Robinland is a bridge between DeFi and Trad-fi serving the real estate industry.
DeFi in 2021
The field of finance has not been this interesting since 08.
Traditionally, banks are the ‘heart’ of finance: absorbing deposits and reallocating such liquidity throughout the economy to facilitate funds to get to its most productive use. However, in the most recent 2 years, DeFi (decentralized finance) has completely changed the landscape. The emergence of Smart Contracts and DAO (decentralized autonomous organizations) enabled the reallocation of liquidity to be provisioned in a completely decentralized, peer-to-peer manner, bringing the cost down and the speed up in a way the world has never seen before.
So far, DeFi lending facilities mostly accept on-chain native assets (such as utility tokens or stablecoins) as collateral to extend loans. But the field of DeFi now has gradually arrived at the realization that, in order for DeFi to really revolutionize the world of finance, it has to embrace applications in the real world, i.e. financing RWA as collateral.
However, the application towards RWA (real world asset) is hard for obvious reasons: the regulatory and operational burdens. Whenever you’re dealing with off-chain assets, the first question is, how can we legally link assets in the real world onto assets on the chain? Furthermore, even after we’ve figured out how to do that, actually doing the work can be another nightmare: taking real estate as an example, the applications for loan licenses at different states, sourcing deals and due diligence, evaluation of projects and actually servicing the loans or project operation. This can be another nightmare for someone who does not have industry specific expertise.
Real Estate in 2021
One of the biggest problems with the US housing market is the affordability crisis, which can largely be traced back to restrictions on construction, including not only land use regulations, but also problems in the space of financing for developers. Traditionally, real estate developers can seek financing from three sources: banks, real estate PE firms, or crowdfunding platforms. However, each source has its drawbacks:
- Banks have rigid requirements for extending financing to construction since the 2008 financial crisis, and as a result, many projects that have good fundamentals, such as generating a steady flow of rental income, do not get financed or suffer from a very restrictive LTV ratio.
- Real estate PE firms, however, do not always act in the best interest of the developer or the community, but rather its LPs: when a private equity fund invests in a project, it typically holds a super-majority of the equity and therefore the governance rights. Ultimately, the investment fund can take over the property and kick out the developer.
- Crowdfunding platforms are an innovation over the past five to ten years, but they are fundamentally (“legally” speaking) no different from any real estate PE fund. After all, it’s an innovation more for real estate retail investors than for real estate developers.
What is Robinland
And that’s where Robinland comes in: we serve as a bridge between the traditional world of finance and DeFi, providing a new financing solution to the real estate industry. By digitization and tokenization, Robinland turns real estate project-backed debt assets (e.g., CRE Loans) into on-chain crypto tokens that can be used as collateral to access liquidity from DeFi-lenders (e.g., MakerDAO).
This innovation benefits both parties: for real estate developers, this is a much faster, cheaper, and hassle-free way of accessing liquidity; for DeFi-lenders, this is a scalable technology allowing them to include high-quality interest-bearing stable real world assets into their collateral pool, enhancing the stability and credibility of their lending facility. Robinland’s ultimate goal is to build a fintech ecosystem for tokenized real estate projects, which will provide the full spectrum of blockchain-based financial services worldwide.
Robinland is formed by a team of real estate financing & fund-raising, blockchain/crypto/DeFi, and legal experts who are native to both the on-chain and off-chain part of the process. We are here to provide financial services that turn high quality off-chain real estate assets into on-chain native collaterals, such that DeFi lenders can expand their collateral pool to include RWA and real estate developers can access DeFi liquidity in a hassle free fashion.
For DeFi Lenders
- High quality collateral: Robinland integrates one of the highest quality collateral — real estate — into the DeFi lending ecosystem
- Hassle free RWA: with Robinland turning RWA into crypto-native tokens, DeFi lender can enjoy the stability brought by real world asset without real world hassle
- Risks, managed: with our proprietary project evaluation system, Robinland serves as the risk controller and also buffers the DeFi lender from defaults of underlying asset
For Real Estate Developers
- Lower cost: DeFi lenders provide much lower cost of financing compared to traditional sources like banks, real estate PE or crowdfunding platform
- Faster turnaround: thanks to the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) system, approvals for credit are much faster than traditional sources of financing
- Stable financing: unlike bank financing that can be retracted for arbitrary reasons, the revolving credit lines from DeFi lenders ensures stability of financing for borrowers
Get Involved
Interested in learning more? Email team@robinland.io.
We are currently in the process of raising an initial round of funding, and also in the process of applying for revolving credit lines from major DeFi lenders. If you’re an angel investor, or a DeFi lender, or a developer interested in using our service, please get in touch!
