Overstock.com’s blockchain property rights subsidiary, Medici Land Governance (MLG), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the municipality of Tulum in Quintana Roo, Mexico to develop a digital record of land ownership.
Blockchain-meets-property rights
In some developing economies, a lack of clarity over property ownership creates uncertainty that stifles the development of functioning markets and encourages fraud.
To address this gap, MLG provides a blockchain-based administration system. This helps to clarify who owns what and makes it very difficult to manipulate documents.
Even though a blockchain itself is hard to tamper with, it will only store what’s entered. So a key issue is to minimize corruption when data is entered. There’s a superb feature on Quartz about a blockchain property initiative in India, and the challenges.
The Mexican project
MLG and Tulum officials will collect property ownership data for a specified area of the Tulum municipality. This first step should clarify ownership and result in the issuance of certificates of title to land. These records will then be uploaded to a digital platform.
Next, MLG and Tulum officials will also collaborate to develop a mechanism to automatically update the record by capturing and uploading subsequent transaction data.
“Mexico’s adoption of advanced technology in their land registry will increase opportunities for individuals to strengthen their connections to the global economy through rightful ownership of land,” said Medici Land Governance CEO, Ali El Husseini. “Medici Land Governance’s next-generation land administration systems provide an egalitarian solution to the problem of developing a digital property titling platform that is reliable and secure, bringing trust through technology to Tulum County and its surrounding areas.”
“The signing of this Memorandum of Understanding between the Municipality of Tulum and Medici Land Governance represents the beginning of a new territorial ordering stage for the digitalization of land ownership and related processes,” said Víctor Mas Tah, mayor of the municipality of Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
