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Source publication
Purpose
This paper aims to set out an argument for the use of blockchain technology as a land registration tool, for Cyprus and other disputed land contexts, to assist with land disputes, which may, in turn, promote peace and harmony.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is exploratory in nature. It raises the historical and present land issues i...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... the third-largest Mediterranean island after Sicily and Sardinia, Cyprus is located in the East Mediterranean Basin 75 km south of Turkey. The island has an area of 9,251 km 2 and since 1974, has been divided into two states, as shown in Figure 1, with two different demographic structures. The population of the island and the percentage ratio of the minority Turkish Cypriot vs the Greek Cypriot population has always been a controversial subject since 1571 when the Ottoman Empire rule commenced. ...
Context 2
... violence caused many deaths and the forced displacement of over 30,000 Turkish Cypriots from mixed villages to enclaves (Figure 2), which only covered 3 per cent of the island (Tocci, 2000;Lacher and Kaymak, 2005). Consequent to the war in 1974, the two Blockchain as a tool for land rights communities were completely isolated from each other and the island was divided into two separate parts bordered by a UN buffer zone called the green line, which covers 3 per cent of the total area of the island as shown in Figure 1. To this date, the green line is controlled by UN forces and is inhabited (global security, nd). ...
Citations
... The question of the type of rights that are present in a DT (combining being a value with being a carrier of value) has been related to the question of the link between smart contracts and their legal nature (Ferreira & Sandner, 2021;Raskin, 2017). Several studies have focused on taking the trouble to identify the legislative challenges of defining the tokenisation of property rights (Bullmann et al., 2019;Ishmaev, 2017;Savelyev, 2018;Yapicioglu & Leshinsky, 2020). Research of this type has been undertaken particularly in relation to how property rights to land are recorded (when DTs are intended to replace/modify/supplement existing land registries; Verheye, 2017;Vos et al., 2017) and in formulating proposals for the use of DTs as a new type of property registry (Konashevych, 2020). ...
The paper focuses on financial and axiological aspects of the new instrument in the digital economy, such as digital tokens (DTs). The purpose of the article is to examine the investment performance of certain types of DTs. We suggest a categorisation of DTs according to the types of assets that they represent and analyse them in terms of profitability, risk, and effectiveness. The investment performance of different types of DTs was compared with stock market indices and commodity prices. The empirical source of information is data from the coinpaprika platform from January 2018 to July 2022. It occurs that DTs demonstrate, on average, lower investment performance than traditional instruments. However, there is a wide group of the former that can be included in the portfolio as their investment performance is higher than the one represented by stock market assets. Our contribution comprises, first, the extension of existing research on tokenization and tokens to include the investment aspect. Second, we develop and apply the original proposal of DT classification, which takes into account the hitherto neglected aspect of worldview valuation of a given DT type by market participants. Finally, we assess the investment performance of DTs (both in terms of our proposed classification and in the context of stock market indices). We also specify recommendations for investors.
... In other words, the exclusive use of technologies, ignoring the adoption of a developed land titling system such as the Torrens, is unlikely to result in the required land rights protection under an obsolete, complex, and colonial land governance system as exists in Bangladesh. Adoption of any technology will be costly (Yapicioglu and Leshinsky, 2020) and, in any event, likely to be superseded by newer technologies. As such the focus should be on a technology-neutral solution. ...
... Technology too will play an important role in the future in all country's land administration systems. However, while other authors have noted blockchain's potential to assist with land transactions, as, for example, a tool for conveyancing (Garcia-Teruel, 2020) and enabling transparency (Yapicioglu and Leshinsky, 2020), blockchain per se cannot solve the underlying issues of the current Bangladesh land administration system. This is because of the current division of responsibilities, and the separation of the registers; and, most importantly, because blockchain lacks fundamental 'Torrens' qualities. ...
