In this episode of NFTs for Good, BHR Co-Founders Zach Gorman and James Rogers sit down with Kelley Cambry via Twitter Spaces to discuss their Blockchain Home Registry. Kelley Cambry is the host of NFTs for Good and the CEO and co-founder of family-focused streaming platform Blue Studios.io – which is also supported by blockchain technology. The three outline future BHR integrations and other applications of blockchain technology across residential real estate. This episode of NFTs for Good also includes a Q&A portion, during which Zach and James answer questions from attendees of the Twitter Spaces session. Follow below for a full transcript of the twenty-eighth episode of NFTs for Good: “Real Estate and Blockchain Technology.” We made a few minor edits for clarity.
NFTs for Good Episode 28: Real Estate and Blockchain Technology
Kelley Cambry from NFTs for Good: We are going to get started in a few. Make sure to tweet out that you have joined the spaces. We’re gonna let this run for about a minute or two, and then we’ll go ahead and get started. Hello everybody, thanks for joining. Hey there Antonio. Thanks for joining.
Alright, thanks everybody who’s tuning in. So, there’s some new faces. All right, all right. Thanks to everybody who is tuning in. I’ll welcome you all to NFT’s for good… We are a weekly Twitter Spaces. It’s all about highlighting the builders and the founders in the DeFi, web 3, crypto and NFT space.
We do this at least once every week, and you can check out the schedule on our website: https://www.bluestudios.io/nfts-for-good. And we do this because we know there are a ton of stories that always come out about the negative aspects of DeFi, web 3, crypto and NFT’s. But we believe if we keep talking about the positive aspects – and how the people behind these projects are trying to make the world a better place by building utility with leverage technology – that we can really elevate the conversation.
So with this show and subsequent shows that we do, we’ll continue to highlight the people and founders and also include a social good and utility component when we [describe] what they’re building. We hope that two things can come from this conversation.
We hope you get to connect with another founder and hear their courageous journeys from idea to building in public and also be inspired by their stories and know that there are some really great people out here building the new internet. You can check out our upcoming shows and sign up for updates at https://www.bluestudios.io/nfts-for-good. Quick disclaimer that all opinions of the guests may not reflect the views of Blue Studios or its hosts. This Twitter Space is for informational purposes only. None of the opinions of the show by the host or panelists can be considered investment advice.
Please do your own research. Be safe and make sure you talk to securities and investment advisors for more information on how NFT’s and crypto fit into your collectible and ownership portfolio.
As you can see, this show is being recorded, so we can have it on our website and other places to promote future shows. Also, happy to announce that we are starting to have our episodes on major podcasting platforms including Apple, Spotify and Amazon Music, so we’ll have that in this upcoming week, but we’re super excited about that and also really quick before we intro our guests.
I am Kelly. I am the founder of Blue Studios. We built a community around education, family and web 3, and we believe in really redefining what families can do together. I’m a strong believer of that as a third generation entrepreneur on both sides of the family. I have seen what happens when families come together, work together around shared goals.
And for me, umm, this is exactly me continuing that I guess tradition and helping other families do the same and our mission is really to pioneer how families invest, plan and earn together with technology that’s accessible to everyone and a big part of what we do is around coming up with innovative ways and innovative approaches to educating and inspiring families to also learn and earn together, but also to onboard more families in a safe way.
To web 3. Super happy to be here today. A big reason why it’s important for us to do this show is again to highlight the stories and people behind the DeFi and web 3 movement. Web 3 is fast-paced. It’s 24/7, and we’ve had to work harder and faster than ever, but it’s nice to slow things down and dig deep with amazing guests like we have here today: Zach with Blockchain Home Registry. So with that I will quickly hand it over to Zach to talk a little bit about himself, and then we’ll go deeper into the interview.
Zach Gorman from BHR: Awesome, thank you so much Kelly. And just one quick heads up: I think James is in the lobby, but he doesn’t have a way to request to speak. His handle is @JamesRogers10, so I’m happy to intro myself, but just want to make you aware of that.
Kelley Cambry (Host): Yeah, let me see, I can’t see him on my end for some reason, but let me figure that out. Give me a second while you talk.
Zach Gorman: Yeah, no problem. Hey everybody, really, really great to be here. Thank you all for taking the time to come listen to us chat a little bit about the exciting world of real estate and blockchain. There’s a lot of amazing stuff happening in the space, and we are really excited about what we’re working on but also about just the general innovation overall. We’re huge fans of the Blue Studios community and project – really like the whole value system of everything you’ve set-up and just the conversations going on there. So big fan of what everybody’s got going on there.
High level – just some background on me while Kelly’s working on getting James – my cofounder James and I have been working in the proptech space since about 2017. I’ll let him tell sort of the story of how we started because it applies a bit more to him. But, my background – just to give you a bit of summary – James and I met at college many, many years ago. At this point we went to Tufts University.
After school, we went pretty different directions. James really moved directly into entrepreneurship and technology and I went into management consulting and actually spent about 10 years as an electronic music producer in Washington DC. And then from there, I developed a lot of skills and interest in sort of the marketing/product design realm.
Then in 2017 James and I came together to start working on our prop tech company called Torii Homes. And then most recently – in the last couple of months, the end of April – we released a new product called Blockchain Home Registry, which is why we’re here today. So excited to introduce that to everyone, and again thank you for having us. Thank you, Kelley.
Kelley Cambry: No problem, I think he has to join on the Twitter app. I think that’s the problem.
Zach Gorman: OK, I think you can hear us, so I think I’ll ping him as well.
Kelley Cambry: Yeah, I’m coming home right now, so I think he’ll be on in a second. I know that’s the weird thing about Twitter spaces.
