I recently attended Propteq Europe 2018, which is a networking event for real estate innovators gathering from the whole world during one full day of interactive sessions. For each session, there was a designated moderator, along with a set of selected contributors (typically 5 to 8), while the rest of the participants randomly sat around in circles. That way it allows for constant interaction, with no specific agenda to follow for the moderator. One of the four sessions held during the day that I attended was about “Blockchain: Transforming Real Estate” where I joined Denis Petrovcic, Co-founder/CEO at Blocksquare.

Back to the basics, what is blockchain?

So here we are sitting around in full session scheme, ready to kick-in and the first question that comes out from the moderator is: what is blockchain?

The room instantly starts smiling and giggling, as if well, after all everyone had somehow heard about that buzz word but still can’t really figure out what it is or how this “new tech” will be used by real estate professionals. So, I’ve decided to write this article solely around explaining (at least try to!) the basic definitions to start with.

Starting late 2000s, Bitcoin, and its underlying blockchain technology, gave rise to a wave of innovation that is changing the way people think about transferring and storing value. The public distributed ledger technology (“DLT”) that is the foundation of Bitcoin, along with many other digital assets such as Ethereum, decentralises the tasks of accessing, identifying, controlling, tracking and validating any type of data & transactions. One could think of it as a multi-dimensional map which any individual in the world has access to, without any geographical border, all within a highly secure digital infrastructure.

What are cryptocurrencies?

A cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and control the creation of additional units of the currency.

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum started in 2014 and is the first mover to anticipate smart contracts operating on the blockchain. Ethereum provides the largest ecosystem and global participation in a new generation of Solidity developers and businesses. Ethereum can be a digital asset used as a medium of exchange, but unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum is also programmable (at least for the time being until Rootstock is deployed on Bitcoin) — it provides a decentralised platform that runs smart contracts — applications that runs exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. Once an Ethereum smart contract is deployed onto the blockchain its internal logic can’t be changed. This in terms means any line written in the smart contract will always be present and can not be modified at a later stage.

How can Ethereum be used to tokenise commercial real estate?

This is where Blocksquare plug & play set of protocols, APIs and tools for commercial real estate property tokenisation comes into place, so that it enables online real estate platforms to tap into the upcoming tokenised real estate market. Blocksquare opens the world of commercial real estate to anyone with an internet connection. Similar to how Stripe or PayPal provide tools for e-commerce sites to securely and promptly process online payments, Blocksquare is building a plug & play set of protocols, APIs and tools using the Ethereum blockchain to process commercial real estate property tokenisation so platforms can integrate it and offer tokenised deals to their user base.

Change is building up!

Digitising a traditional asset class such as commercial real estate ownership deed/titles provides a way for individuals to access valuable blockchain assets without the restrictions and deficiencies inherent in traditional forms (e.g. paper based, databases). Real estate has always been an attractive investment, but never accessible to everybody. The upcoming markets of tokenised real estate are set to change this, as the financial entry barrier becomes almost non-existant. The event process for tokenisation also allows a diversification through multiple properties and locations that is today almost only available to institutional investors. As mentioned in Blocksquare whitepaper, this new market will increase liquidity by multiples, something not possible before. In fact, the illiquidity discount of real estate is estimated to be 10–30%. Commercial real estate tokenisation and frictionless trading are set to unlock this value and open the door to a new market worth over USD 5 trillion.

This is a first introduction article. I’ll talk a little more in details in my next article about the process for tokenisation itself, how its generated and what the utility tokens (there will be two of them!) use will be in the Blocksquare’s ecosystem, etc.

Please feel free to suggest, comment, clap, share, dislike, whatever.

Cheers guys!

P.S.: the pre-sale ICO is open, you can take part in it at (this is no investment advice): https://dashboard.blocksquare.io/dashboard