu-
rity token—of an asset, meaning that a security token could represent a share in
a company, ownership of a piece of real estate, or participation in an investment
fund. These security tokens can then be traded on a secondary market. The main
benefits of tokenization of assets are:

– Liquidity - By tokenizing assets, the tokens can be then traded on a sec-


ondary market of the issuer’s choice. This access to a broader base of traders
increases the liquidity [9].
– Faster and cheaper transactions - Because the transaction of tokens is com-
pleted with smart contracts, certain parts of the exchange process are au-
tomated. This automation can reduce the administrative burden involved
in buying and selling, with fewer intermediaries needed, leading to not only
faster deal execution but also lower transaction fees.
– Transparency - A security token is capable of having the token holder’s
rights and legal responsibilities embedded directly onto the token, along
with an immutable record of ownership. These characteristics promise to
add transparency to transactions, allowing you to know with whom you are
dealing, what your and their rights are, and who has previously owned this
token.
– Accessibility - Importantly, tokenization could open up investment in assets
to a much wider audience thanks to reduced minimum investment amounts
and periods. Tokens are highly divisible, meaning investors can purchase
tokens that represent incredibly small percentages of the underlying assets.

3.5 Special Purpose Vehicle


A Special Purpose Vehicle is a separate legal entity created by an organization.
The Special Purpose Vehicle is a distinct company with its own assets and liabil-
ities, as well as its own legal status. Usually, a Special Purpose Vehicle is created
for a specific objective [3]. Special Purpose Vehicles can be viewed as a method
of distributing the risks of an underlying pool of exposures held by the Special
Purpose Vehicle and reallocating them to investors who want to take those risks.
Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain Technology 7

This allows investors to be able to invest in those opportunities which would not
otherwise exist and provides an additional source of revenue generation for the
firm sponsoring the Special Purpose Vehicle. Some of the most common uses of
a Special Purpose Vehicle are:

– Securitization - Special Purpose Vehicles are the key characteristic of secu-


ritization and are commonly used to securitize loans and other receivables.
– Asset Transfer - Many assets are either non-transferable or difficult to trans-
fer. By having a Special Purpose Vehicle own a single asset, the Special Pur-
pose Vehicle can be sold as a self-contained package, rather than attempting
to split the asset or assign numerous permits to various parties.
– Financing - A Special Purpose Vehicle can be used to finance a new venture
without increasing the debt burden of the firm sponsoring the Special Pur-
pose Vehicle and without diluting existing shareholders. The sponsor may
contribute some of the equity with outside investors providing the remainder.

3.6 Legal aspects of Security tokens, Smart Contracts, and Special


Purpose Vehicle

The Securities and Exchange Commission (the ”SEC”) has regulatory authority
over the issuance or resale of any ethereum token or other digital asset that has
the characteristics of an ”investment contract”. Under Securities Act § 2(a)(1)
and Securities Exchange Act § 3(a)(10), a security includes “an investment con-
tract.”. An ”investment contract” has been defined by the U.S. Supreme Court
as an investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation
of profits to be derived from the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of others.
On September 11, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New
York held that a digital token can be deemed to be a security under the Howey
test [5].
According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in their Policy State-
ment 19/22, the security tokens are within the regulatory parameter [4]. This
means that firms carrying on specified activities involving security tokens need
to ensure that they have the correct permissions and are following the relevant
rules and requirements.
To make the smart contract associated with the platform legally binding, we
can use the approach as suggested in [12]. The approach involves digitally signing
the legal contract by the different entities involved in the transaction. Once the
legal contracts have been signed, they are added to an immutable distributed
database such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and the hashes of these
legal documents are added to the smart contract. This ensures that the smart
contract was legally agreed upon by every party in the transaction and any
disputes can be upheld in a court of law.
The Special Purpose Vehicle owning the asset would be tokenized and the
shares of the Special Purpose Vehicle would be distributed to the token holders.
The Special Purpose Vehicle is treated as a corporation and is subject to laws
8 A. Gupta et al.

pertaining to the respective jurisdictions. A shareholder certificate can be pro-


vided to token holders. The token holders will have to comply with the respective
KYC/AML norms.

4 Proposed Workflow for Tokenizing Real Estate

The process involves background verification of users (asset owners and investors)
and registering them on the platform. Later, a Special Purpose Vehicle is cre-
ated which holds the title of the asset and is tokenized. The tokens are issued
initially through a security token offering and using smart contracts the monthly
distribution of the income generated by the asset is done to the investors. These
processes are described in detail below:

4.1 Registration of Entities

We propose a common platform where the asset owners can be connected with
the investors. Every Real estate owner, as well as the investors, will have to regis-
ter on the platform. A Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering
(AML) verification for every user registered on the platform would be conducted
through a third-party provider. Basic details regarding the User’s identity would
need to be submitted by the user electronically to the platform. Once the KYC
and AML requirements are satisfied, the user can be able to access the services
of the platform.