Zach Gorman: No, no worries at all.
Kelley Cambry: No problem. So, I mean, do you want to just kind of go into how you know maybe you got started in the like or interested in the DeFi/web 3 space and kind of like what inspired you?
Oh wait, here is James right here. Hey, James.
Zach Gorman: Awesome. Great. Hey, James.
James Rogers from BHR: Hey everyone.
Kelley Cambry: Hey there, alright, so just a quick intro. Would love to hear a little bit about your background and then Zach also says that you’re the one who can tell the origin story about how you guys got started in the space and how you guys went from [Torii to BHR and said] “I’m interested in this too.” Like, “hey, I’m dedicating myself 24/7 and making this happen.”
James Rogers: Yeah I guess I can do that. Kelley, first thanks for having us this is really fun! So like Zach said, we’ve known each other for a really long time. I like to tell people that Zach and I have been in literally life-threatening circumstances because we used to climb a lot of tall mountains together.
So, after many years of being mountaineering partners and almost dying on glaciers at high altitude, many, many years later, we decided that we would regroup and start a company together. But in between that, I worked for several companies and ran engineering teams at a bunch of different consumer technology companies.
Throughout that, I was always really interested in real estate and that no matter how many times I tried, or I bought or sold homes, I found that it never got easier. It stayed really, really hard. It was very stressful, very laborious. So I guess this is the really quick origin story to why Zack and I ended up working on technology and real estate:
My wife and I were buying a house. We found it online. A real estate agent didn’t help at all. We actually drove two hours to go see this house and then our real estate agent wasn’t even there. He didn’t even show up, and I called him, and he said his dog had thrown up in his car. He was lost, and that I should just go in without him.
So I ended up buying that house, and I was thinking to myself: “I understand how softwares are built… I think software can make this industry better.” So I actually quit my job and sold my house. Then Zach and I started a company called Torii.
Really, really high level is that Torii is a real estate tech company making it easier to buy, sell and own homes. But we’ve been doing that…we started about five years ago, and Zach and I have both always been really interested in blockchain and the crypto space generally, and then more recently web 3.
I’ll never forget back in 2011 when a friend of mine at the gym was telling me that I should buy Bitcoin. I wish I’d listened to him at the time. Took me a lot longer than that. But so then Zach and I started this company to really build technology to make things easier in the real estate space. And we uncovered two really big problems that we couldn’t help ourselves but solve. And Kelley, to your point about what drove us to spend most of our waking hours on it.
But those problems that we found were:
One is that you know we’ve been building in the real estate space – real estate tech for us. More specifically, we found that while there’s a ton of really cool stuff being built, the industry is really uncollaborative. A lot of people are rewriting the same code paths, or, you know, rebuilding the same relationships and then not helping each other. For us, that was a big problem.
And then another problem that we found is that you might own your home, but you only own the asset itself. Of course, you can sleep in it. You get to live there, but you don’t own the underlying data. And what I mean by that is I actually at one point was trying to buy a different house with my wife in California. We got rejected by 10 insurance companies for wildfire risk and that was data that we didn’t know. The seller didn’t know. Insurance companies knew that. They didn’t share that with any of us until it was almost too late. Or title companies know much, much more about ownership history and permits and deeds and liens and things like that than you might as a buyer or a seller. We really wanted to go about solving that.
So I’ll let Zach explain how we’re going about it, but that series of – at this point – many, many years of experience led us to where now we’ve given up many other things to spend a lot of time building what we call Blockchain Home Registry. But I’ll let Zach explain what that actually is.
Zach Gorman: Sure.
Kelley Cambry: Yeah, definitely yeah. So definitely tell us a little bit more about what you’re building.
Zach Gorman: Yeah absolutely. Thanks, James. So high level: you know Blockchain Home Registry is a web 3 protocol bringing the world’s real estate data on chain and to sort of ground us. And what does that actually mean? You know, from a consumer standpoint, you can really think of it as CARFAX for your home. If people here are not familiar with CARFAX, it’s a company that gives you a bunch of insights and information, and a CARFAX report about whether the car you’re looking to purchase has had any accidents, open recalls, previous owners service history and much, much more.
So you can think of it very similarly to that, and the idea is that we’re creating a record for all property – all real estate – and sort of one source of truth. We’re bringing all of that information together that you know James was referencing that most homeowners don’t have access to. Or you know, the ability to even see on a continual basis. So from a consumer standpoint, it’s CARFAX for homes.
You as a homeowner, can mint an NFT of a property that you own and that gives you access to this permanent historical transferable record. So on your side as the homeowner, you can upload all of the documentation that you have related to your home and have a secure storage solution for all that information. You can take things off of receipts, text messages, email.
The process of owning your home is distributed through so many different providers and communications so having that sort of one source of truth that you can organize and add to [is so important]. But then you know it’s sort of all of that, but on steroids. And we really, you know our vision for BHR is building this as an industry standard and protocol and a collaborative one where all of those different service providers that James was talking about – title insurance companies, lenders, banks, you know, energy providers, solar companies, all of them – can integrate onto the platform and provide their unique data about your home and put it onto your home record.
So all of those different companies and service providers are going to be able to access consumers. They’re going to be able to access consumers you know via promotions and different, interesting new technology. You, as the homeowner over time, are going to learn more and more about your home and get more access to information about it. So it’s an entirely new data vertical that really will help bring the entire industry together. And then, you know, empower home buyers to really own and understand the information about their property that they own.
Kelley Cambry: Now I know when we first had our conversation before we did this live interview…when you really think about it – and you said CARFAX for your home – it’s like we know more about our cars and even like our devices and everything.
