Rotterdam to record rental agreements on blockchain

Rage Review : Rotterdam, the Netherlands, cooperated with Deloitte Netherlands and Cambridge Innovation Center to develop a blockchain-based rental agreement recording and storage system to supervise the rent payment process on the blockchain. Rotterdam's 23 municipalities participated in the project pilot, and will use blockchain technology and applications on a large scale, taking advantage of its inherent advantages to achieve the upgrade and update of smart city systems. This has gradually become an important part of global urban modernization.

Translation: Annie Xu

Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has partnered with Deloitte Netherlands and the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) to develop real estate blockchain applications for recording and storing lease agreements.

The ten-point blockchain project was first proposed by Deloitte Netherlands, with the aim of quickly signing legally binding lease agreements and monitoring rent payments.

Jan Willem Santing, general manager of Deloitte Real Estate Advertising, said, "By implementing blockchain applications in the real estate industry, transaction time and costs can be further reduced. It can also make decisions using data analysis systems to determine future real estate planning, investment, development, buying and selling."

CIC's startups will participate in the research and development of the real estate blockchain application. Founded in 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, CIC is the world's largest startup network. In July 2015, it established its first global organization in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. With an area of ​​140,000 square feet, CIC can accommodate 500 startups and play an important role in promoting local blockchain applications.

The pilot project is part of the local “Roadmap Next Economy” initiative, which will see 23 municipalities in Rotterdam test blockchain technology.

Deloitte explains:

"Rotterdam can further promote the application of blockchain through this project and provide blockchain technology support to third parties."

The Municipality of Rotterdam, CIC and Deloitte will work together on blockchain application development and innovation.

Recently, there have been a number of city-scale integrated blockchain R&D projects. Industry startup Factom is building a blockchain-based land title project platform and has also encountered obstacles in developing Bitcoin blockchain solutions in Honduras. Recently, Factom in Texas has reached a cooperation with the Chinese government to jointly build smart cities.

Peter Kirby

Factom CEO Peter Kirby explained that smart city systems are mature and it is time to use blockchain for change.

"The biggest challenge in smart city management is data authenticity. If city decisions are automated through sensor data, if the data is used by people, the consequences will be serious. Therefore, we work with our partners to build a blockchain-based smart city system to record every data point in an unalterable database."