Fig. 2. Registration of Users on platform


Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain Technology 9

4.2 Creation of Special Purpose Vehicle


Once an Owner of the property is registered, he/she can now submit the nec-
essary documents and paperwork in accordance with the local jurisdiction. A
Special Purpose Vehicle is created. The Special Purpose Vehicle would serve
as the legal owner of a real estate. Also, the Special Purpose Vehicle would be
responsible for the operation of the real estate or, in general, the underlying
assets. These operations can be the functioning of a hotel or renting the prop-
erty for commercial purposes. It is the Special Purpose Vehicle that would be
responsible to verify the documents with the concerned authorities. The Special
Purpose Vehicle is only created upon successful verification of the paperwork. In
case of any inconsistency with either the information of the asset or the Special
Purpose Vehicle, the entire deal is called off, on grounds of not complying with
legal formalities. The reason for opting for a Special Purpose Vehicle instead of
direct tokenization of an asset is that in most countries, directly tokenizing the
underlying asset is not possible due to the lack of legal and technical frameworks
for enabling the tokenization of property rights [15].

4.3 Tokenization and Smart Contract


Once everything is verified, the Special Purpose Vehicle is successfully created
and the process of tokenization can be proceeded with. It is the Special Purpose
Vehicle and not the underlying asset which would be tokenized. The tokens gen-
erated would represent shares of the Special Purpose Vehicle. It means that every
token holder would have some percentage of ownership in the Special Purpose
Vehicle based on the number of tokens they hold. From the legal perspective, the
ownership of these Security Tokens is guaranteed owing to an Special Purpose
Vehicle that we establish for each of our clients. The Security Tokens issued are
an economic right to share the profits of the Special Purpose Vehicle.
It is at this stage that the crypto tokens are actually minted on the Ethereum
blockchain of ERC 777 standard. These security tokens, which are blockchain na-
tive, are now a representation of the fractional ownership of the Special Purpose
Vehicle and by extension the asset. Subsequently, these tokens must be embedded
with subjected regulation on a Smart Contract. The underlying Smart Contract
would contain the entire business logic of transfer of ownership and validating
the users and transactions. Moreover, the use of a Smart Contract can be further
extended to incorporate additional features of the token.

4.4 Security Token Offering (STO) / Initial Coin Offering (ICO)


Once the Special Purpose Vehicle has been tokenized, the tokenized securities
will be issued to the investors through a Security Token Offering. Unlike the
tokens issued through an ICO, Security tokens are backed by an asset. Hence,
the tokens of Special Purpose Vehicle would be issued through an STO. The
asset would be listed on the platform. Target price and the number of tokens
would be set based on the value of the asset. The registered user will be able to
10 A. Gupta et al.

Fig. 3. Tokenization of Real Estate

view all the asset features such as the location, cost, expected returns and other
details of the asset on the platform. Once the user decides to purchase the token
of the given asset, they will pay the required amount based on the number of
tokens purchased.
If the STO is successful, which means if the STO is able to raise the required
target amount of funds, the investors will receive their corresponding tokens and
the asset title would transfer in the name of the Special Purpose Vehicle offline.
Whereas, if the STO is not successful and is unable to raise the required amount
necessary to purchase the asset, the amount paid by the existing investors would
be refunded and the title ownership would still lie in the name of the original
asset owner.
Once the investors have received their tokens, they would be able to benefit
from the monthly returns of the tokens as well as from the capital appreciation
due to the rise in token value. Since the implemented token is based on Ethereum
and is of the ERC 777 standard, the investors can also freely sell these tokens in
the secondary market via different exchanges where the tokens can be traded.
This ability of trading the tokens ensures liquidity to the investors.

4.5 Distribution of Dividends to the Investors

As discussed earlier, the real estate can be used for various purposes. It could be
rented for commercial or residential purposes or it could be a hotel business. In
any case, revenue can be generated from the asset. The profits can be distributed
to the investors in the proportion of the number of tokens they own. This system
can be automated and efficiently implemented using a smart contract. The smart
contract can have the functionality of calculating the percentage of ownership
Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain Technology 11

and smoothly transfer the proportion of profits to the investor without any scope
for frauds or discrepancies. Along with functionality for dividends’ distribution,
additional features for voting of investors in case of any decision taking can also
be implemented.