We know more history about everything but the like most – like you said – the most important and most expensive asset that most families own which is insane that we’ve been kind of going blind at this for so many years.
Zach Gorman: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think anybody who’s worked or interfaced with the real estate industry knows that there’s a lot of room for improvement and pretty much everybody is interested in it – all of the different stakeholders are looking for solutions.
But I think it’s really this collaborative approach that’s going to be the end-all-be-all for this because there’s just too much information out there – too many different providers. So to be providing an environment and sort of platform to bring them all into one place and then again really focusing on the homeowners, you know at the bottom line, I think that’s the way forward for us.
Kelley Cambry: No makes complete sense. So for basically your marketplace, how do you attack that chicken-and-egg problem of the supply side of folks willing to contribute their data to this ecosystem and then demand for homeowners to seek this opportunity to get more access to the data on their homes? And also, are you focused on a particular – i.e. the type of home, etcetera.
Zach Gorman: So where we’re starting is primarily US homeowners and residential property. We intend over time that this protocol could be applied to all real estate international, and that’s very much part of our road map and intention. But we’re entrenched and have expertise in sort of the US residential market, so that’s where we’re starting.
Then to address your question about the sort of chicken-and-egg problem, we’re builders. We love building consumer technology. We’ve always been in that world, so we really wanted to get something out there as quickly as possible that homeowners themselves could touch and experience, and you know give us feedback on.
So what we released a couple of months ago – that’s live now anybody. Anybody listening here can go claim their homes on the platform. They can get that verified NFT of the property that they own and then access to the dashboard and immediately start managing everything about your home. We even give you a home valuation report right off the bat for free just to give you a taste, like here’s a new insight about your home you might not have had.
This sort of approach is to get that consumer piece out there, really start identifying what the market wants, what consumers are really looking for and what the pain points are that we can solve immediately for homeowners. But then, where things really start to get interesting is when we start to bring in all of those integrators – bringing in large title companies, large banks and lenders and things like. They’re sort of an enterprise side of this part of our go-to-market strategy that we’ll sort of be focusing on for the next six to twelve months.
Because imagine if you bring in a giant title company or something like that that’s doing five million transactions per year. Not only are you getting all of the data onto the network but then all of the people – all of the customers that they have – also get to be onboarded as well.
So, there’s a really interesting flywheel and something we’re really excited about. From a homeowner’s perspective, the more integrators on the platform – the more data and information available about your home – the more incentive there is for homeowners to get on the platform. Over time, the more homeowners on the platform, the more interesting it becomes for those different integrators and real estate providers in the ecosystem. Because now there’s this whole trove of homeowners that they can try to provide real value for. So it sort of goes back and forth and that kind of flywheel.
Kelley Cambry: Oh, oh, did you want to say something else, Zach?
Zach Gorman: That was it.
Kelley Cambry: Okay, awesome, awesome. So my next question is what types of data sources are available free of charge that don’t require customers to necessarily input their own data?
James Rogers: I’ll take this one, Zach. So, there are certain parts of some things homeowners own, and they could choose to add those and eventually actually be able to monetize their own data. I’m not avoiding your question – I will answer it – but I think it’s an important detail that you know.
For example, let’s say a homeowner had to get an appraisal if they got a mortgage on their home, which is very typical. They could then choose to add that, and then eventually they’ll be able to monetize that data. You can imagine if a software company was trying to make better technology to make appraisals more streamlined, it would benefit them to have a data set of maybe 10,000 appraisals.
They’ll actually be able to buy those from homeowners if those homeowners choose to make them public. [Homeowners] can also access any data they upload, but they can keep it private forever and not share with anyone other than themselves. It is gated by that access of that NFT – only they own data.
Now, sources that are free of charge…probably not a lot, but we’re paying for those things. So the data that’s in there now, we pay for because we’re trying to add value to the consumer. And that’s like what Zach talked about. We’re working with some really exciting partners – everything from some of the largest banks that you’ve definitely heard of to really large real estate organizations that will be adding data in. So effectively, that will be free of charge to the consumer.
We’re building it as a network and there may be costs associated but not to the end consumer in that world because – again – we’re all about creating that value and creating that record where you can just keep learning about your home. You can go on right now and claim your home totally for free and there’s not going to be a cost because we’re all about creating that value.
Of course, we’re a business, so some of those partnerships end up meaning that we either pay to bring in that data, or there’s a monetary aspect to the network when that data gets added. But that doesn’t cost anything to the consumer, so effectively all of those data sources eventually will – in some form or another – be available free of charge.
Kelley Cambry: Awesome and I wanted to just add a follow-up question. So typically the most information that folks get about their home might be during the appraisal process. [That’s when they] figure out what’s actually wrong with their home and the inspection process.
What key pieces of data are missing in the typical appraisal or home inspection that Blockchain Home Registry can provide people when they’re going through the buying process?
James Rogers: So one example that I really like that’s going to be possible – and we’re talking to some partners about how this will happen – but you can imagine that your local energy company would add in your real time energy usage data. Think about if you have electric cars charging overnight or want to shift your usage, decrease your usage in the middle of a heat wave. Right now obviously with AC load, they like to think about “OK, how do we manage this, so we don’t have a blackout?”
This type of information is really relevant to homeowners who live in their homes, but it’s [relevant] for energy companies. It’s hard for energy companies to relay that to the homeowner. They might add that data into BHR so that you have it available in real time.
But then you can imagine what Zach was talking about, that flywheel of how data builds on itself.
Then you can imagine that a solar energy company might add in their sun model to show homeowners what the potential of their rooftop is. They can say “here’s what your real time energy usage is, and we know what the system size that you would need to offset that, so we’ll give you a discount on a right-size solution for your rooftop.” And now you as a homeowner have learned those new things.
