- Raipur is digitizing property records on blockchain with AirChains
- The new system aims to cut processing times from a month to just three days
- The initiative uses zk-FHE encryption to ensure document security and integrity
Indian City Raipur Moves Property Records to Blockchain
Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh in India, is putting its real estate records on the blockchain with the help of AirChains. The move aims to prevent fraud and reduce processing time from one month to just three days.
Abinash Mishra, the commissioner of the Raipur Municipal Corporation, told CoinDesk that certification should be secure and decentralization is the future we need to work towards.
The city manages over 8,000 building permits, work orders, and development approvals every year. They put out a request for proposals to get their records on the blockchain, and AirChains came out on top as the partner for this project.
Mishra explained that they’ve faced a lot of issues with document forgery in the past.
“We’ve developed this solution with AirChains, and we’re now looking at applying similar digital documents on the blockchain for essential city services like birth, death, and marriage certificates.”
AirChains’ CEO, Ankur Rakhi Sinha, shared that this project marks India’s first use of fully homomorphic encryption with zero-knowledge (zk-FHE).
“ZK is used to prove that something is true without revealing any additional information, whereas FHE is used to perform computations on encrypted data without needing to decrypt it,” Sinha explained on his blog.
Progress and Goals in Raipur’s Blockchain Initiative
Sinha noted that Raipur Municipal Corporation controls its own servers and encryption keys.
“As of now, we are not on chain live yet, we are encrypting the old certificates and have completed around 100,000 certificates on ZK and once we go live we will bring the current data too”
Mishra added that the verification process for building permit applications currently takes “at least one month,” compared to “seven days” for a bank to process a loan and inform the municipal commissioner. The goal is to cut this down to just three days.
“This is a small initiative we’ve undertaken, but I think many people will adopt it,” Mishra said.