1 Introduction

Due to centralized networks, a solitary point of failure raises the chance of security lapses or outages brought on by cyber threats such as DDOS assaults. Additionally, centralized networks will always provide privacy issues as there is only one central database for user data. Data on a primary server could be permanently lost if it is compromised or taken offline [1]. After a certain point, scaling centralized networks can be challenging because doing so requires upgrading the central server’s memory, bandwidth, or processing capacity [2]. Information obstacles may develop, causing users farther away from the central server to experience growing delays, if the network experiences traffic surges that are greater than what the network was designed to handle.

In the blockchain, decentralization states the handover of power and shifting from a centralized to a dispersed network for making decisions. Decentralizing resource utilization and administration in an application can result in greater and more fair service. The advantages of increased consistency and service levels brought about by decentralization outweigh the disadvantages. Each member of a decentralized blockchain network has a replica of the identical data in the format of a distributed ledger (refer to Table 1). If a member’s ledger has been changed or distorted in any way, the majority of network affiliates will reject it. Decentralized data storage allows for access to a real-time, shared view of the data by all entities [3]. Decentralization can help to reduce system weaknesses. These flaws may result in systemic problems such as the inability to deliver quality service or efficient service because of resource exhaustion, frequent outages, bottlenecks, a lack of sufficient desire for effective service, or corruption. Decentralization can also help with resource allocation optimization, which can lead to increased effectiveness and consistency as well as a decreased risk of catastrophic failure.

Table 1 Comparison of centralized and decentralized networks
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Blockchain is currently one of the most prominent technology trends in the world. Many enterprises and domains have already begun to utilize blockchain technology due to qualities like immutability and decentralization (refer to Fig. 1). The worldwide blockchain technology market was worth 10.02 trillion dollars in 2022 and is predicted to increase at an annual compound growth rate (CAGR) of 87.7% between 2023 and 2030. Market expansion may be a factor in the increased venture capital funding of blockchain technology firms. Blockchain technology business Circle Internet Finance Ltd. announced in May 2021 that it has raised USD 440 million in cash from institutional and strategic investors [4].

Fig. 1
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Use of blockchain technology in various sectors. Image source: https://www.grandviewresearch.com

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Real estate is a category of property that encompasses both unimproved land and enhancements like buildings, fixtures, roads, and utility systems. It frequently includes undeveloped land, open space, and residences for individuals and families, including tiny homes, apartments, condos, townhouses, and other kinds of housing. It also includes commercial properties like shopping malls, individual stores, office buildings, parking lots, medical facilities, and hotels as well as industrial buildings used for industrial production, mechanical production, research and development (R&D), construction, transportation, logistics, and warehousing. Real estate investments are expanding swiftly in India because of the high return on capital and tax benefits. The Indian real estate market is predicted to grow at a rate of 9.2% between 2023 and 2028 (CAGR) (refer to Fig. 2a, b) [5].

Fig. 2
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a Anticipated growth of Indian real estate up to 2028. Image source: https://www.imarcgroup.com. b Types of Indian real estate and its market share. Image source: https://www.imarcgroup.com

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Real estate has long been regarded as one of the best investment alternatives available since it gives investors reliable passive income and excellent returns. However, the lengthy and expensive traditional real estate purchasing procedure has frequently discouraged many people, particularly small investors wishing to make real estate investments. However, the introduction of blockchain technology is creating a wide range of options for investors with different levels of investment capacity. Using a platform that connects different buyers and sellers, blockchain technology can offer a solution for efficient tracking, recording, and trading of real estate. Sellers can offer digitized shares of their property on an online marketplace thanks to blockchain technology. Everyone has access to a distributed database that contains this data. Once a buyer and seller get in touch, they can learn more about one other’s identities, backgrounds, and the asking price of the property. After that, they can sign a smart contract. A smart contract will be created to carry out the sale of the property according to the guidelines for real estate transactions listed in the database. The secured transaction can then be entered into by both parties.

Blockchain implementation attempts to assist businesses in utilizing blockchain-based solutions that bring about decentralized data processing and storage, ensure data integrity and immutability, and provide efficient workflow automation. Full transparency, top-notch security, and quick data and transaction processing are all provided by blockchain software. To execute the suggested system on a broad scale, we followed the stages of conducting a feasibility study, creating a business case, conceptualizing a blockchain network, designing a blockchain solution, developing a blockchain solution, deploying a blockchain solution, and integrating a blockchain solution with front-end technologies.

