The Voice • July 2016
The National Land Survey of Sweden, Lantmäteriet, has recently conducted initial testing of blockchain technology for the purposes of including it into their land registration processes. Lantmäteriet has partnered closely with the Swedish blockchain company, ChromaWay to develop the proof-of-concept of the technology which could possibly reduce the amount of risk involved with existing, manual transaction processes of land recordings. The “risk” of the traditional methods would be bypassed with the use of digital signatures within transaction documentation. The results of the trials have led to their conclusion that the “blockchain-based system is faster, more secure and less prone to error than current methods.” [1]
ChromaWay CEO Henrik Hjelte said, “By using digital signatures in all steps in the process of selling a house we can bring down the total time of doing a deal from several months, say three months on average, to less than a day or a few days.” He continued, “Also, our solution makes it impossible to enact certain kinds of fraud that occur now and those are not theoretical frauds.” [2] Hjelte concluded that the transactions can reduce the possibility of incorrect data being entered into the land registration and can keep ownership from getting clouded by outside factors.
It was stated that the trial runs of the blockchain transactions are primarily about reforming the process of the real estate property transaction. Ultimately, the goal would be to integrate blockchain with the existing workflow of managing land recordings. Testing has been completed for now but there are plans to test a more “full-sized” environment that will involve real estate agents and banks.
Sources
[1] http://realtybiznews.com/sweden-to-become-first-nation-to-adopt-blockchain-tech-for-real-estate-deals/98733747/
[2] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/sweden-conducts-trials-of-a-blockchain-smart-contracts-technology-for-land-registry-1466703935
