Vnesheconombank (VEB), Russian state-owned development bank, and Ibrahim Zakriev – the mayor of Russian city Grozny, have launched two blockchain-based pilots to test the technology for the management of housing and utilities and lease of municipal property, the bank said on Tuesday. The blockchain platforms were built by VEB, which cost them about 2.5 million rubles ($40,000).
In a few months, the distributed ledger technology (DLT) will estimatedly save about 20% on housing and utility services costs. The trials will be carried out for about three months after which the parties will assess the efficiency, a VEB representative said.
Hyperledger-based housing and utilities management
Vladimir Demin, head of VEB’s blockchain and digital transformations unit, explained that the project for management of housing and communal services was developed on Hyperledger Fabric, a technology provided by Linux-based blockchain project Hyperledger.
Now, the system provides Grozny residents with access to the full history of accrued utility bills, while the authorities can optimize management and analytics.
The blockchain nodes are located in VEB’s blockchain competence center and the mayor's office in Grozny. In the future, the system will be quite simple to scale to a higher number of nodes, as well as automatically load data from utility meters. According to Demin, one more platform will be developed in the future to enable various services, such as conducting voting by tenants.
Ethereum-based property rental
The second pilot, which revolves around lease of municipal property, was built on the Ethereum platform, Demin says. Municipality officials are responsible for putting the deals on the blockchain. At this stage, the system will operate with four nodes - two in the municipality and two in VEB. The smart contracts will streamline payments based on the pre-defined conditions of the deals.
Grozny, with a population of about 270,000 people, is the capital city of the Chechen Republic in Russia. In February, the head of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, touched upon Chechnya's interest in blockchain projects.
During the same month, VEB announced a cooperation with the Russian district of Kaliningrad to implement blockchain for social payments and electronic services.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