Fig. 4. Distribution of dividends to Investors

5 Implementation Architecture of the proposed system


The platform will be based on the ethereum blockchain which allows us to use
smart contracts. The security tokens which are backed by the shares of the
Special Purpose Vehicle will be embedded in the smart contract. The tokens will
follow the ERC 777 standard protocols. ERC 777 standard defines a common
list of rules which all ethereum tokens must adhere to.
ERC 777 defines 13 different functions for the benefit of other tokens within
the Ethereum system. The Thirteen functions defined by the ERC 777 are:

– name() - This function returns the name of the token in string format
– symbol() - This function returns the symbol of the token in string format
– totalSupply() - This function identifies the total number of tokens created
– balanceOf() - The balanceOf function returns the number of tokens that a
particular address, in this case, the contract owner, has in their account.
– granularity() - This function gets the smallest part of the token that’s not
divisible.The granularity is the smallest amount of tokens (in the internal
denomination) which may be minted, sent or burned at any time.
– defaultOperators() - It gets the list of default operators as defined by the
token contract
– isOperatorFor() - This function indicates whether the operator address is an
operator of the holder address.
12 A. Gupta et al.

– authorizeOperator() - This function sets a third party operator address as


an operator of the sender to send and burn tokens on its behalf.
– revokeOperator() - This function removes the right of the operator address
to be an operator for sender and to send and burn tokens on its behalf.
– send() - This function sends the amount of tokens from the address of the
sender to the address of the recipient.
– operatorSend() - This function sends the given amount of tokens on behalf
of the address of sender to the receiver.
– burn() - This function burns the given amount of tokens from the address
of the sender.
– operatorBurn() - This function burns the amount of tokens on behalf of the
address given.
Altogether, this set of functions and signals ensures that Ethereum tokens of
different types will uniformly perform in any place within the Ethereum system.
As such, nearly all of the digital wallets which support the ether currency also
support ERC 777 compliant tokens. Following the ERC 777 standard for the
tokens would allow the tokens to be listed and traded in numerous secondary
market exchanges that are compatible with ERC 777 tokens.

Algorithm 1 Transfer Tokens


Input: recipient address
tokens
function transfer :
1: if (recipient address 6= stakeholder or
Balance of msg.sender < tokens) then
2: Abort session
3: else
4: Debit tokens from account of msg.sender
5: Credit tokens to account of recipient address
6: Emit tokens is transferred from msg.sender to
recipient address
7: end if

On top of these above listed six functions, a function for Asset income distri-
bution is also implemented in the smart contract. The algorithm takes as input
the accumulated wealth which denotes the income accumulated by the Special
Purpose Vehicle over the years and the income which denotes the income of the
Special Purpose Vehicle during the current month. The algorithm is invoked
by the Special Purpose Vehicle at the end of each month. The algorithm first
verifies whether the account which invoked the contract is the Special Purpose
Vehicle. Then for every token holder it calculates the proportion of tokens that
the token holder owns and calculates the dividend distributed to them accord-
ingly. The contract then credits the dividend into each token holders account.
A transaction is emitted to the blockchain stating the respective dividend has
been credited in the Tokenholder’s account.
Tokenization of Real Estate Using Blockchain Technology 13

Algorithm 2 Distribution of Dividends


Input: accumulated wealth
income
function distribute:
1: if (msg.sender 6= Special Purpose Vehicle) then
2: Abort session
3: else
4: for every token holder do
5: Calculate Percentage of ownership (percent own)
6: dividend = income * percent own
7: accumulated wealth - dividend
8: Balance of token holder = Balance of token holder + dividend
9: end for
10: Emit dividends distributed to token holders
11: end if

6 Conclusion
In this paper, we present an approach to introduce liquidity in a real estate in-
vestment by leveraging the use of Blockchain technology. We have used a Special
Purpose Vehicle for the purpose of holding the underlying asset. Special Purpose
Vehicle is tokenized and is providing the investors the flexibility to purchase ERC
777 standard security tokens as per their convenience. A Smart Contract is de-
veloped for the transfer of tokens and also an automated solution for distribution
of dividends is implemented.
The future directions for this work focus on using a Decentralized Autonomous
Organization (DAO) instead of a Special Purpose Vehicle to further improve
decentralization. We can also provide functionality for additional features like
voting and loyalty rewards for token holders. Moreover, each token can also be
structured to represent ownership in the Special Purpose Vehicle which not only
owns a single asset but holds the title for multiple assets belonging to the same
class. For example, tokens can be made to represent shares of a Special Purpose
Vehicle which holds two or more assets.

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