How to use ERC721 Ethereum token for unique identification of land and real estate

A brief overview how we use ERC721 standard for the accounting of land, buildings and rooms/apartments objects

In a previous article “Decentralised autonomous registry of rights on lands and real estate on Ethereum”, I discussed the possibility of creating a decentralised global registry of property rights for land and real estate on Ethereum.

In this article, I will give a brief overview of using the ERC721 standard token for that purpose.

Land or real estate objects, unlike other real assets, like cars, art objects, and others, have the mathematical property of uniqueness. They physically occupy a specific position in space and can be uniquely determined only by their geographic coordinates. Two land plots, houses, or rooms can’t physically have the same geographical coordinates. The core entity of the Galt project is the NFT ERC721 standart Ethereum token. Each Token contains geospatial data and represents a particular land plot, whole building, room, or several rooms. We employ World Geodetic System (WGS84) as a primary Geodetic datum. Its measure of inaccuracy is believed to be less than 2 centimeters to the center mass, making it far more precise than any other datums. We define several types of tokens.

Types of Property ERC721 Tokens

• land-plot tokens represent a particular land plot with its unique geographical coordinates. Each token stores details on the boundaries of the land plot in the smart contract. They’re set in the form of coordinates of the vertices of the plot. The token contains accurate coordinates in a different form: Latitude and Longitude, UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator), Geohash, and other Geodetic datums. Coordinates are three-dimensional. Every point of the land plot has its Altitude coordinate (also in different Geodetic datums). All this information is kept in blockchain;

• whole-building tokens. They represent a whole building and contain its geographical coordinates, topology, and other identification data. The data regarding the topology of the building (wall and roof geometry) is stored in IPLD with the help of IPFS protocol;

• room tokens are similar to land-plot tokens, with the difference that each of them represents a specific area of a building rather than a land plot. Just as land-plot tokens, room tokens store geographical coordinates. The information about room topology (wall and ceiling geometry) is kept in IPLD with the help of IPFS protocol;

• package tokens represent one or several room tokens united by their Owner.

Through the use of the ERC721 standard, each property can be transferred or sold as a token, using the wide possibilities of the Ethereum ecosystem.

How it works — Penthouse in New York

Let’s see how it works in practice. In the screenshots below, you can see 3 penthouse tokens located in New York (this is demo data).

As you can see the apartments are located on different floors (28 and 29) and each of them has unique geographical coordinates and other important information (address, apartment number, document links and others). Each token has corresponding polygon. The vertices of a polygon have coordinates in the WGS84 standart — latitude, longitude, and height. Vertices of the first two tokens (two apartments on the 28th floor) have 103 meters height and vertices of the third token (apartment on the 29th floor) have 106,5 meters hight.

Tokens can be transferred on Ethereum, sold or rent.

Of course to perform commercial operations with Ethereum tokens, an appropriate legal framework is needed. I will discuss the legal aspects of such transactions in the following articles.

In general Property ERC721 tokens can be created for commercial purposes, as digital objects representing the right of ownership, lease rights, leasing agreements, shares in co-op, membership rights, etc. As well as for the self-government of property owners. In this case, the token can give the right to make a decision and vote in the community of homeowners. The purpose and legal meaning of the Token should be fully determined by legal agreement.

More details you can find in Galt Project Whitepaper.

About us

Galt Project was founded in 2018 as an organisation, which invests crypto assets and develops technological projects to change the way people live, manage their property, and cooperate with each other for bettering the world.

More details can be found on our website galtproject.io, Telegram group galtproject (You can also meet our team there!), the galtproject_newschannel, twitter and articles to follow.

Control your money, control your property, control government institutions, control your data!