Skip to main content
Log in

A conceptual framework for blockchain smart contract adoption to manage real estate deals in smart cities

  • S.I. : Machine Learning Applications for Security
  • Published:
Neural Computing and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Blockchains-based smart contracts are disrupting the smart real estate sector of the smart cities. The current study explores the literature focused on blockchain smart contracts in smart real estate and proposes a conceptual framework for its adoption in smart cities. Based on a systematic review method, the literature published between 2000 and 2020 is explored and analyzed. From the literature, ten key aspects of the blockchain smart contracts are highlighted that are grouped into six layers for adopting the smart contracts in smart real estate. The decentralized application and its interactions with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) are presented to show the development of a smart contract that can be used for blockchain smart contracts in real estate. Further, a detailed design and interaction mechanism are highlighted for the real estate owners and users as parties to a smart contract. A list of functions for initiating, creating, modifying, or terminating a smart contract is presented along with a stepwise procedure for establishing and terminating smart contracts. The current study can help the users enjoy a more immersive, user-friendly, and visualized contracting process, whereas the owners, property technologies (Proptech) companies, and real estate agents can enjoy more business and sales. This can help disrupt traditional real estate and transform it into smart real estate in line with industry 4.0 requirements.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

source statista.com)

Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Data are available with the corresponding author and can be made available upon reasonable request

Code availability

Codes are available with the corresponding author and can be made available upon reasonable request

References

  1. Chourabi H, Nam T, Walker S, Gil-Garcia JR, Mellouli S, Nahon K, Pardo TA, Scholl HJ (2012) Understanding smart cities: An integrative framework. In: 2012 45th Hawaii international conference on system sciences, IEEE, pp 2289-2297

  2. Allam Z, Newman P (2018) Redefining the smart city: culture, metabolism and governance. Smart Cities 1(1):4–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Neirotti P, De Marco A, Cagliano AC, Mangano G, Scorrano F (2014) Current trends in smart city initiatives: some stylised facts. Cities 38:25–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Nam T, Pardo TA (2011) Conceptualizing smart city with dimensions of technology, people, and institutions. In: Proceedings of the 12th annual international digital government research conference: digital government innovation in challenging times, pp 282-291

  5. Ullah F, Sepasgozar SM, Wang C (2018) A systematic review of smart real estate technology: drivers of, and barriers to, the use of digital disruptive technologies and online platforms. Sustainability 10(9):3142

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Felli F, Liu C, Ullah F, Sepasgozar S (2018) Implementation of 360 videos and mobile laser measurement technologies for immersive visualisation of real estate & properties. In: Proceedings of the 42nd AUBEA Conference

  7. Ullah F, Sepasgozar S (2019) A study of information technology adoption for real-estate management: A system dynamic model. Innov Prod Constr Transf Constr Through Emerg Technol pp 469-484

  8. Ullah F, Samad Sepasgozar P, Ali TH (2019) Real estate stakeholders technology acceptance model (RESTAM): User-focused big9 disruptive technologies for smart real estate management. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Development in Civil Engineering (ICSDC 2019), Jamshoro, Pakistan. pp 25-27

  9. Ullah F, Sepasgozar SM (2020) Key factors influencing purchase or rent decisions in smart real estate investments: a system dynamics approach using online forum thread data. Sustainability 12(11):4382

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Nowicka K (2014) Smart city logistics on cloud computing model. Procedia-Social Behav. Sci. 151(Supplement C):266–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Zygiaris S (2013) Smart city reference model: assisting planners to conceptualize the building of smart city innovation ecosystems. J. Knowl Econ 4(2):217–231

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Sepasgozar SM, Hawken S, Sargolzaei S, Foroozanfa M (2019) Implementing citizen centric technology in developing smart cities: a model for predicting the acceptance of urban technologies. Technol Forecast Soc Change 142:105–116

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Munawar HS, Qayyum S, Ullah F, Sepasgozar S (2020) Big data and its applications in smart real estate and the disaster management life cycle: a systematic analysis. Big Data Cogn Comput 4(2):4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Narayanan A, Bonneau J, Felten E, Miller A, Goldfeder S (2016) Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies: a comprehensive introduction. Princeton University Press, New Jersey

    Google Scholar 

  15. Cash B (2019) Bitcoin Cash. Development:2

  16. Adedokun A (2019) Bitcoin-Altcoin price synchronization hypothesis: evidence from recent data. J Finance Econ 7:137–147

    Google Scholar 

  17. Ciaian P, Rajcaniova M (2018) Virtual relationships: Short-and long-run evidence from BitCoin and altcoin markets. J Int Financ Markets Inst Money 52:173–195

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Quest M (2018) Cryptocurrency 101: Your guide to understanding how to trade Bitcoin, Altcoin, and other online currencies.