This paper examines current land titling and administration processes in a selected developing country,
Bangladesh, in order to determine the reliability and effectiveness of those processes in supporting and
protecting individual landowners, and in guaranteeing title. In doing so, it identifies several governance issues flowing from the current decentralised registry and record of rights systems, and limited use of technology; which adversely impacts upon individual landowners’ title and rights, and users’ confidence, in those processes. This research supports both the need for a single centralised land management system; and the need for greater access to easy-to-use technology by all landowners, and potential landowners, irrespective of their social class. The paper concludes by identifying how the adoption of a Torrens style system, combined with increased technology adoption and use, will both assist in protecting individuals’ title and other rights, and result in a more efficient and rigorous Bangladesh land administration system. The research adds to the limited literature regarding Bangladesh.
... Additionally, Abdulai (2006) reports that land conflicts exist globally, with conflict rates of 15% in the Philippines and 10% in Honduras. Incomplete documentation leads to disputes over land ownership among many landowners worldwide (Mintah, 2020;Murtazashvili, 2016;Yapicioglu, 2020). In the United States 1 and Australia (Arruñada, 2018), land registration faces challenges such as fraud, public record errors and property boundary disputes which lead to conflicts over ownership and title. ...
... Fourthly, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is a consensus algorithm that replaces PoW (Ali, 2019;Makhdoom, 2019;Monrat et al., 2019). Fifthly, Sidechains (Ali, 2019;Panarello, 2018;Yapicioglu, 2020) are separate blockchains linked to the main blockchain. Sixthly, State Channels (Köpke et al., 2019;S. ...
This review summarizes the most recent literature on land title administration challenges worldwide. It focuses discussion on five main challenges in land title administration and highlights the significance of blockchain technology in resolving these issues globally, particularly how such technology can improve the efficiency, transparency and security of land records systems, thus making it easier to verify land ownership and transfer of title. Articles that explored the land title phenomena, blockchain technology, and discussed the implementation of blockchain in land titles were extracted from the Scopus database between 2015 and 2023. Despite three main challenges of this technology, adopting blockchain in land title administration can enhance its efficiency, resolve its issues, strengthen regulators' position and promote investments in land property. Henceforth, this review provides distinct practical contributions in a few ways. Implementing blockchain technology in land title administration can support regulators worldwide through increased transparency and accountability, improved efficiency and cost savings, enhanced security and trust, better data management and analysis and facilitation of cross-border transactions. It can also encourage land property investments worldwide by creating a secure, efficient and transparent land title system that reduces the risk of fraud, errors and corruption.
... Like threaded beads, data is sequentially added to the ledger (as blocks), in a linear and chronological order, chaining itself to previous blocks, using hash functions. Though blockchain technology is perhaps best known as the foundation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the technology has been put to diverse use including: land and property registry (Ansah et al., 2023;Bennett et al., 2019;Chandra and Rangaraju, 2017;Eder, 2019;Thakur, 2020;Yapicioglu and Leshinsky, 2020); bill management in the shipping industry (Liu, 2000); safeguarding (Gipp et al., 2017;Huang and Dai, 2019); digital copyright protection (Savelyev, 2018;Vishwa and Hussain, 2018); and autonomous vehicle security (Davi et al., 2019;Ferdous et al., 2019;Sharma et al., 2018). ...
Street art has flourished around the world, gaining international recognition and commercial success. Consequently, controversies over their misuse have escalated, and artists have begun to pursue legal protection of their intellectual property (IP) rights. But asserting these rights is still quite difficult, creating a state of uncertainty and risk to both artists and interested parties. In this article, we introduce Street-Art-NFT-System (SA-NFT), a dynamic street art ledger that enables artists to assert their IP rights and communicate with other interested parties, while maintaining their anonymity. Additionally, SA-NFT can create a new documentation method that will open new avenues for studying a city's ever-changing urban facades.
... Blockchain changes the features of current financial services such as settlement, cross-border payments, remittances, creditinformation systems, and smart contracts while addressing issues such as trust, transaction costs, and fraud (Guo & Liang, 2016;Yoo, 2017). It can mitigate land disputes (Yapicioglu & Leshinsky, 2020), address issues related to sharing registers, fund collection, and management processes and improve corporate governance mechanisms. ...
