ReBloc Mission Statement
“On the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.” -Hunter S. Thompson
ReBloc is a decentralized real estate data marketplace. ReBloc leverages blockchain technology to overcome the $25B real estate data industry’s immense market failures, providing market participants with unprecedented data integrity, more competitive prices, increased data coverage, and more robust trading volume. Introducing an innovative privacy preserving data validation layer, we obviate buyer dependence on oligopoly market participants that control the market. ReBloc’s leadership team is comprised of world class serial entrepreneurs, technologists, and real estate experts, and is backed by some of the largest banks, insurance companies, MLSs, and assessors in the world, ensuring a strong and vibrant ecosystem.
Problem
Data integrity is a paramount challenge in the real estate data industry. Consuming real estate data is inherently complex. Data is often sourced from multiple, conflicting, and non-standardized sources. This problem is exasperated as data sellers do not regularly provide transparency with regard to collection, normalization, and resolution methodologies. Unable to validate, or often even assess data quality, both prior and after its acquisition, data consumers have no option but to rely heavily on the reputation of data providers. This is not an accidental outcome. Rather, legacy marketplace participants have purposefully and aggressively exploited their political sway to preserve the dependency on their reputation, making it extremely difficult for new competitors to enter the market. The result is a classic and dramatic market failure. As a result of the limited number of data providers, the overall trade volume is diminished, data coverage is limited, price premiums are maintained, and data integrity remains low.
Solution
ReBloc is a decentralized real estate data marketplace built on three main components: (a) an innovative data validation layer that provides buyers with unprecedented data quality guarantee, regardless of the data source; (b) a state of the art blockchain privacy mechanism built in cooperation with Enigma to leverage their proprietary “secret contracts,” allowing data providers and validators the comfort that they can sell and validate data without risking data exposure to each other or the general public; and (c) an innovative indexing protocol that ensures real-time availability of the data, without requiring sellers and validators to upload such data to a central repository. The three mechanisms provide a dominant system design and business architecture that will disrupt the real estate data industry.
Validation
At the heart of our marketplace lies an innovative validation layer. This validation layer provides consumers with an unprecedented data quality guarantee, regardless of the data source. When a consumer transacts to buy data in the ReBloc marketplace, such data is automatically pulled from the provider’s database into a secure smart contract. At the same time, the secure smart contract automatically pulls the same data field(s) from multiple different validator databases. The secure smart contract then compares the different data points and determines whether the provided data is in fact accurate (insofar as it matches the data provided by validators — consensus occured). If the data is deemed accurate, the secure smart contract sends it to the consumer, and the payment is remitted to the provider. If the data is not deemed accurate, the secure smart contract terminates the transaction (and penalizes the data provider). With data integrity guarantees, consumers become indifferent to the source of data. This allows us to completely obfuscate the source of data provided in the marketplace, eliminating the negative repercussions of the traditional reputation system. We allow for exponentially more stakeholders, from the largest insurance company, to the smallest broker or homeowner, to participate in the marketplace and create and share value. At the same time, we are also creating a new asset class of validators, able to participate in value creation and sharing. The result is more accurate data, more competitive prices, and increased data coverage.
Indexing
Leveraging Cherre’s unique IP, ReBloc introduces a robust real-time indexing protocol for real estate data. The protocol is responsible for indexing and maintaining a list of all real estate data available for transaction and validation. The indexing protocol ensures real-time availability of data, without requiring providers, consumers, and validators to upload their data to a central repository. Avoiding a central repository allows sellers and validators to maintain control over their data, enabling a trust inducing environment that doesn’t violate regulatory and privacy requirements. Data is only shared once a transaction is consummated. Another benefit of such design, which is complementary to obfuscating the data source, is that it allows providers and validators with even small amounts of data to participate and compete in the marketplace. For the first time, the long-tail of real estate data market can be utilized and captured. The indexing protocol consists of a proprietary Geocoder and three distinct and interconnected mechanisms: (a) the Cardinal Object Data Engine (CODE); (b) the Automated Schema Mapping Engine (ASME); and (c) the Assisted Business Logic Engine (ABLE). The indexer allows providers, validators, and consumers to programmatically sell, validate, and buy real estate data from each other.
Privacy
Blockchain technology allows us to enable a trustless data marketplace that overcomes current market failures. However, as a result of blockchains’ inherent transparency, it presents us with a new, key challenge — keeping the raw data private. A naive implementation of a decentralized marketplace would expose the sold data to 3rd parties. This would invoke a number of issues with an accumulated crushing effect. For example, when specific data has been sold and validated once, 3rd parties would be able to view it on-chain, for free, and no one would ever need to pay for the same data again. Providers would not agree to participate in such an ecosystem. In order to overcome this and numerous other problems, we are leveraging a proprietary privacy protocol for blockchain solution co-developed with Enigma for this specific use case. Enigma’s “secret contracts” are secure smart contracts that hide contract inputs and outputs, allowing ReBloc to execute validations and transactions without exposing the raw data on-chain.
