Koleya Karringten, executive director of the Canadian Blockchain Consortium, considers blockchain as an essential tool for innovation in the sectors beyond cryptocurrency.Sarah B Groot
When Paul Czan works, he appreciates having a single application that contains all the information he needs to help his customers buy and sell a property. With technology rationalizing the process, it releases it to focus on the aspects of his work that require a person in person.
“Technology definitively improves our industry overall,” said Czan, an Ottawa real estate agent and president of Ottawa Real Estate Board.
Each morning, he opened Realm, a multiple registration service platform for real estate agents developed in 2021 by the Toronto and Region Real Estate Board (TRREB) and its subsidiary, Proptx. It has since been adopted by almost all the real estate councils of Ontario.
In 2023, Proptx announced its intention to integrate the blockchain into the platform.
For the uninitiated, a blockchain is a large decentralized and unchanged digital book that safely stores recordings on a network of computers. The information is stored in blocks linked together in a chain. Instead of counting on a central authority, as when your bank confirms that someone has filed money on your account, the technology responds directly to the question: “Can I trust that this exchange took place?”
Known for its use in cryptocurrency, it was also announced as a technology that other industries could operate.
The CEO of Trreb, John Doucihele, said in a statement that his blockchain solution will provide a secure and more rationalized process for all those involved in a real estate transaction, with the potential for reducing fraud.
Everywhere in Canada, work on blockchain projects outside the cryptocurrency had weaker profiles than five years ago. Before the pandemic, the first adopters such as Walmart Canada announced the intention of using blockchain to improve its bill and payment process, and the biggest banks in Canada all launched blockchain initiatives.
Patrick Mandic, CEO of Mavennet, an IT services company in Toronto, said that the momentum has slowed down because the use of blockchain in the supply chain requires a level of normalization for which most companies n ‘ were not prepared.
“We had the right answer to the bad question,” said Mandic. “We had to do a lot of legs to align different organizations on the same standard to exchange information and know that everyone is talking about the same thing before you worry to prove specific action.”
He also says that fundamental work has led to other products that many people are not linked to blockchain, such as decentralized identity standards and verifiable identification information. They are essential to take advantage of the blockchain.
“It starts slowly, but once you arrive at the tilting point, this is when the value takes off in a very important way – this is what we saw with the introduction of the Internet”, explains Mr. Mandic. “We are going to arrive in places that we couldn’t even imagine five years ago.”
The blockchain, almost by default, has become synonymous with cryptocurrency. Koleya Karringten, executive director of the Canadian Blockchain Consortium, said that this has contributed to a lack of understanding and risk perceived. “The technology as a whole is 99% extremely beneficial.”
Apart from the financial sector, she says that blockchain is “still a lot of conversations and discussions”, but convincing uses of blockchain arouse a lot of interest in Canada, including smart contract signatures, transfers of titration. terrestrial and identity verification.
“It is an agnostic technology that can really help Canadians in many ways,” says Karringten.
She adds that industry needs more support and clarity of governments to prosper in Canada.
