by Daniel Novy , Blockchain Specialist at ConsenSys, special thanks to Joseph Chow and Andres Junge



Registries are everywhere. We need registries for cars, real estate, company assets, books, marriages, births and deaths music, films, domain names, even your computer needs a registry to keep track of the software you install. We need them in order to have a common place to search for and keep track of items. Some of the most important registries, like those for public goods, are controlled by governments whose authority provide authenticity for the records.



One of the features of public registries is that they are open. This means that anyone can request the registration for the title of the home I live in and the real estate I own, for example. They are meant to be public. In order to get a real estate registration, one would just need to know the location and request the paperwork from at the local registry, right? Actually, no. At least in Brazil, it's not that simple.



Real estate registries in Brazil are profit-driven private entities, authorized to work by the central government. And here is where some problems start to appear. If you have more than one registry for real estate in a given city, how do you know which registry the specific apartment you're interested is registered in? Without asking the owners, it's impossible to know. You need to personally go to each of the registry companies, spend time on their queue, and check if that particular registry has the registration you're looking for. Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, has 18 real estate registries. And their records are not unified.



