In April, Smartlands will launch an alternative investment platform for buying and selling tokenized shares of real-world assets. The platform, built on the Stellar open-source network, will first focus on issuing security tokens that represent a suite of high-yield real estate listings based in Ukraine.
Smartlands’ New Platform Is Revolutionizing the Real Economy in Eastern Europe
How could blockchain technology revolutionize the real economy?
One of the most exciting answers lies in unlocking liquidity. Consider this: The estimated value of tokenizable real estate worldwide is more than $270 trillion, while other real-world assets — like businesses, debt and agricultural holdings — put the total much higher.
But the legacy financial system poses problems.
Due to regulatory and technological barriers, it’s been difficult for owners of real assets to take advantage of their free equity for other opportunities. Meanwhile, the majority of investors have missed out on the benefits of investing in the real economy, such as protecting their capital from inflation.
Smartlands bridges this gap. By using blockchain technology to unlock liquidity in traditionally illiquid assets, Smartlands enables investors and asset owners to access the massive value that’s trapped in the real economy.
The team’s first major accomplishment came in 2019 with a pilot Security Token Offering (STO) for a student accommodation block in Nottingham, U.K. Smartlands raised enough capital from private investors to buy 30% of Winrise One Limited, the company that owns the property, while the remaining 70% was held by the original developer.
The pilot project was a success — it not only served as a proof of concept for the Smartlands Platform, but also made history by becoming the first tokenized property in the U.K.
Now, Smartlands is taking its next major step toward tokenizing the real economy.
Smartlands Platform Launch
In April, Smartlands will launch an alternative investment platform for buying and selling tokenized shares of real-world assets. The platform, built on the Stellar open-source network, will first focus on issuing security tokens that represent a suite of high-yield real estate listings based in Ukraine.
Using the platform, owners of high-quality real estate will be able to issue Security Token Offerings (STO) to investors. Investors from around the world can then buy those asset-backed tokens and trade them on a secondary market, providing a secure way for investors to benefit from fractionalized ownership of real estate.
A First-Mover Advantage in Ukraine
Smartlands is uniquely positioned to launch such a platform. While other projects in the cryptocurrency space are aiming to tokenize real-world assets, few have overcome the regulatory roadblocks standing in the way.
In contrast, Smartlands has already finalized the necessary legal framework to launch its platform in Ukraine. To accomplish this, Smartlands partnered with Quantum Attorneys, a law firm that provides best-in-class legal advice on all matters related to blockchain technology.
Why is Smartlands launching its platform in Ukraine?
European countries like Ukraine and Lichtenchtein have recently become some of the world’s most forward-thinking nations in regards to cryptocurrency. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation is currently working on creating a progressive legal environment for the development and regulation of cryptocurrencies, while Ukraine’s finance minister recently described virtual assets as “promising.”
Ukraine has also partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to create a central bank digital currency, and the government plans to build cryptocurrency mining projects next to its nuclear power plants.
This crypto-friendly landscape gives Smartlands a first-mover advantage in Eastern Europe and beyond.
“The legal side is a stumbling block for many crypto projects,” said Ilia Obraztcov, CEO of Smartlands Platform Ltd. “We passed this test previously in the UK, and now our Ukrainian office with Quantum Attorneys has developed a stable structure for a successful launch in Ukraine that also allows a smooth expansion of the project.”
As far as expanding the project, it’s worth emphasizing that real estate is just the first asset class that Smartlands will list on its platform. Soon, Smartlands plans to offer Initial Coin Offerings in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Ukraine.
Toward that goal, Smartlands recently partnered with Business Incubator Group Ukraine, which helps SMEs in the early stages of their development.
“This collaboration will unlock a new business direction for us, and tokenizing the SMEs company shares will certainly help small businesses to receive well-needed financial investment,” said Obraztcov.
Smartlands has also partnered with Agroxy, a blockchain ecosystem that provides a regional trading platform for farmers and purchasers of agricultural products. Agroxy plans to incorporate Smartlands’ infracture into its trading system.
Beyond these promising partnerships, Smartlands aims to enable the tokenization of a wide range of real assets, from tech platforms to debt trading platforms, in many nations across the globe.
But no matter the asset or location, it’s worth highlighting what fuels transactions on the Smartlands Platform: the SLT token.
The SLT Token
On the Smartlands Platform, STO issuers will pay fees for listing assets. Issuers can pay fees in fiat currency, but all fees will be processed in SLT, which is native utility token of the Smartlands ecosystem.
SLT is a unique token in the cryptocurrency space. That’s primarily because, after the platform launches, qualifying SLT holders will receive one-third of the total fee revenue generated by the Smartlands Platform.
Smartlands’ near-term goal is to tokenize $1 billion in real assets. When this goal is reached, qualified SLT holders will have received a total of roughly $16.5 million, considering Smartlands applies a 5% commission to the total portfolio of assets on its platform, and qualified SLT holders receive 33% of this fee pool.
Smartlands expects that this unique revenue-sharing model, combined with rising platform activity and future tier-1 exchange listings, will result in increasing demand for SLT over the long term.
“At Smartlands, we believe the world is on the cusp of a quantum shift in how value is stored, transferred, and accounted for using blockchain and crypto-currencies,” said Martin Birch, Non-Executive Chairman of the Smartlands Group and Managing Partner of Ukrainian investment bank Empire State Capital Partners.
“This financial landscape of Dollars, Euros, and other fiat currencies supporting stock markets and the foreign exchange markets will change beyond all recognition in the coming years as the key advantages of blockchain and the crypto world become accepted by users worldwide.”
Fact list:
- Unique staking structure: Unlike other cryptocurrency projects, the amount of passive income distributed to stakers is based on the amount of activity on the Smartlands Platform, making SLT an ideal token during bear markets.
- First-mover advantage: Smartlands has finalized the legal framework to launch its alternative investment platform in Ukraine. This will help pave the way for expanding into other nations.
- Flexibility: The Smartlands Platform is capable of tokenizing not only real estate, but also any real-world asset, such as small and medium-sized enterprises, agricultural assets and debt.
- Fast, cheap and secure transactions: SLT is built on the Stellar network, one of the most trusted and environmentally friendly blockchains on the planet. What’s more, the Stellar Development Foundation is helping to create a central bank digital currency for Ukraine, where Smartlands is launching its platform.
- Low token supply: There are a total of 7.2 million SLT in existence, with about 5.1 million in circulation. Smartlands expects this to increase buying demand for the token.
- Upcoming exchange listings: Smartlands is pursuing negotiations with some of the best exchanges in the cryptocurrency space, while it’s currently available on StellarTerm, LOBSTR, WhiteBit and Atomars.
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