Property registries are a natural fit for blockchain technology, which has led many blockchain-focused firms to begin developing blockchain-based property registry systems. Those select firms which have made substantial progress on this project will be outlined in detail here in no particular order (Chromaway, Propy, Ubiquity, Bitfury, Consensys). Particular attention will be paid to how the technology works as well as the potential for this technology to be harnessed to its fullest possible capacity as the foundational property registry for new or developing jurisdictions.

1. Blockchain Property Registry Firms
Erick Brimen and Trey Goff
NeWAY Capital
1875 Connecticut Ave NW,
10th Floor, Washington, DC 20009
Property registries are a natural
fit for blockchain technology,
which has led many blockchain-fo-
cused firms to begin developing
blockchain-based property registry
systems. Those select firms which
have made substantial progress on
this project will be outlined in detail
here in no particular order (Chro-
maway, Propy, Ubiquity, Bitfury,
Consensys). Particular attention will
be paid to how the technology works
as well as the potential for this tech-
nology to be harnessed to its fullest
possible capacity as the foundational
property registry for new or devel-
oping jurisdictions.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
June 8th
, 2018

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May 8th, 2018
mäteriet, agents or banks is not the ambition of
this project.”
Chromaway’s system works as follows: Lantma-
teriet runs a private blockchain which preserves
the transactions involving real estate by refer-
encing the verification record number of each
piece of evidence involved in the process. This
is important: the contract, bill of sale, mortgage
deed, etc. are not saved in the blockchain; only
their verification record numbers. This private
blockchain then has multiple nodes run by se-
lect groups of Lantmateriet’s choosing to veri-
fy the veracity and accuracy of the blockchain.
Ideally, banks, real estate firms, and Lantmater-
iet would all run a node to ensure the accuracy
of the blockchain.
Chromaway’s phone application utilizes e-ID
solutions provided by Telia as well as the accura-
cy of smart contracts to allow for the digital ref-
erencing and signing of documents. This does
significantly reduce the time of the entire pro-
cess (from 6 months to as little as a few days),
as well as digitize the entire process, ensure it’s
accuracy and reducing storage overhead. All of
the metadata such as contracts, bills of sale, the
location of the land, etc. will be stored on an
external database run by Lantmateriet or others.
The verification record numbers on the block-
chain will reference each specific piece of data
in the database so that any actor in the process
can recreate the chain of events from scratch.
For example, the seller signing the initial sale
contract with the real estate agent will be re-
corded on the blockchain, then the buyer sign-
CHROMAWAY
ChromaWay, in association with Kairos Future,
Lantmateriet (Sweden’s official land registry),
and Telia Company started developing a block-
chain-based property registry and transaction
system in 2016. By June of 2016, they had a ful-
ly operational UI for property purchases within
their system, which can be demoed from both
the buyer and seller side here. They are currently
in the third phase of their development, which
calls for a fully operational system capable of
making an actual land transfer by April of 2018
(no word on the success or failure of this dead-
line).
HOW IT WORKS
All actors involved in each transaction have their
actions encoded in a smart contract, which au-
tomatically records the transaction on a private
and immutable blockchain. From their website:
“Our Smart Contract technology records state
changes in a contract and then publicizes them
on an underlying blockchain.”
However, it should be noted that this is not a
full blockchain solution to the problem of cost-
ly and time-consuming land transfers. No, this
is simply a project to digitize currently extant
models of property transfer and registration
within the existing Swedish system. From page
67 of the Chromaway whitepaper: “Digitally
representing all of the packages of land in Swe-
den so that they can be traded directly on the
blockchain without the involvement of Lant-