So you were asking about [how it helps in] the buying process. Well, those are both totally relevant. I mean, a lot of you know that Zach, and I’ve been working in the real estate space for a long time. What the utilities cost is something that everybody wants to know. I’m gonna buy this home, but how much am I going to be on the hook for gas and for electricity? So that’s the type of information that will be in there the more integrations that we build out.
Again in that example with the energy company, now the next time you’re buying that home, the owner of the NFT has flipped that information public for you. You’ll be able to view all that information, which is much more in depth than you’d ever get in a traditional appraisal or inspection.
Zach Gorman: Yeah, and I’d like to add on to that. It’s not only what like pieces of surgical data are missing, but also just the continuous stream of information covering the entire history of the home. Because there can be gaps and spots where there just isn’t any accountability or record or receipts.
So really starting to get a more holistic look at home updates over time – improvements, renovations, things like that – I think that will help somebody who’s a prospective buyer to have much more you know in depth and analytical insight into what’s going on in the home and help them forecast you know what’s the actual cost of living going to be to support this home once I purchase it.
Because a lot of those hidden costs come up because of things like seasonality and one-off things that break. So the more [visibility] and understanding you have about the home’s history, the better you are going to be able to plan. Also, if you really think about it, that can start to really become interesting when you’re looking to sell your home because the more high-fidelity these records become – the more information available about these homes – the more marketable the home could become.
Prospective buyers have all of that extra transparency and insight, so they can waive things like inspection contingencies, which could hold up the deal and can lead to the deal falling through. It’s just like there’s so many more efficiencies that can be gained. So over time, it’s both sort of in the homeowner’s interest to add records to the network and their home because down the road when they look to sell, that could be something that’s quite impactful in terms of creating interest for prospective buyers.
Kelley Cambry: Yeah, that’s amazing. This is definitely the future. So for when someone sells their home, how do you envision someone getting access to the data on their home? And then how do I prove I now own this home and get access to your platform? And also – last thing – how would it function, possibly in inheritance planning?
Zach Gorman: Sure, I can jump in on that. So when somebody sells their home the way that when you go to claim your home, we’re verifying against public record. We’re taking your legal name and matching it to public record to ensure that yes, you are the owner of this home itself. So the second that the public record is updated, we will be able to verify and say, OK, well, it’s clear that if you, Kelley, are the one selling your home, you are no longer the owner of that home. So we’ll be building in features to take possession of the NFT.
And then you ask, “what about how it can function in inheritance planning?” We don’t have that road map yet, but you know – as with anything – I very much see a future where that could be easily handled on BHR.
Kelley Cambry: This only makes sense. So how does someone partner or do an integration with a Blockchain Home Registry? How do you see integrations working with you all as you deliver on your road map?
James Rogers: I could take that Zach. So that’s a lot of what we’re building now. So Zach talks about the product that’s live now where people can go claim their NFT and get access to the record that’s specific to their home. We’re working really hard to actually build out the entire framework and there’s a lot of code to write to make that work in the right way.
So that’s not going to be live for several months, but we’re working very diligently on making that happen. Part of the next big thing on our road map is to make it, so it’s very easy to build those integrations, but you’ll see a lot more about that over the coming months.
Kelley Cambry: Awesome and I just wanna note to everybody in the audience. Feel free to start thinking through some questions that you have of Zach and James. So I’m going to keep asking questions, but I want you guys to start thinking through them and then once you have a question, just go ahead and request to speak.
And if you’re a little stage-shy or camera-shy, feel free to DM me or tweet at me your question. Maybe if it’s not too quiet where you are, but you still want to ask a question, feel free to just shoot me a DM or tweet at me, or you can just request to speak and come up to the stage.
Also want to note that toward the end – if you stay till the end of the space – is today that we’ll be giving away $50.00 Unstoppable Domains credits. If you came to a previous show before, you can still get a new credit this week. So we want to make sure you guys come every single week. But again, start thinking through your questions and make sure to stay to the end so that you can get that $50.00 Unstoppable Domains credit.
So a quick question: tell us about the chain that you’re building on and why you chose that specific chain.
Zach Gorman: Go ahead, James.
James Rogers: So the NFTs are built on Ethereum. You know, we understand there are some limitations there as far as gas fees – although it’s less of a limitation in our case because we pay for them for the people that claim their homes. You don’t have to pay any gas fees. We give away the home claim totally for free.
We’re going to be building a lot more blockchain technology. When I was talking about the integration platform and how all that works with the on chain data, we’re evaluating a lot of different options for that. We actually haven’t finalized which chain we’re building on top of. We’re evaluating a few different ones, but again – haven’t finalized that yet.
Q & A Session of “NFTs for Good: Real Estate and Blockchain Technology”
Kelley Cambry: All right, I see Antonio has a question, so come up to the stage, Antonio.
Antonio (NFTs for Good Listener): Awesome, thanks so much to Kelley and Zach and James for doing these Spaces. It’s something I look forward to on a weekly basis now – having the opportunity to talk to some experts and true builders in the space trying to make an impact in ethically making a tangible impact in the web 3 space for everyday lives of people. So thanks for that.
I do have two questions – specifically regarding tamper-proof documents and I just thought about this when you were telling the story about some of the hurdles and some of the difficulties that you had, James, when you were purchasing your home, which really led to you to really tackle this problem.
