Labs Group rewards a 5-star seaside property for its IDO on Uniswap

Labs Group, the world’s first end-to-end blockchain-powered real estate investment ecosystem, has announced to host an initial DEX offering on March 15, at 10:30 am UTC on Uniswap. A grand prize winner of the IDO participants will be able to win a five-star seaside property on Phuket Island in Thailand, according to the official announcement.

The property will also include a 6% rental guarantee for two years, announced Labs Group. It stated:

“Even if you don’t stay there, the property will pay you rental dividends while it’s operating. The winner will receive 100% of the security tokens issued with this property, which will make them the owner of the luxury real estate.”

Yuen Wong, CEO of Labs Group, and Mahesh Harilela, chairman of Labs Group, told Cointelegraph China on March 11 during a Hub interview that their team has been experimenting with how to leverage blockchain technology to disrupt the real estate industry since 2018. However, they believe that now is the perfect time for tokenizing properties.

Wong pointed out that with more and more institutional investors and individuals investing in Bitcoin (BTC), the market is now much more ready for understanding and accepting tokenizing the biggest asset class — real estate — than ever before. With the ongoing pandemic and the impact on the real estate business, developers are more open to hearing out some of the alternatives solutions to raise funds for their businesses.

Harilela added that the readiness of the blockchain infrastructure is also another critical point for pushing tokenizing real estate to the tipping point. He explained:

“Corporate infrastructure having the financial availability through a platform such as RioDeFi can hedge the loans property or have the property owners come on board.”

Harilela explained that the market has matured to a point where people now understand that everything has to be done through the net and through blockchains. People believe that blockchain technology has become a legitimate source for validating data information storage and transparency. He gave purchasing a house in Hong Kong as an example:

“…If you want to buy a house in Hong Kong, you have to register with the government registration office. You have to spend a lot of time on site investigation and reading a lot of information so that you can know who the real owner of the land is. Now, we can find real estate information through the blockchain and pay attention to the process of real estate ownership change all the time.”

The tech behind real estate tokenization

RioDeFi, a blockchain company that aims to accelerate the mass adoption of digital assets by bridging traditional and decentralized finance, has been working on providing the latest technology of DeFi and cryptocurrency to the real estate industry and Labs Group.

James Anderson, CEO and co-founder of RioDeFi, shared his prediction with Cointelegraph China that in the future, we could use the real estate token as a mortgage, buy Bitcoin after the loan, and then use the Bitcoin profit gains to buy more real estate. He believes that through circulation, assets can get more liquidity.

RioDeFi chief marketing officer Stephane Laurent Villedieu explained that blockchain technology will play a greater role in solving the problems of poor liquidity in the blockchain market and serve more enterprises in the long run.

Villedieu revealed that RioDeFi is in the process of receiving several licenses, such as payment processing in Estonia and Singapore. This will allow the company to act as a bridge to connect blockchain, DeFi and traditional assets, such as real estate.

According to Anderson, RioChain is the backbone of the entire RioDeFi system. Several applications such as RioWallet, RioPay and RioFinance have been built on the RioChain. There are a number of decentralized applications built on the RioChain as well. These include Mantro DAO, a platform for savings and lending activities; Lepricon, a gamified platform for prediction markets; Bitpool; and Labs Group.

Win-win for both parties

Both Wong and Anderson believe the collaboration between RioDeFi and Labs Group can benefit both parties. As Wong explained:

“The technology that can’t solve the industry contradiction is just a technology. If there is only a solution but no technical support, the project can not achieve very good results. Therefore, the cooperation between labs and RioDeFi is like a marriage. Solutions and technical support can solve the pain points of the blockchain industry.”

Anderson pointed out that other blockchains have similar problems, including network congestion and high transaction costs. These pain points prevent business potential from happening. He gave buying property with the help of Labs as an example:

“If you want to buy a house for only $100 and only buy part of the house, the gas fee will be very expensive. It will charge you $50, which will basically offset your income in the next few years.”

According to him, RioChain can process 3,000 transactions in one second, and the block output speed is two seconds. Anderson also revealed that as an alternative to other blockchains, RioChain plans to be a parallel chain of the Polkadot network this year.

Wong hopes investors can leverage the RioDeFi platform and benefit from it, too. In the traditional way of investing in real estate, investors often take a mortgage from the bank, and some will carry out secondary mortgages to obtain funds for investment. However, with the DeFi platform, investors can use the mortgage as collateral and continue to borrow funds for other investments. He said:

“We hope that this platform is for everyone so that everyone can access real estate. We introduce these elements in order to innovate the real estate industry, make our vision come true, and make real estate accessible to everyone.”

Harilela concluded that both real estate investors and sellers can take advantage of the huge DeFi ecosystem, including financing functions, currency and cryptocurrency trading functions to expand real estate trading to a global level.

The NFT trend

Labs Group has already partnered up with Enjin, a blockchain gaming platform focused on the creation of digital collectible items that are truly owned by the user. According to Wong, the company will also use Enjin’s NFT minting platform to tokenize real estate on the blockchain.

Labs Group can also offer fractionalized deeds of real estate for as low as $100, allowing retail investors (particularly millennials) to finally enter and invest in the real estate market. Wong said:

“The range of real estate on offer will include buildings, hotel rooms and apartments. Trades will all take place securely through the regulated Labs Security Exchange. This marks the introduction of blockchain into the world’s oldest and largest asset class, valued at approximately $228 trillion.”