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May 8th, 2018
their own unique cryptographic key to be trad-
ed via NFT’s and smart contracts. This is simply
a highly efficient adaption of blockchain tech-
nology to an already extant legacy system. This
means that Chromaway may be of limited use
to a new jurisdiction aiming to build a digitized,
blockchain-based registry from the ground up,
with no referenced legacy system.
PROPY
Propy is a blockchain-based property registry
startup with a big vision: it aims to one day be
the legally recognized property registry for as
many jurisdictions around the world as possi-
ble to standardize property records, making
international property purchases an incredibly
simple peer-to-peer process. At the moment,
however, it is little more than a website and
app connecting buyers and sellers of property
around the world. At the moment, individuals
can only utilize Propy to initiate the property
purchase process.
Propy has, however, completed the world’s first
truly blockchain-based transfer of a property in
a pilot in South Burlington, Vermont. They are
likewise in the process of mirroring the proper-
ty registries of California and Ukraine into the
standardized database of the Propy Registry,
with goals of the first California legal transac-
tion using Propy in Q2 of 2018.
Propy’s team consists of engineers from Ap-
ple, Linkedin, Facebook, and Intuit, along with
ing the mortgage will be on the blockchain, etc.
This brings the security and transparency of the
blockchain to the entire process while maintain-
ing the privacy of sensitive data. This is because
only banks or buyers could actually retrieve the
mortgage data referenced by the record verifi-
cation number. The same will be true for a vari-
ety of other aspects of the transaction which all
parties involved would rather have kept private.
These verification records are transparent to the
public and searchable online so that anyone can
look up the status of a property (if they know
that property’s verification number) at any time.
ANALYSIS
Chromaway’s solution is an excellent way to
adapt currently extant registry technology to the
advantages conferred by blockchain technology.
However, it suffers from two drawbacks: it is
highly specific to Sweden, and it does not pro-
vide for the total digitization of land registry
processes.
First, this solution is highly specific to the unique
exigencies of the Lantmeteriet and Sweden’s le-
gal and property system. Although it could os-
tensibly be utilized in another environment by a
registry other than Lantmateriet, doing so would
require significant retooling of the software.
Second, it doesn’t go far enough to be of use to
a potential new jurisdiction. This isn’t a “block-
chain property registry” in the fullest sense of
placing all land parcels on a blockchain with

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In V.2, which is the full deployment of the sys-
tem, buyers and sellers will be able to transfer
property peer-to-peer seamlessly. The smart
contracts governing the transfer will be mod-
ular, so the buyer can request unique contract
stipulations to be fulfilled by contractors (geo-
graphic surveys, inspections, etc.) on a case by
case basis as needed fully within the Propy sys-
tem. The buyer and seller will both pay the req-
uisite amount of PRO (Propy ERC-20 tokens)
needed to unlock the title contract and deed
smart contracts, then payments will be automat-
ically made in a cryptocurrency of the buyer and
seller’s choice while the Propy Registry deed is
automatically transferred. This is a “blockchain
property registry” in the truest sense possible.
ANALYSIS
All of Propy’s barriers to deploying at the mo-
ment are caused by difficulties complying with
legacy property transfer systems which do not
recognize cryptographic signatures as legally
binding or do not recognize the Propy Regis-
try as legally enforceable. A new jurisdiction
looking to implement a fully blockchain-based
property system would be able to relatively eas-
ily implement the Propy system because most
of the hurdles to Propy will be rendered non-
existent. The interface is also subjectively sleek
and aesthetic. This organization seems to have
the highest probability of success out of those
surveyed here.
UBIQUITY
well-established real estate industry experts,
so it has a bright future relative to some other
blockchain property attempts.
HOW IT WORKS
The Propy Registry will contain the proper-
ty titles for all property within a jurisdiction.1
Metadata such as the address, owner details,
right typology, property typology, coordinates,
and property condition will all be on the actual
blockchain, while larger and more complex data
such as images, property description, purchase
agreement content, and more will be contained
in Propy’s centralized database and referenced
in the blockchain listing.2
In V.1, prospective buyers will be able to uti-
lize the Propy app and website to do the entire
property transaction process, and it will be re-
corded on the blockchain. The buyer will be able
to contact the seller, negotiate price, coordinate
property inspections, contact legacy title offices,
negotiate contracts, arrange for funds transfers
and escrow, and coordinate the actual signing of
the contracts and deed with the realtor and the
seller, all within the Propy ecosystem. The pur-
chase will be recorded on the blockchain and
the buyer will be transferred the Propy Registry
title to the property (although this title is merely
a mirror of the real-world legacy registry, and as
such is in no way legally enforceable yet). This
system is not yet live, but Propy hopes to be us-
ing it to obtain at least $50mm in property sales
by the end of 2018.3

