An open source blockchain platform developed and commercialized by Cornell researchers is being utilized by a software company to establish a more efficient, secure property records database for one of the most populous counties in the nation.
Ava Labs, the company behind the technology, recently announced that the Avalanche blockchain platform will be used to digitize 370,000 property records worth $240 billion in real estate value in Bergen County, New Jersey.
Balcony, a real estate infrastructure company, will build the database using the Avalanche platform. The company's initiative with Bergen County will be the largest blockchain-based deed tokenization project in U.S. history.
By leveraging Balcony's platform powered by Avalanche, Bergen County will gain a tamper-proof, fully digitized and searchable chain of title across its 70 municipalities - cutting deed processing time by over 90% while dramatically reducing the risk of fraud, title disputes and administrative errors. This new method of recordkeeping could make buying and selling homes more seamless for property owners because Avalanche allows transactions to be verified quickly and reliably.
This project, along with the announcement last year that California's Department of Motor Vehicles will digitize 42 million automotive vehicle titles, demonstrates Avalanche blockchain technology's potential to modernize and secure critical infrastructure.
Blockchain is a digital ledger that securely records transactions across a decentralized computer network. The technology is poised to revolutionize how information is stored and shared.
"Using the blockchain makes your workflow and work life a lot easier because it's a single source of truth," said John Wu '92, president of Ava Labs. "It's immutable, it can't be changed and it's transparent."
In a blockchain, "blocks" are individual units of data linked together chronologically to form a "chain." Each new block references the previous one, and the entire blockchain is distributed across a network of computers, each representing a "node." These features make blockchain more secure and transparent because every change and transaction must be verified by the network.
The technology underlying Avalanche originated in the lab of Emin Gün Sirer, former associate professor of computer science at Cornell. Sirer co-founded the company in 2018 with two former students, Maofan Yin, M.S. '19, Ph.D. '21, and Kevin Sekniqi, M.S. '18. Ava Labs' products are based on research co-authored with Robbert van Renesse, professor of computer science, and others.
Avalanche's innovation lies in its unique verification process, called a consensus protocol. A random sampling of nodes verifies every transaction, which differentiates it from other blockchains that check every node. This makes Avalanche faster and more energy-efficient without sacrificing the technology's security benefits.
"Say a fraudulent actor wanted to dispute a transaction and make a false claim," Wu said. "For them to erase a transaction or change the details of a transaction, they would have to collude with many people at the same time. That's why it's more secure."
The way Avalanche is constructed also provides users with customizability. The blockchain allows for the creation of "subnets," essentially individual blockchains built on top of the Avalanche network. These subnets, built on Ava Labs' user-friendly AvaCloud platform, can have their own rules and be tailored to specific needs and applications. Balcony is leveraging this technology for the property record digitization project.
"It allows Bergen County and Balcony to create their own cloud service based on the needs they have for the registry," Wu said. "Although Bergen County wants to get the benefits of the blockchain, they can't completely give up that ownership of managing that registry. Because they can do it on a private blockchain, they can permission what can be done and changed and who can get access. It saves them cost but also allows them control."
A blockchain-based approach to maintaining official documents like property records and car titles could transform historically slow, error-prone processes into efficient, consistent recordkeeping systems. As a fast, customizable blockchain platform, Avalanche is well-positioned to continue to lead the way for these applications.
After licensing the technology from Cornell's Center for Technology Licensing, Ava Labs became the first company to join the Praxis Center for Venture Development in November 2019. Since then, Avalanche has become one of the most popular blockchains in the world and has been applied to various industries, including disaster management, entertainment ticketing and video games.