2 Related work

The research study concentrated on an analysis of the systemic literature on recent research studies carried out from 2015 to 2021. Its present investigation is an extensive comparison of blockchain applications across several industries. There are very few application areas, encompassing the land, health, insurance, and electronic voting sectors, that have been studied for the implementation of blockchain technology, according to this report Future applications of Blockchain technology and smart contacts may involve a lot of underserved industries [6].

To demonstrate how a smart contract can be developed for usage in blockchain-based real estate, Deploying a decentralized application and describing how it interacts with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) [7]. Through the Interoperability and integration of Blockchain 3.0, which is utilized to handle electronic health, medical, and personal records, a Novel Smart Healthcare Design, Modelling, and Implementation are given using Healthcare 4.0 Processes [8]. Using Hyperledger Fabric, an open-source permissioned blockchain design framework, a proposal for a cost-effective method of processing insurance-related transactions on a blockchain network was proposed in 2018 [9]. For the Saudi Arabian Kingdom, A creative approach is presented that regulates transparency and satisfies the need for a reliable property registration system on the Blockchain. The infrastructure offers many advantages to companies involved in real estate acquisition and disposal. Transparency, record integrity, and trustworthiness are all guaranteed by a tamper-proof ledger [10]. to better comprehend the benefits, risks, and difficulties associated with a blockchain-based electronic voting system for national elections. A collaborative architectural evaluation and documentation process showed how election stakeholders might be helped by the architecture trade-of-analysis approach (ATAM). South Africa was the sole focus of this study. For numerous nations around the world, it might be enhanced in the future [11]. The usage of corporate blockchain in healthcare is examined and explained, as well as the unique requirements of the healthcare industry that can be utilized to inform the creation of a blockchain application [12].

According to the article [13], Indian real estate is an untapped market for blockchain, and related algorithms are recommended for the processing of Indian real estate papers. To promote openness, integrity, availability, and trust, the suggested algorithm maintains transparency, record integrity, and trust factors in the targeted area. A blockchain-based land administration system with hybrid approaches to smart contracts was published in 2021. Institutional trust, legal issues, and policy constraints are absent from the study provided [14]. A novel strategy, particularly in the Electronic Property Registration area of digital governance in India, was put up by Siddhartha Sen et al. [15]. as a permissioned blockchain architecture based on smart contracts. To solve security issues including confidentiality, integrity, and authentication, the proposed framework’s first goal is to implement smart contracts. Its second goal is to assure safe electronic record storage by setting access guidelines for the proposed framework’s stakeholders. Aditya Verman et al. [16] envisioned a decentralized blockchain-based real estate economy for purchasing and selling. Through the use of the Real Chain platform, which offers the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) environment, the difficulties are to replace the traditional real estate environment and to make this data design a requirement for any buying or selling of property. This will counter the dishonest middlemen and remove historically centralized institutions from the process.

A comparative and comprehensive examination and analysis of chain Applications in Various Fields was created based Latest study on the Integrated Review Of the literature completed from 2018 to 2021 the study [6] (refer to Table 2). A recent study found that few industries, including the ones that deal with health care, insurance, electronic voting, and real estate, have implemented blockchain technology. Future uses for blockchain technology and smart contracts span a wide range of undiscovered industries. In traditional India, the processing of real estate documentation is centralized, requiring the mandatory presence of an intermediary, and it is devoid of transparency, honesty, accessibility, and trust. Also, the system lacks some complex business logic that may make it reliable and safe [13].

Table 2 Comparative and comprehensive review analysis of blockchain-related research work
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3 Proposed methodology

3.1 Building blocks of framework

The suggested framework would be utilized to address several concerns in the field of Indian Real Estate Processing Transactions, including third-party trust, security, and integrity. The suggested Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned blockchain to process documents including sale deeds, will be used by governmental agencies to handle and store Indian Real Estate Document Processing data. The purchaser and the seller, as well as the certificate authority, local magistrate (collector), judiciary, and municipal governments, are all parties to the transaction. Due to the confidentiality of the papers and data utilized in Indian Real Estate Document Processing, we utilize permission blockchain instead of a blockchain [23]. By making each document immutable via IPFS and asymmetrical encryption so that it may be shared as well as validated, BigchainDB will help treat each one as an asset [24].

One of the key essential components in the Hyperledger Fabric network is the peer, which is largely made up of a group of peer nodes [25]. It is a type of node that houses the Hyperledger Fabric System’s ledger and chain code. Peers can be organized according to the requirements for managing ledgers and contracts and are connected via channels. The primary functions of the registration authority include the addition of new property registrations, the sale of real estate, the transfer of ownership, the issuance of deed titles, and the provision of real estate and ownership-related information. The legal aspect of the property is being investigated by the District Magistrate. The municipality certifies the type of property and its condition; for instance, it is confirmed when recording an apartment that the flat is finished and ready for registration (refer to Fig. 3).