One is about digitizing assets, right? So once you claim your home, I was curious to know will that have any effect in the future or even currently with credit scoring? I check my e-mail daily, and I’m constantly getting phone calls about increasing my credit rate limit, and we check our credit scores, and I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the people in these spaces have a credit card, right? So I’m curious to know already or in the future if there will be some integration or if there’s some way that credit scores might be affected positively, or if it can read the information in the data that you have [on BHR]. Will that have some kind of positive or negative effect on credit scoring with your venture?
And then my other question is if there’s any interesting data insights that you all can share based on your unique vantage point running Blockchain Home Registry. So whether it’s like the geographic area that has the most claimed homes – is it the West Coast, the Midwest, the East Coast? Just any interesting data or metrics that you can share based on what you’ve learned so far having run your company.
Thanks so much.
James Rogers: Thanks, Antonio, great questions. So about the credit score side. Some of the things we’re really excited about on the integration side involve new innovative loan products that will be made possible because of BHR. As far as will this affect your credit score? I don’t know. We haven’t talked to any credit agencies about integrations. Is there a possibility for that? Sure.
One of the things that we’re most excited about with building BHR is that the sky’s the limit. In a lot of ways, we’re agnostic to what gets built on top of it. We’re building a protocol for the real estate industry, but if that’s something that you thought be valuable, you, Antonio, could go build that.
For example, you could create a novel integration that connects credit scores to the information that people upload, and then in any information attached to their home. And then maybe that could work that way. We’re excited because anybody will be able to build on top of it in that way.
And then to your second question – and this is all pretty new – so it’s been pretty geographically widespread. As you can imagine, there’s a higher density of claims in cities. There are more people in those places, but it’s all pretty new, so it seems like it’s pretty widespread geographically across the United States so far.
Zach Gorman: And just to piggyback off of that – on the first question about credit, so we can reinforce this for everybody. We’re building BHR you with homeowners in mind, and we understand that there’s a lot of privacy concerns. You know, a lot of the documentation on home records can have sensitive information on it, so you as the homeowner will always have control over what documents, what information, what data is made public or private. So just to clarify, if at some point there was an integration built that would be looking at assessing credit – again – you would have the control. You would be able to say “I’m not willing or not interested in participating in that.”
And then just one other thing on this. I guess this is sort of a data insight, but I just think it’s been really interesting as we’ve sort of taken off. We’re building this with a web 3 community in mind first – just because the application is going to be much more relevant in the early days of building our roadmap features. But I’ve been really excited to see how many homeowners immediately are finding value on the platform. Even with zero web 3 experience.
And you know, it’s been a sort of important part of our thesis that the next wave of web 3 technology should for most use cases be sort of invisible. You know the products and services that are using and leveraging the technology should be out in front. But I think anybody who’s in here and anybody who’s really trying to get in the web 3 space knows that there are definitely hurdles.
There’s definitely overhead in education, and that’s why companies and teams like Blue Studios are so great because they’re helping lower that barrier to entry and making it more accessible to people. But I was just really interested and excited to see how many homeowners already find value here and are able to use the product with minimal to no experience in the web 3 space.
I think that especially in the macro environment and the [web 3] space overall there’s going to be – and probably is a lot of latent demand for – real services and products. And no offense to anybody, you know. I’m a fan of Bored Ape Yacht Club. But people are looking for more than JPEGs of monkeys to really validate why blockchain technology is going to be useful in the future.
So just you know, an insight that we had is that it has been really great to see a lot of people coming to us first. I think BHR can be a really great platform for sort of educating people – being this omnibus for education about web 3, blockchain, financial literacy, homeownership and real estate overall.
Antonio: Awesome, thanks for that, and yeah, regarding the insights that you provided about cities, that makes a lot of sense, so thanks for that. And then the description of being…like CARFAX for your home, that is brilliant, so thanks for that. Appreciate it.
Zach Gorman: Thank you, Antonio.
Kelley Cambry: Awesome and so our next question I will have is actually from the audience via DM, and then we’ll go to we’ll go right to you right afterwards, Kilroy. So this question is from 147.wallet – also known as Meta Mask.
He said: “Is this data open to the public? Can a user give permission to who is able to view any information on their property?” Also, they said, “By the way it is very good technology for real estate investors.”
James Rogers: So the short answer is yes. Whoever uploads any of the data has full privacy controls over who sees it. So I mentioned this earlier, but a homeowner – when they upload any information – they could choose to keep that completely private forever. They don’t have to share that with anyone other than whoever has control of that NFT, which in this case is the owner of that home.
So if a third party integrator – like I said an energy company or a bank or an insurance company – adds data to someone’s home, it’s [the homeowner’s] data, so they can choose what they want to do with it within the network. But certainly the homeowner has full privacy controls and never has to share anything that they don’t want to.
They may choose to share it for certain reasons like it gives them access to some novel type of integration or – like I said before – they’ll eventually be able to actually monetize their data if they make it public in certain ways, but they never have to.
And then to the property investor side, absolutely. They’re going to be really interested in what’s possible with this, like more sophisticated valuations of properties than we’ve been able to do before, with more data available.
Kelley Cambry: Great, thank you so much for that question. And now Kilroy, come on up to the stage.
Kilroy (NFTs for Good Listener): Hello Kelley. Hello, guys. Hello Zach and James. Yeah, this is a very awesome and interesting solution to owning properties. I have been in touch with this topic since 2017 and things just got interesting with the advent of NFT’s in regard to a property ownership protocol. So just two questions:
What is the tokenization process in regard to putting all the data into the blockchain? And the second question is about security. What happens if I lose my token?
That’s all, thank you very much.
James Rogers: Thank you. So the second question first. If you lose access…we have a system in place where you can contact us, and we can re-verify that you are indeed still the owner of that home, and then we have the ability to reissue you the proper NFT for access.