The article addresses the legal design challenges of real estate crowdfunding, proposing potential solutions that combine blockchain technology, tokenisation, finance, and law. We propose a blockchain tokenised security design, based on a sertificate similar to Sukuk, an Islamic finance asset, that draws inspiration from Equipment Trust Certificates and is managed by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), that may issue blockchain tokenised certificates. These certificates grant rights related to an investment property. Each series of certificates represents specific property and will be a liability of the SPV that owns the property. In general, the tokens used resemble but remain categorically distinct from asset-backed securities. Their performance still depends on the underlying asset’s performance. Most important, token owners do not become partners in the SPV but are granted fractional ownership and rights on the underlying property. The proposed token mechanism could prevent delays in the transaction process related to transferring ownership of a property. It could split at some point to allow for the creation of ownership and income rights. The proposed security design potentially protects investors’ legal rights better without standard application of investors becoming partners in the SPV while shortening the transaction times, and increasing transparency and asset liquidity.
... As against other transaction records management ledgers, some uniqueness of blockchain technology center on; the traceability of records which are linked to each other in a linear chain system, the immutability of records, and the decentralized nature of the technology's operation that requires consensus building among connected actors to a transaction before it can be completed. These features have caused blockchain-based transactions to be associated with transparency, trust, security and resilience, elimination of fraud possibilities, corruption, and data manipulation among others (Ameyaw and de Vries, 2020;Yapicioglu and Leshinsky, 2020;Umrao and Patel, 2022). These issues are equally the challenges bedeviling the land sector in many countries, particularly developing ones, and threatening property rights protection. ...
... This is due to the fact that there are many interests, and stakeholders involved in land transactions, and this makes security of data, trust, and transparency extremely important in these transactions. Subsequently, this has led to the proposition for adoption of blockchain, and actual adoption for land administration in some countries; India, Honduras, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Kenya, Georgia, Sweden, Ghana, and Rwanda, among others (Goderdzishvili, Eder et al., (2018; Lazuashvili et al. (2019); (Shahriyer and Monim, 2019;Yapicioglu and Leshinsky, 2020;de Vries, 2021, 2022;Umrao and Patel, 2022). Supriyadi et al. (2021), identified that blockchain use case was highest in land administration and land management as compared to other government administration services. ...
The adoption of efficient technologies in support of land administration services is still a challenge in Ghana.
Data on land ownership, use, and value in Ghana remain fragmented, and technological systems enabling information
services automation, and accessibility to reliable land information remain inefficient. This continues to
cause societal problems like; double sales of land, unauthorized changes to land documents, corruption, and
bribery. In this study, we argue that the absence of a context-focused guide for technology adaptation is a major
factor for failures in previous technology adoption attempts in Ghana’s land sector. We evaluate how a past
technology (GELIS) adoption at Accra Lands Commission in Ghana was executed and why it led to unrealized
expectations. We relied on elicited expert views followed by content analysis, and validated against a metasynthesis
qualitative review methodology of secondary data. We then extrapolated these results to possible
outcomes and trajectories for the adaptation of a new technology like blockchain. Based on blockchain’s
interdependent feature, Ghana’s contextual land issues, and the GELIS adoption experience, we develop suggestions
covering an extended TOE framework to include socio-cultural elements as a guide for blockchain
technology adaptation in Ghana, and other developing land administration systems with similar land issues as
Ghana. Policy implications underlining these suggestions are highlighted.
... Another stream considered the legal aspects of blockchain in the land administration domain (e.g., [30][31][32][33][34][35]). Some reports examined blockchain in land administration from the viewpoint of the public sector or governance (e.g., [36][37][38]). The concept papers in land administration often developed general technical blockchain concepts, sometimes tailored to a specific country (e.g., [39][40][41][42]) and usually aiming to improve the security of land registration and administration (e.g., [39,[43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]). The example documents in land administration either provided blockchain land administration as a general example or mentioned some real-world blockchain applications in land administration. ...
In recent years, blockchain technology has received increasing attention in the real estate literature. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that blockchains could provide some added benefits for the real estate sector even in the current hybrid settings, where blockchain is usually just an add-on to existing systems. This research provides an up-to-date and systematic understanding of blockchain’s theoretical potential, pros, and cons for the real estate sector. The research aims to understand why and where to apply blockchain in real estate by conducting a systematic review that identified 296 relevant documents and performed a thematic content analysis. The identified blockchain adoption proposals were classified using standardized real estate vocabulary. Most of the literature focused on blockchain possibilities within land administration, followed by property transactions, real estate investment, leasing and renting, and real estate administration. However, real estate development and real estate maintenance did not appear as attractive real estate subsectors for blockchain. This paper provides a detailed analysis of blockchain technology’s possibilities for each real estate subsector, i.e., blockchain merits, and discusses the pros and cons. Last, this review provides suggestions for future research directions.