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May 8th, 2018
mation is available, they seem to function just
like Chromaway: All of the data and metadata
about a property are stored on Ubiquity’s cloud
servers (or in a decentralized file storage system
in the future), while a hash record number for
all of that information is stored publicly on the
blockchain. Then, Ubiquity’s API will allow us-
ers to explore the data in detail by indexing hash
record numbers to stored data and metadata in
their cloud.
Ubiquity does not offer any actual property
transference solution, however. They do not
have a user interface or system for doing so, nor
does this seem to be their business model. Their
objective is more narrow than property trans-
feral: they are focused exclusively on mirroring
legacy property registry systems on the block-
chain utilizing their cloud service.
ANALYSIS
This is, so far, the worst of the bunch. First,
at a high level, they simply don’t offer the level
of comprehensiveness a new jurisdiction would
desire. They mirror legacy systems, not con-
struct new systems from the ground up. This
makes them prima facie useless for startup so-
ciety projects.
There are far more issues than this, though.
Their website is not as well designed as the
others on this list, with one entire tab on their
homepage being completely dead. Other aspects
of the website are simply poorly designed, with
strange spacing or large blank spaces. Some of
the copy on the website is poorly written as well,
Ubiquity is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) com-
pany founded in late 2015 focused on block-
chain registries of property. According to their
website, they “help e-recording companies, title
companies, municipalities, and custom clients
benefit from a clean record of ownership, there-
by reducing future title search time, increased
confidence and transparency. We’ve created a
fully functioning, easy to use platform for in-
putting property information, including up-
loading and record documents onto the block-
chain.”4
They are more specifically focused on
transferring legacy systems to blockchain-based
recordkeeping, whereas Propy is focused on
revolutionizing the entire property transference
process.
They claim to have some private clients but have
so far chosen to keep them completely anony-
mous. They also announced a high-profile pilot
project in 2017 with the Municipality of Pelo-
tas in Brazil. “The pilot is a parallel platform to
replicate the existing legal structure of property
ownership and transferring recording within the
cities.”5
However, little to no news has devel-
oped since the announcement of the pilot proj-
ect. Its status remains a mystery.
HOW IT WORKS
Unlike the other firms surveyed here, Ubiqui-
ty has no white paper to speak of. That means
there is far less publicly available details about
the functioning of their product, product road-
map, etc. However, judging from what infor-

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May 8th, 2018
and legendary economist Hernando de Soto
to transfer all property titles in Georgia to the
blockchain. They announced the project at Har-
vard Business School and in conjunction wit the
UN.8
By February of 2017, they already had
100,000 documents digitized and registered, and
by today seem to have completely transferred
Georgia’s property registry to the blockchain.9
In fact, they are now looking to transfer many
of Georgia’s other registry systems to the block-
chain.
HOW IT WORKS
The Bitfury system is surprisingly simple (which
probably explains its success): “The system
stores land deeds on a private server, with their
unique ID codes uploaded to multiple public
databases to ensure transparency. Any change to
the original document would alter one copy of
the public code, alerting users to the discrepan-
cy.” In other words, all data is stored on a private
server, but it is linked to an ID code on the pub-
lic blockchains in such a way that any change to
the original documents will change the ID code
on the blockchain. This, too, is quite similar to
the other models discussed above.
Unlike Propy or Chromaway, and very much like
Ubiquity, Bitfury is focused only on transferring
Georgia’s legacy system to the blockchain, not
on streamlining the property transferal process.
The big difference between Bitfury and every-
one else, however, is that they seem to have ac-
tually done it.
with many redundancies.
They also contradict themselves on key as-
pects of their service. Their website says they
are “blockchain agnostic” and utilize a variety
of chains for their service. However, the press
release announcing the alpha version of their
software specifies that they exclusively use the
Ethereum blockchain.6
As a result of this in-
congruence, I legitimately don’t even know what
blockchain they use.
This project has the lowest probability of suc-
cess out of all the blockchain property registry
projects.
BITFURY
Bitfury is the world’s largest blockchain com-
pany, and their property registry work is only a
small portion of what they do. This Cayman Is-
lands-registered company made over $90 million
in revenue last year, but their primary business is
mining cryptocurrencies, which calls into ques-
tion the accuracy of that $90 million number—
it could be far higher.7
They also sell hardware
in the form of custom ASIC chips specially de-
signed for crypto mining, as well as software in
a variety of forms. They have offices all over the
world and appear to be doing very well.
Their blockchain property registry project is
no different. Towards the end of 2016, Bitfu-
ry partnered with the Republic of Georgia’s
National Agency of Public Registry (NAPR)