And then as far as the [tokenization] process, we’re actually getting the information on that. I mentioned before that a big part of what we’re building, it’s the next big stage of our road map – that whole integration process. We’re looking at what adding novel data to the network looks like, so you’ll see a lot more about that over the next few months. But it’s not built yet, so I can’t really share too many details about what our plans are there.
Zach Gorman: And just yeah just to piggyback off of that. And thank you for the question, Kilroy, and also thanks for the support on socials because we definitely see you out there. So just worth clarifying that right now we are evaluating decentralized data storage solutions, but anything that you upload once you’ve claimed the NFT of your home is stored centrally we just use AWS for that.
That’s just because we’re not yet very comfortable with any of the solutions out there. I definitely think that’s part of the road map for sure but, we use this example sometimes that you wouldn’t want your inspection report on chain visible to anyone saying that your back door you know is broken. Then somebody can see that and be like “Alright, I’m going to rob Kilroy because I just saw that on chain.
So right now, privacy is one of the highest priorities we have. So this is where we’re starting. But we’ve got a road map to hit that sort of DeFi solution.
Kilroy: OK, thank you very much and just a follow-up topic, because this really is a game changing-technology and there are very good opportunities for integrations such as energy companies, insurance companies, the banking institutions. I’m thinking about Kelley’s comment about the inheritance process, [if you think] that should be also integrated into the future road map?
Zach Gorman: Yeah 100%. I mean, we just released the light paper about a week and a half ago and if people are interested, I’ll definitely post the link in the Blue Studios Discord after this. You can find our socials as well, but we walk through a lot of different use cases that we’ve come up with. There’s probably like 20 or so in there, but in all honesty – as James said – the applications are limitless.
You know anything – Home Depot or Lowes – could integrate on the platform. All of the smart home technology companies could integrate on the platform, so it really becomes this experience that transcends into the actual IRL experience of living in your home as well. So we’re really excited to continue building in that direction.
If you would like to read our Litepaper and learn about a few potential use cases for BHR integrators, it’s available here.
Kilroy: Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much guys and I will be following you on this.
Zach Gorman: Of course. Thank you, Kilroy. I appreciate it.
Kelley Cambry: Awesome, thank you so much. Alright, so another question I have just in general for folks who are listening in [is that] you know a lot of people want to work or start something in web 3, but they might not feel like they have the relevant skills. What would you say to folks who are thinking about building or entering into this space?
Zach Gorman: On my end, I think it’s to follow your passions. I think the really brilliant and exciting part about web 3 is it’s not localized to one industry. It’s – in fact – probably applicable for almost every industry out there in some manner.
So really start with what you love and find the different projects like DeFi projects, NFT projects, etc. that are working in that space to just get a better understanding of what actually exists out there, who the players are. Find people that you admire that are working on those problems and just try and get close to them and establish a relationship with them.
This whole web 3 ecosystem is about community and relationships and people lifting one another up together, so that would be my first place to start. Just find what you’re interested in and go and find who’s working on it. Obviously there’s a lot of stuff that’s not built yet and a lot of applications we haven’t even seen yet as well. So if you’ve got ideas around that, just find people who are similarly passionate about the stuff that you are and start there.
James Rogers: I totally agree with all of that. I think I’m biased a bit because my background is in writing code, but one of the really neat things about everything in the blockchain space is that you can just go look at the code. So one thing that I think is a really neat way to start learning – even if you don’t know how to write code – is to just start reading some smart contracts. [For example,] Zach referenced Bored Ape Yacht Club. You could go read their smart contract.
[Do that to] just to start understanding how an NFT gets created. You don’t have to dig too deep to figure out all of the imports that they’ve got and every part of the library that generates every piece of that because it actually gets pretty complex at some point. But you could start to go look at that.
Even if the way that you wanted to get started was maybe by buying an NFT, I would still suggest going and reading that contract because I think one of the reasons that there’s so many scams and so much fraud in the space is because you’re buying an asset that the underlying code, the technology, the framework for what creates it is available to you, but a lot of people either don’t know that or they just don’t take advantage of the fact that it’s right in front of them.
So I think it’s a really great way. I know I learned a ton by just starting to read contracts before we started writing our own a while ago and that was really valuable to me, so it’s something I would highly suggest. Even if you’re not someone who writes code professionally or even on the side, I think it’s a really great way to learn about how the space actually works, and it’s a really unique part of the technology that underlies anything blockchain.
Zach Gorman: Yeah, and just one more thing to add there. There’s also just a ton of education being built up in this space. Again, teams like Blue Studios are doing great work there. You know other teams like Odyssey, Dow – there are so many different platforms and companies building for this use case of how do we get the next million people into web 3, and creating really good resources and – again – communities around all of this. So it’s this great moment where if you spend the time to find it, the information is there.
James Rogers: And, of course, keep joining Spaces like this.
Zach Gorman: Exactly.
Kelley Cambry: Love it thanks for the shout-out guys. And I love that. I actually, James, I don’t think anybody has ever said to go out and read smart contracts. So that is great advice to help people get up to speed on, you know, just understanding how smart contracts work and kind of the baseline of blockchain. So that is a great answer for folks to get up and running in the space.
Would also love to know your thoughts on where you see the broader role of crypto, DeFi, NFTs, web 3, and the impact this can have, where would you like to see it go?
James Rogers: Zach mentioned before, but I think there are a lot of different industries that could apply [blockchain technology]. There are some people that have a maximalist take on this. They think that blockchain is going to eat the world, and it’s going to take over everything. Personally, I don’t. I think that that’s probably not the most pragmatic approach, I think. But, however, I think there are a ton of different use cases that we’re yet to explore.