  19. Dewan S, Singh L (2020) Use of blockchain in designing smart city. Smart and Sustainable Built Environment

  20. Seigneur J-M, Pusterla S (2020) Socquet-Clerc X Blockchain real estate relational value survey. In: Proceedings of the 35th annual ACM symposium on applied computing. pp 279-285

  21. Veuger J (2020) Dutch blockchain, real estate and land registration. J Prop Plan Environ Law

  22. Kanak A, Ugur N, Ergun S (2019) A Visionary Model on Blockchain-based Accountability for Secure and Collaborative Digital Twin Environments. In: 2019 IEEE international conference on systems, man and cybernetics (SMC), IEEE, pp 3512-3517

  23. Sun M, Zhang J (2020) Research on the application of block chain big data platform in the construction of new smart city for low carbon emission and green environment. Comput Commun 149:332–342

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Karamitsos I, Papadaki M, Al Barghuthi NB (2018) Design of the blockchain smart contract: a use case for real estate. J Inform Security 9(3):177–190

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Leiding B, Memarmoshrefi P, Hogrefe D (2016) Self-managed and blockchain-based vehicular ad-hoc networks. In: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM international joint conference on pervasive and ubiquitous computing: adjunct. pp 137-140

  26. Liu S (2020) Blockchain - Statistics & Facts. Statista.com. https://www.statista.com/topics/5122/blockchain/. Accessed 12 October 2020

  27. Zīle K, Strazdiņa R (2018) Blockchain use cases and their feasibility. Applied Computer Systems 23(1):12–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Nakamoto S (2008) Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

  29. Yli-Huumo J, Ko D, Choi S, Park S, Smolander K (2016) Where is current research on blockchain technology?—a systematic review. PloS one 11(10):e0163477

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Linoy S, Stakhanova N, Ray S (2020) De‐anonymizing Ethereum blockchain smart contracts through code attribution. Int J Netw Manag :e2130

  31. He D, Zhang Y, Wang D, Choo K-KR (2018) Secure and efficient two-party signing protocol for the identity-based signature scheme in the IEEE P1363 standard for public key cryptography. IEEE transactions on dependable and secure computing

  32. Ying B, Nayak A (2019) Lightweight remote user authentication protocol for multi-server 5G networks using self-certified public key cryptography. J Netw Comput Appl 131:66–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Casino F, Dasaklis TK, Patsakis C (2019) A systematic literature review of blockchain-based applications: current status, classification and open issues. Telemat Inform 36:55–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Amani S, Bégel M, Bortin M, Staples M (2018) Towards verifying ethereum smart contract bytecode in Isabelle/HOL. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on certified programs and proofs, pp 66-77

  35. Falazi G, Hahn M, Breitenbücher U, Leymann F, Yussupov V (2019) Process-based composition of permissioned and permissionless blockchain smart contracts. In: 2019 IEEE 23rd international enterprise distributed object computing conference (EDOC). IEEE, pp 77-87

  36. Watanabe H, Fujimura S, Nakadaira A, Miyazaki Y, Akutsu A, Kishigami J (2016) Blockchain contract: Securing a blockchain applied to smart contracts. In: 2016 IEEE international conference on consumer electronics (ICCE). IEEE, pp 467-468

  37. Wright C (2017) Serguieva A Sustainable blockchain-enabled services: Smart contracts. In: 2017 IEEE international conference on big data (Big Data). IEEE, pp 4255-4264

  38. Sepasgozar S, Karimi R, Farahzadi L, Moezzi F, Shirowzhan S, Ebrahimzadeh M, S, Hui F, Aye L, (2020) A systematic content review of artificial intelligence and the internet of things applications in smart home. Appl Sci 10(9):3074

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Ali Q, Thaheem MJ, Ullah F, Sepasgozar SM (2020) The performance gap in energy-efficient office buildings: how the occupants can help? Energies 13(6):1480

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Veuger J (2018) Trust in a viable real estate economy with disruption and blockchain. Facilities

  41. Spielman A (2016) Blockchain: digitally rebuilding the real estate industry. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  42. Li M, Shen L, Huang GQ (2019) Blockchain-enabled workflow operating system for logistics resources sharing in E-commerce logistics real estate service. Comput Indus Eng 135:950–969

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. School SB, Group A (2019) Direct and indirect investments in Proptech firms by real estate companies worldwide in 2019, by type of technology. Statista.com. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1128676/cre-real-estate-investment-direct-indirect-proptech-firm-global/. Accessed 12 October 2020

  44. Hoffmann T (2019) Smart contracts and void declarations of intent. In: International conference on advanced information systems engineering. Springer, pp 168-175

  45. Ma F, Fu Y, Ren M, Wang M, Jiang Y, Zhang K, Li H, Shi X (2019) EVM*: from offline detection to online reinforcement for ethereum virtual machine. In: 2019 IEEE 26th international conference on software analysis, evolution and reengineering (SANER), IEEE, pp 554-558

  46. Kolluri A, Nikolic I, Sergey I, Hobor A, Saxena P (2019) Exploiting the laws of order in smart contracts. In: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on software testing and analysis. pp 363-373