7. 7
May 8th, 2018
a property transfer. They have even drawn up
a demo simple property transfer, and you can
watch the entire process here.
However, OpenLaw doesn’t have a solution for
the registry, nor do they seem to be working on
one. They are more focused on solving the myr-
iad legal problems with digitized, blockchain
property transfers. As they point out, property
transactions can be highly complex, and current
blockchain property transfer solutions do not
yet solve for many of the problems. OpenLaw
is working on this by developing the code for
smart contracts to deal with this complexity.
However, they are still at a very early stage with
no plans for deployment. Their demo reads
more like a though experiment than an actual
proof-of-concept.11
They may be a good reference for help with the
smart contract language of a blockchain proper-
ty system, but they do not appear to be a viable
option for a de novo property registry solution.
CONCLUSION
Of all of the firms working on blockchain prop-
erty registries, only one has successfully con-
verted an entire legacy system to the blockchain:
Bitfury. However, this does not automatically
mean they are also ideally positioned for part-
nering with a firm which could be developing
a blockchain property system from the ground
up. No, Propy seems more ideally suited for that
because they have extensively developed a uni-
ANALYSIS
Bitfury is the most successful blockchain prop-
erty registry project to date in that it successfully
transferred an entire nation’s property registry
to blockchain technology. However, it’s scope
was narrowly focused on simply digitizing the
legacy system, not on creating an entire inter-
face for easier and faster property transferals.
Being that Bitfury is the largest and most suc-
cessful blockchain firm to date, the expertise,
experience, and network they have means they
could most likely successfully launch a fully in-
tegrated system for a new jurisdiction as well.
CONSENSYS
Consensys is one of the largest blockchain
companies, with over 450 employees and proj-
ects ongoing around the world. Their property
registry project, however, is not a public-facing
enterprise. They don’t advertise it or discuss it
much in any way. This is because they are devel-
oping it, not as a standalone project, but in con-
junction with and for the city of Dubai. They
have completed a proof of concept, but little
information besides that is publicly available. It
isn’t something they intend on selling or fran-
chising as these other firms are, so they don’t
publicly advertise it.10
ANALYSIS: OPENLAW
Another spoke of the Consensys hub is a firm
called OpenLaw. OpenLaw has been working on
utilizing ERC-721 nonfungible tokens to model

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pets-blockchain-land-registry-republic-georgia-har-
vard-un-1646616
9
https://cointelegraph.com/news/georgia-records-
100000-land-titles-on-bitcoin-blockchain-bitfury
10
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/305701
11
https://media.consensys.net/the-purchase-and-sale-
of-real-property-on-ethereum-55bdc289a7b5
form standard for property registration, have
actively developed a solution for a property reg-
istry, and have developed a good front-end user
interface for the property transfer process.
Propy provides the only end-to-end solution for
a registry and a usable transferal system. They
have already conducted an actual transfer of
land in Vermont and have the best team of any
of the firms listed herein. Propy’s platform with
OpenLaw’s legal expertise could be a powerful
combination for the creation of the world’s best
legal framework for real property.
REFERENCES
1
https://propy.com/about
2
https://tokensale.propy.com/Propy-White-Paper-17-
Jul-2017.pdf
3
http://bitcoinist.com/propy-unveils-product-road-
map-update/
4
https://www.ubitquity.io/web/about.html
5
https://www.rtinsights.com/case-study-blockchain-
takes-a-spin-around-the-real-estate-block/
6
https://medium.com/@nathandwosnack/ubitquity-
releases-api-for-blockchain-based-property-tracking-
615d4d48bd3d
7
https://www.npr.org/sections/paral-
lels/2018/04/23/597780405/how-the-tiny-nation-of-
georgia-became-a-bitcoin-behemoth
8
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitfury-trum-