I’m of the mind that we’re over a decade into this experiment that is blockchain, and I think it’s been really exciting, really interesting. You know, maybe 13 years so far. I think the next decade, a lot of what you see that uses blockchain won’t talk about blockchain. I think that things will be web 3 or use NFTs or use blockchain as an underlying technology. You might not even know it. I think that a lot of what has existed over the last decade has been mostly around cryptocurrencies, but the technology itself doesn’t necessarily have to be around a currency.
It’s actually just a really interesting technology when you distribute durable information globally and when you think about it that way. But what does it look like to have immutable data that no one can change without some sort of consensus mechanism? That’s a really neat technology to apply in a lot of different ways, but you don’t necessarily need to talk about it. When Zach and I explain – it happens to be in the name of our company Blockchain Home Registry – but when we explain what we do, a lot of times we don’t even talk about NFT’s or anything cryptocurrency or blockchain because in reality it’s just a product that’s really useful.
[It’s] like a supercharged CARFAX for your house. People are like “oh, of course that makes sense,” but you don’t need to talk about blockchain to understand why that’s useful, so I’m a big believer in the next 10 years of blockchain technology not needing to talk about blockchain technology.
Zach Gorman: Yeah man, I totally agree and then just to add, I sort of feel this from my musician background as well. I think one of the big opportunities of web 3 – one of the big promises of this technology – is that there’s a bit of a recalibration happening in terms of ownership over data and moving away from just these like large private or public companies that have all of the information on their side, and distributing that and creating ownership that can sort of transcend these legacy web 2 institutions.
On the music side of things, there are some really exciting projects that are connecting artists to fans, and they’re creating a community around that artist – tracking their progress and deciding to follow along vis-à-vis an asset like an NFT, but that NFT then being used to engage that community. For example, give them cool perks and access and just really enable the growth of those musicians in a way that you know legacy companies sort of strip away the revenue potential or the earning potential of an artist.
I think there’s sort of a recalibration there, and we’re really starting to just connect people to the other people and projects that are providing value and sort of removing those intermediary layers, so I’m really excited. Again, I’m biased on that side because I came from that world but just excited to see that happening at a larger scale.
Kelley Cambry: Awesome, awesome. So I have a question from the audience – a DM – and then I will bring Type3Civilized up to the stage to ask a question as well. So 729.NFT –also known as Bitcoin Bear Club – asks the guests, “will there be a token or ICAO released by this project for investors to invest?”
James Rogers: Right now we’re just focused on building the product. We got a lot of exciting ideas on our road map, except I said before there’s a lot of stuff we can’t really talk about. It was because we got a lot of plans in motion and a lot of which are not finalized yet, so I can’t really share anything about that because there’s nothing finalized. So right now, we’re really just focused on building a product that’s as useful as possible to everybody that uses it.
Kelley Cambry: Good, great answer. Next up – Type3Civilized, you have a question for the guests?
Type3Civilized (NFTs for Good Listener): Hi yeah, thank you. So James, very, very interesting concept, and I was on your website last night, and you mentioned there is a limitless possibility and application. But as I was thinking about this product I have a question – probably you might have explained it earlier. Today I was a little bit late, so sorry if you already explained it. I’m trying to compare this – as I understand it – solution, is basically a centralized storage of the Home Registry coupled with the blockchain proof of concept and consensus mechanism.
I’m trying to compare your solution with today’s web 2-based solutions. For example, credit bureaus or CARFAX, where we are able to query using the Internet. I mean your solution also needs the Internet, right? And today’s solutions also look up into a centrally stored data and get the information. So how different or what is the added value for you to mint an NFT as a proof of your ownership for data that is stored on a central server compared to using an Internet – maybe by login credential or something and having the access to the same data?
Again, you might have already explained this, but I was late, so I’m just trying to understand.
James Rogers: Zach, you want to take that one? Nope, OK, I got it. Alright, so one of the really neat things about NFTs and this is that a lot of times people think about 10,000 minted generative art profile photos, but what it really is just a marker to a specific asset on the internet.
And what’s really neat about it is before that concept we never really had ownership on the internet because you could go make a database and say that you own something. But then I could just – if I just own that database and I manage it – I could just go log in and just change who owns it.
But when it’s the NFT, you can actually say the same thing about your credentials – I mean your login credentials to a website. With the NFT, what’s really neat is that you actually have verifiable ownership of something on the Internet, and we really think that this application of that technology is really interesting because when we connect the real world ownership by verifying that you are indeed the owner of that home within that owned marker in that verifiable unique asset, this really neat technology facilitated that.
We think the connection to that is really compelling, because one way we think about it is that the NFT itself is sort of like the keys to your digital house. You are the only person that will ever have that access until you eventually sell the house – if you choose to do that. But that’s not as easy to do in a verifiable sense, and it’s actually a lot easier to just go make a database record than it is to go and mint an NFT.
We actually generate and mint the NFT, but it’s a much more durable, immutable concept. We couldn’t just change who owns a home once you’ve actually minted it, so we think it’s a much more secure and verifiable long-term solution than in your example with login credentials on a website. That said, not everybody that uses this necessarily has a non-custodial wallet like a MetaMask or Coinbase wallet.
So we actually do support the notion of a custodial wallet where we’ll actually hold it for you until you’re ready to later move it out into a noncustodial wallet and then that allows you to log into the platform, so we support both. Because my parents – for example – they love this idea and they’re excited about using it, but they don’t have a MetaMask wallet. They don’t own any cryptocurrencies, but they want to be able to use this, so we do support both. But we’re big believers in that ownership on the Internet.
