Bottom-up land registration(Zambia)

Using VC-based land registrations to on ramp land owners to the digital economy.

My team (and partner) have documented over 10,000 land parcels in Zambia. We can quickly onboard the land owners into the SSI world.

Over the last few years, my team and our partner (Medeem) have helped over 10,000 land owners obtain formal land titles. With a bottom-up approach, we helped land owners gain their first documented land survey and land titles.

The bottom-up approach has proven to be more effective in solving the problem on the ground. Allowing land owners to take matters in their own hands.

We believe the next logical step is to issue these land titles as verifiable credentials and onboard the land owners with their own self-sovereign identity.

Goal

We already have the digital version of these land titles. For Fund 7, our goal is to secure enough funding to create a proof of concept so we can start working with our local partner to plan out the next step.

- Store a sample set of the land titles into IPFS

- Issue the sample set of land titles as Verifiable Credentials

- Create a Trust Registry with our initial partner as the Issuer

- Create Proof of concept web wallet to store the land owners' DID and VC

- Create Proof of concept web wallet to allow for verification of ownership

Demographic

Our target audience are the over 10,000 land owners. For the POC, we want to create enough so that our local partner understands what SSI and VC is. We want to paint the right picture for our partners as well as the land owners.

Action Plan

Fund 7 should give us enough funding to create the POC. We will take the POC and demo to partner in Zambia.

Road Map

POC (0-3 month)

Cloud-based Issuing App to issue basic land titles as VC

Cloud-based custodian wallet for land owners

Future plan beyond Fund 7

(3-6 months)

Mobile wallet for land owners

Cloud-based app for verifiers

Encryption of land titles and IPFS storage

(6-12 months)

Paper-based DID solution for land owners without smart phone

Design on the ground community support.

(12-24 months)

Start pilot deployment and phase rollout.

KPI

For the POC, key is to be able to actually go through an end-to-end workflow. The POC should demonstrate at least:

2-5 land titles

1 Issuer

1-2 Verifier

Skills Required

- Knowledge to the current land title system in Zambia

- Full-stack web application design

- Knowledge to Atala Prism development

- Ability to work with local partner in Zambia

Budget Breakdown

1 Full-Stack Web Developer for 3 months - $15,000

1 Atala Prism Developer for 3 months - $18,000

1 half-time Project Manager for 3 months - $9,000

Business Model

The basic starting point is to charge membership fee for each issuing organizations as well as issuing fee per land-registration. However, the key is to create new and unforeseen value with these land titles.

The incentive is the main part of the work going forward. Getting these land titles as VC is just a technical first step. The real value comes when we can unlock hidden equity within these properties, and help the land owners become financially secured.

There are 3 major ways that we are approaching this.

1. Traditional Microfinance. We have began talking to Kiva and see if we can get into a partnership with them. This field is vast and complicated, however, with our track records in the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) area, we should be able to open some doors.

2. DeFi. The field of DeFi is seeing massive innovation. Could we link up land titles with DeFi protocols? Can we allow them to leapfrog beyond traditional financial system? While we don't have much experience in DeFi, I am sure we can find the right teams and experts within the Cardano ecosystem.

3. GameFi. Even more far-fetched is the idea of going GameFi. People are spending real money buying virtual land (Sandbox and Decentraland). Can we partner with some of these virtual land companies, and have virtual land backed by real land? Better yet, this could be a future Catalyst project to put one of these virtual game on Cardano.