... Nicolaou-Manias and Wu have recently concluded that incorporating blockchain into existing registries is a safer first step than replacing them (Nicolaou-Manias and Wu, 2021). Others have also considered replacing current land registries with blockchain-based land and title registries unrealistic (Nastri, 2021;Yapicioglu and Leshinsky, 2020). In 2019, Allessie et al. examined blockchain applications for digital government and concluded that blockchain is always "just one layer of a more developed service" (Allessie et al., 2019). ...
The real estate sector is often presented as an exemplary field that benefits from practical blockchain applications. The general hypothesis is that, in theory, blockchain could solve some significant challenges the real estate sector is facing, such as nontransparency, inefficiencies, fraud and corruption, high costs, and trust issues. However, the literature focuses on blockchain’s theoretical benefits, challenges, or concepts. This research aims to understand the recent developments in the blockchain literature, specifically in the real estate sector, and to understand the current real-world applications by collecting empirical evidence from blockchain studies. The systematic literature review identified 262 relevant documents, after which a thematic content analysis was performed. Conceptual blockchain literature was identified to propose blockchain benefits for the real estate sector in four categories: land administration, real estate transactions, tokenization, and real estate management. The thematic content analysis also identified 26 empirical applications, of which all except one were related to land administration. Although the conceptual and theoretical blockchain literature presents blockchain as a disruptive and transformative technology for the real estate sector, the empirical applications suggest that blockchain adoption materializes more in hybrid, smaller-scale settings, where blockchain is merely an add-on layer to existing systems. Overall, most of the conceptual blockchain benefits remain empirically unconfirmed. On the other hand, the empirical applications suggest that blockchain could, for example, increase efficiency, reduce time, and provide verifiability, transparency, and automation, even in smaller-scale, hybrid settings. In addition, the applications indicate that blockchain could, in some cases, help reduce fraud and increase security and trust compared with centralized digital solutions. Finally, the empirical insights emphasize the role of political will, regulatory framework, availability of reliable digital data, public–private partnerships, and educational aspects in blockchain applications.
... These characteristics establish a high level of faith in the ability of tiny, scattered shareholders to govern the organisation. Land conflicts might potentially be mitigated by blockchain (Yapicioglu and Leshinsky, 2020). The tokenization of scarce assets is perhaps the most significant benefit of Blockchain. ...
Blockchain technology is a core, underlying technology that stimulates possible applications in the banking sector. The study examines blockchain, the nascent technology that reinforces Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, to determine what it is and how it can disrupt and alter the banking services. It emphasizes the technology's properties and explains why they can significantly impact the banking industry, including reimbursements, payments, outflows, credentials facilities, and novel products based on smart contracts. The study also considered the work that needs to be done by the industry for blockchain applications to become a mainstream part of the financial landscape. It emphasizes that this is not a technology that a single company can perfect to obtain an advantage over competitors. Instead, it may assist the entire sector by speeding up and securing transactions. However, it can only reach its full potential if there is a wide-ranging alliance across the industry to explore practices and develop shared standards.
... Nevertheless, the usage of blockchain in land registry systems has several constraints regarding the identity that must be addressed when creating a blockchain-based land registry system. Among these considerations are: independent verification [10,[64][65][66][67], the necessity for an identity solution [64,68,69], compliance with the identification principles [66,70], user control [11,67,71,72], and legal validity [9,39,64]. It is necessary to solve those constraints for a successful deployment of blockchain technology in the land registry system as well as to overcome its drawbacks. ...
Citation: Shuaib, M.; Hassan, N.H.; Usman, S.; Alam, S.; Bhatia, S.; Agarwal, P.; Idrees, S.M. Land Registry Framework Based on Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) for Environmental Sustainability.
