Distributed-ledger based real estate platform Ubiquity has successfully utilized the Colu Colored Coins Protocol to settle the Bitcoin blockchain’s first property ownership transfer.
The settlement of the transfer was handled by Atlantic Sotheby’s International Realty chief real estate officer Marina Reznik, who integrated her recent real estate purchase onto the Bitcoin blockchain through a class of methods called Colored Coins.
The term “Colored Coins” refers to a variety of methods that are commonly used to represent and manage real world assets on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Users or platforms can use Bitcoin’s scripting language to store metadata onto the blockchain network, which is unalterable and impenetrable.
While a number of blockchain-focused startups have attempted to use the Ethereum protocol and its smart contract platform to record real estate data and identities, Ubitquity has officially become the first startup to represent a real world application of the Bitcoin blockchain network in the real estate industry.
“A lot of meticulous work goes into doing a title search and ensuring ownership transfers correctly. Any title defects revealed must be cleared up and the sale is still recorded with the appropriate municipalities governing the transaction. We have simply added an extra layer of security by securing the record of transfer on the Bitcoin blockchain for permanent immutability. This is a huge step forward for blockchain and real estate,” explained Reznik.
Despite the complicated process of utilizing the Bitcoin network for identity storage, Ubitquity believes that the Bitcoin blockchain’s greatest asset is its security and irrefutable ledger and thus, it is more reliable to record data onto the Bitcoin blockchain network rather than other alternative ledgers.
As stated by Pete Dushenski in the past, the security of a blockchain network is represented by the hashrate. “The more petahashes the network maintains, the more secure the network is to attacks,, that is, the more costly attacks become,” explained Dushenski.
In an industry like real estate, security comes in as a huge factor which alters the entire process of purchasing and selling properties. The use of the Bitcoin blockchain network will optimize many of the industry’s time consuming and expensive operations.