  47. Molina-Jimenez C, Sfyrakis I, Solaiman E, Ng I, Wong MW, Chun A, Crowcroft J (2018) Implementation of smart contracts using hybrid architectures with on and off–blockchain components. In: 2018 IEEE 8th international symposium on cloud and service computing (SC2). IEEE, pp 83-90

  48. Kapsoulis N, Psychas A, Palaiokrassas G, Marinakis A, Litke A, Varvarigou T (2020) Know your customer (KYC) implementation with smart contracts on a privacy-oriented decentralized architecture. Future Internet 12(2):41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Tao Y, Li B, Jiang J, Ng HC, Wang C, Li B (2020) On sharding open blockchains with smart contracts. In: 2020 IEEE 36th international conference on data engineering (ICDE). IEEE, pp 1357-1368

  50. Huh J-H, Kim S-K (2020) Verification plan using neural algorithm blockchain smart contract for secure P2P real estate transactions. Electronics 9(6):1052

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Azeem M, Ullah F, Thaheem MJ, Qayyum S (2020) Competitiveness in the construction industry: a contractor’s perspective on barriers to improving the construction industry performance. J Construct Eng Manag Innov 3(3):193–219

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Ullah F, Sepasgozer S, Tahmasebinia F, Sepasgozar SME, Davis S (2020) Examining the impact of students’ attendance, sketching, visualization, and tutors experience on students’ performance: a case of building structures course in construction management. Construction Economics and Building 20 (3)

  53. Mongeon P, Paul-Hus A (2016) The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis. Scientometrics 106(1):213–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Archambault É, Campbell D, Gingras Y, Larivière V (2009) Comparing bibliometric statistics obtained from the Web of Science and Scopus. J Am Soc Inform Sci Technol 60(7):1320–1326

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. Aghaei Chadegani A, Salehi H, Yunus M, Farhadi H, Fooladi M, Farhadi M, Ale Ebrahim N (2013) A comparison between two main academic literature collections: Web of Science and Scopus databases. Asian Soc Sci 9(5):18–26

    Google Scholar 

  56. Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, Group P (2009) Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS med 6(7):e1000097

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Covaci A, Madeo S, Motylinski P, Vincent S (2018) NECTAR: non-interactive smart contract protocol using blockchain technology. In: Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on emerging trends in software engineering for blockchain. pp 17-24

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Mr. Bilal Ayub (Ph.D. Scholar RMIT University) and Dr. Tayyab Ahmad UniMelbourne for their kind comments and advice on improving the paper while the authors were waiting for reviewers’ comments. The academic community helps add substantial value to the body of knowledge, and we are grateful to have such people around. We are also thankful to Dr. Samad Sepasgozar and Dr. Jamaluddin Thaheem for their encouragement and guidance.

Funding

The article received no funding from any private or government organization.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fahim Ullah.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendices

Appendix A

Authors, citations, year, and type of the retrieved articles.

Authors

Retrieved Citation

Google Scholar Citation

Publication Year

Type

Ref

Watanabe H., Fujimura S., Nakadaira A., Miyazaki Y., Akutsu A., Kishigami J

101

165

2016

Conference

[36]

Amani S., Bortin M., Bégel M., Staples M

64

125

2018

Conference

[34]

Wright C., Serguieva A

15

25

2017

Conference

[37]

Molina-Jimenez C., Sfyrakis I., Solaiman E., Ng I., Weng Wong M., Chun A., Crowcroft J

14

29

2018

Conference

[47]

Sun M., Zhang J

7

11

2020

Journal

[23]

Kolluri A., Nikolic I., Sergey I., Hobor A., Saxena P

6

32

2019

Conference

[46]

Dewan S., Singh L

2

2

2020

Journal

[19]

Falazi G., Hahn M., Breitenbucher U., Leymann F., Yussupov V

2

5

2019

Conference

[35]

Covaci A., Madeo S., Motylinski P., Vincent S

2

4

2018

Conference

[57]

Appendix B

Affiliated organizations, their locations, and citations of the retrieved articles.

Organization

Location

Documents

Citations

Nchain

London, UK

2

17

Muroran Institute of Technology, Muroran-city

Hokkaido, Japan

1

101

NTT service evolution laboratories, Yokosuka-city

Kanagawa, japan

1

101

Data61 (CSIRO), UNSW

NSW, Australia

1

64

Ens Paris-Saclay, Université Paris-Saclay

Paris, France

1

64

Codex, Stanford University

Stanford, US

1

14

Computer laboratory, University of Cambridge

Cambridge, UK

1

14

Hat community foundation

Cambridge, UK

1

14

School of Computing, Newcastle University

Newcastle, UK

1

14

Singapore Management University

Singapore

1

14

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ullah, F., Al-Turjman, F. A conceptual framework for blockchain smart contract adoption to manage real estate deals in smart cities. Neural Comput & Applic 35, 5033–5054 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-021-05800-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-021-05800-6

Keywords

Navigation