Oli Harris, the former head of digital assets strategy at JPMorgan Chase, helped the banking giant become among the first legacy finance institutions to integrate blockchain technology into its operations.
Now, with over 10 years of experience working for companies including Goldman Sachs and blockchain infrastructure company Blockdaemon, Harris is launching his own crypto startup called Arda that aims to bring real estate onto a blockchain.
The new company has received $3 million in pre-seed funding from Lightshift Capital.
“I like the space where both incumbents and new entrants, if they can talk the right language and they can work together, they can radically reimagine industries,” Harris told Fortune. “That's what I want to do with Arda in the real estate space.”
Harris says his team is developing a platform that will help digitize the entire real estate economy, and store that data using blockchain technology. He says Arda will make renting and purchasing real estate easier and more efficient—especially in places experiencing cost-of-living crises—by serving as the central “operating system” for property ownership.
While Harris says Arda will not directly solve real estate pain points like mortgages, escrow, and property inspections, his company will serve as the foundation—aggregating data and building the blockchain infrastructure—to help other companies execute transactions.
“We're generating a continuously evolving history that travels with the property or the asset—so like a CARFAX or a credit score,” said Harris, referring to the background that used car buyers can get before making a purchase and personal credit ratings that factor into whether individuals can get loans. “Buyers, sellers and financiers, they gain instant access to a verifiable, immutable record… that reduces the time around due diligence and operational risk.”
Harris says that when Arda introduces its product, it will make money by charging a flat-rate to view real estate data. The company will also charge a transaction fee to update data about a specific property and to process transactions.
Arda is not the first company to try to tokenize real estate. Atlant, Etherland, and Propy are just a few companies that have promised to transform property management by integrating blockchain technology.
Harris says Arda will use the money raised in this round to develop a product prototype, hire more engineers, and partner with real estate developers and other companies in the space.
“We want to create the infrastructure that allows real estate to think, respond and trade at the speed of the internet,” Harris said.
