Blockchain technology is making its debut globally in almost all sectors of the economy, finance, business, along with the real estate sector in Russia. Real estate, however, not completely new entry in the Russian context as the boom in blockchain technology in this sector had occurred a few years back. The major development firms here had started experimenting with blockchain and implementing it to improve and make their operations more efficient. The Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography also called the Rosreestr has become the first company which has registered transactions through blockchain in the country. This is significant because it is for the first time that a state owned real estate company has introduced a “collective blockchain project” for registration of “equity participation agreements using smart contracts.”
There are certain benefits from the project as it will automatically register the documents submitted by applicants for state registration minimizing the chances of errors and thereby enhancing speed and transparency in the process. As the Coin Rivet points out that the primary aim of Rosreestr’s pilot blockchain project is to “streamline and optimise processes and protect and increase data security.” Blockchain is also being used to register equity agreements under this project as it provides a higher level of data security, thus increasing the level of transparency and making it more accessible to the people involved.
Owing to its inherent properties of “immutability” and “decentralisation” it can prevent fraud schemes reducing the chances of corruption and by “optimising information control” it boosts the efficiency of the process. This assurance of transparency, a higher degree of trust and protection from fraud, would make the participants feel less vulnerable while investing in new projects and the automation of the system would also drastically bring down the processing time from 15 days to one.
Trustworthiness is particularly important in the Russian context because the Russian real estate market is filled with fraud realtors who try to sell a property that is not meant for sale, which has made operations in this sector highly vulnerable. The target of these fraudsters are particularly the older people, drug addicts or the disabled, and thus the implementation of blockchain in real estate would be able to eliminate such intermediaries, helping this sector to improve.
However real estate is not the only area where blockchain and cryptocurrency are making a mark, it has also entered the Russian market place called Mentalmarket which is a website that deals with different kinds of advertisements for products and services. The consumers or sellers will no longer need to convert their cryptocurrency into fiat money for payment purposes and several options of digital currency like Bitcoin core (BTC), Bitcoin cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP) etc. can be used to pay. Mentalmarket has emerged as “the” Russian market place mainly because of the range of products that it covers starting from real estate, to mining hardware to digital currency. Adding further to the range and versatility of the website the CFO of the platform, Kirill Skotnikov has said that consumers can even buy a model of the Audi with cryptocurrency on Mentalmarket, the price of the Audi A3 being 230 Ether and that of the expensive ones being 35 BCH or more.
Skotnikov is of the opinion that greater awareness and exposure to the digital currency world can improve its understanding and remove the misconceptions about crypto and its use. Thus with both Rosreestr and Mentalmarket making use of blockchain technology, it is expected to be another big feat in the crypto world.