Zach Gorman: Sorry guys, my mic was off, but I think it’s working now. Just to add to that we get the question “why blockchain?” And a lot of it is sort of going back to the problem statement that James brought up when we kicked off this Twitter Spaces. Our experience working in the real estate industry for the last five years apiece has really brought into focus how broken the industry is and a lot of that is because there’s a lot of competition and no one is incentivized to work with one another.
So in reality, I don’t think most of these stakeholders – these large banks, financial institutions, all of the different providers in the industry – know that there is a huge advantage that having this sort of open and immutable platform allows all of them to build trust with all of those different providers. Because not many of them would be interested in putting all of their data into the centralized network, and then we become the sort of big centralized network that can sort of turn them on and off.
So that’s also why we want to build this as a collaborative solution. We really get to where we want to go. If the industry can build with us, and we can build together…the technological advantage that blockchain provides is a big reason why we’re using that.
Type3Civilized: Perfect. Yep, thank you. You explained it very well. One quick question actually. If I mint an NFT for my home, would everybody know that the owner of this particular wallet lives here?
James Rogers: Those privacy controls are up to you, so some people like that, but you’ll be able to actually say “don’t ever show that, hide that from everybody.” Privacy, safety, security – it’s all extremely important to us. So all that stuff is baked-in from the beginning.
Type3Civilized: Got it, okay. Nice, thank you very much. This is a very interesting concept, and I’m sure – like you mentioned – once the industry grows with it, this will be basically a kind of foundation of validation and centralized blockchain and hybrid infrastructure of blockchain plus centralized storage. Thank you.
Zach Gorman: That’s the hope, yeah. Thank you for the question.
Kelley Cambry: Yes, thank you for the question as well. So I know we’re getting close to time, but would love to ask a few more questions. One, I know you guys have been kind of keeping the roadmap close to the chest, but is there anything new or new alpha that you can tease out today? We’d love to hear about what’s coming next – whatever you can share. And then finally I always love to end with the ask “how can the audience support you and spread the word about what you guys are building?”
Zach Gorman: Sure. In terms of the new alpha, you sort of said it. You know we’re always building. There’s a lot of great features that we’ve got lined up over the next many weeks, months, and into the future – so a lot coming down the pipeline.
I want to keep people in suspense, but we will be releasing something in the next couple of weeks – sort of really developing this sort of maintenance history and tracking so that anything that you do on your home, you get a better snapshot of what you’ve actually been doing to your home. As I mentioned earlier, that information – that record – can be really, really useful when you look to sell. So that’s just one very small thing we’ve got coming up.
Then beyond that, we’re going to be releasing an ambassador program. We’ve had a lot of people raising their hand, really excited trying to find ways to get involved. So we want to empower our community and create something thoughtful around that, so everyone can participate in that and find some interesting way to reward and provide advantage and opportunity for folks who want to participate at that level.
We’re also building out a lot of education and content. We’ve got our blog live, and we’re constantly putting out great stuff there because – as I said – I think Blockchain Home Registry sits in this great sort of trifecta of interest in education for the web 3 space, real estate and then sort of financial wellness and financial literacy. So we’re constantly putting stuff out there because it’s to our advantage. We have just a lot of conviction and really believe that more people should know about this space and all the potential that it has, so that will be our contribution to that effect.
And then, Kelley, you also asked about our ask. Try the product. As James said, it’s free for anybody who’s a homeowner to go and claim their home. So we love feedback. Anybody who’s got thoughts, things they’d like to see? You know, we just want to learn and build with our community. So try the product. Give us feedback. Let people know what you’re thinking about it and just tag us on socials.
Kelley Cambry: Amazing awesome. Thank you so much. I’m really – oh, go ahead, James.
James Rogers: Yeah, I’m good.
Kelley Cambry: OK, good. No problem. So yeah, no, we really want to thank you guys for coming on today. I wanna thank everybody for also tuning in. In terms of everybody getting to redeem their Unstoppable Domains credit, make sure to DM Blue Studios Labs. We are in this Twitter space right now, so if you click on Blue Studios Labs –it’s this little gear with the Saturn ring around it – please DM that account.
And let us know that you were in the Spaces today, and we will go ahead and send you your unique promo code to get a $50.00 Unstoppable Domains credit, which is like the GoDaddy of web 3 domains. If you are in this Spaces and don’t DM us, you will not get a whole Domains credit because I can’t remember everybody who attended so make sure to DM us as soon as possible, so you can get that again.
Want to thank Zach and James from Blockchain Home Registry. This is truly the future, I think. Again, I always say this. I think we’ll look back on how poorly we keep data about our most important assets that we own, and we’ll look at this time like it’s the Stone Age – like I can’t believe I had all this stuff in different file folders and different places around the house instead of having it in one central location that is immutable and cannot be changed and is completely verifiable.
So I’m so glad that you guys are working on this problem.
Zach Gorman: Thanks so much, Kelley – really appreciate it. And if anybody has follow-up questions, feel free to slide into our DM’s. We’re more than happy to take this offline, but thank you, Kelley. Thank you Blue Studios. This has been really great. Really appreciate all your time.
James Rogers: Thanks Kelley, that was really fun.
Kelley Cambry: Yeah, definitely. And again, this is NFTs for Good – where weekly Twitter Spaces are all about highlighting the builders and founders of the NFT, web 3, crypto space. We do this at least once every week, and you can check out the schedule on our website https://www.bluestudios.io/nfts-for-good.
We have some really great Spaces coming up so definitely check this out, and hopefully we can have this conversation again with Blockchain Home Registry. I feel like this is just the beginning of our conversation around this space with you guys.
So thanks again for tuning in, and thanks everybody for coming and feel free to follow us to stay up to date on the next show. So thanks again and have a great evening.