Fig. 3
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Building blocks of proposed framework

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A participant is a network participant. Participants might be either people or organizations. An individual participant can both generate and exchange assets with other individuals. By reporting transactions, a participant manages assets [26]. Every supplier or purchaser who takes part in the suggested framework is a direct user participant. The buyer or seller might not be the property’s owner, but rather just the owner’s authorized representative.

A permission Blockchain is a blockchain with a small amount of network activity. As a result, the government’s demand for oversight over blockchain network participation is met. However many entities have control over the data. Each peer’s ledger only has the most current set of data [27]. Data about real estate transactions are stored and made accessible to users using Smart Contracts (Chain code) running on The Hyperledger Fabric framework is known as the building component for the blockchain. By executing a certain Chain code, title deeds are also delivered to real estate owners. The chain code contains the business logic that will be applied to provide the services.

To meet this specific demand in the blockchain development environment, BigchainDB [28] was introduced in 2016. It was intended to be straightforward to use an open-source database that could be distributed on a large-scale platform to create asset-centric nodes. It can be implemented in large-scale enterprise solutions or even utilized to construct blockchain system prototypes.

3.2 Core transaction processes

The basic core process of Indian real estate, which is about property registration (refer to Fig. 4), is included in the proposed framework. The purchaser and seller concur to take part in the registration of the property. The necessary legal documents will be used to record this transaction at the registration office. The authorities will review the documents and, after receiving the necessary stamp duty fees, will approve the sale deed documents [29].

Fig. 4
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Process flow of property registration process

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3.3 System design

To receive the data from the seller and the buyer, a sophisticated front-end web application is created. The application collected crucial information such as seller and buyer information, payment and transaction details, property information, stamp duty information, and registration information. After being properly validated, the received information is placed in the database. For archived consensus between regulatory nodes on the data stored, a secure technique is employed. After the consensus is archived, the entire document is transferred to the blockchain network, and following the completion of the last transaction, a new block is created using the SHA-256 algorithm [30] and a secure hash value. We have encrypted the block data using SHA-256 for reasons like data security, attack resistance, and transaction security. The blockchain’s bright future is the immutable block, which increases the security of data and transactions (refer to Fig. 5).

Fig. 5
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Process flow of proposed property registration system

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3.4 Data collection

The original information contained in Indian real estate documents is highly private and hidden. Due to the lack of real data, it is not possible to obtain the actual data for the simulation process on the blockchain network. We have developed a dummy dataset that is similar to the original dataset, which has more than 5000 document records, to meet this objective.

3.5 Proposed framework

Peers, participants, a permissioned blockchain, and a decentralized database are all included in the proposed work (refer to Fig. 6). When the participant initiates the transaction and receives the transaction’s finished copy, the peer plays a crucial role as the transaction’s authority by verifying its details. The permissioned blockchain has evolved into the platform used to carry out all transactions and link participants and peers. The executed transactions are kept in the BigchainDB [28]. The Recommended model archives attributes such as security, privacy, and integrity. Additionally, it eliminates the chance of a single point of failure.

Fig. 6
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Architecture of proposed framework

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4 Implementation and testing of outcomes

Distributed operating system Fabric runs distributed applications created in general-purpose programming languages over permissioned blockchains (e.g., Go, Java, Node.js). There is no cryptocurrency built into it, and it securely records the execution history in a replicated ledger with append-only data [31]. Transactions are sent by the client to the peers listed in the endorsement policy. Afterward, each transaction is carried out by particular peers, and the results are recorded; this process is known as an endorsement (refer to Figs. 7 and 8). Following the execution, transactions move into the ordering step, which creates a completely ordered series of endorsed transactions arranged in blocks using a pluggable consensus protocol. They are disseminated among all peers with the (optional) aid of rumours. Fabric organizes transaction outputs along with state dependencies, as determined during the execution phase, in contrast to traditional active replication, which completely orders transaction inputs [32].

Fig. 7
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Hyperledger fabric transaction flow

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Fig. 8
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Flow chart for execution of transaction

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The suggested framework on hyperedge fabric must be implemented using the required setup procedures. Due to its main benefits, which include segmental planning, permissioned blockchain, presentation, and scalability, “Channels” for data partitioning, sophisticated ledger querying capabilities, and hardware-based security of digital keys, Hyperledger fabric is used in this application [33].

To evaluate the performance of various types of blockchain systems, system throughput is usually utilized. To achieve reliable findings, the experiment’s given data must all be true. In the trial, the system is used by one peer and two participants [9, 34, 35]. The suggested framework is put on the blockchain using Hyperledger to complete the real estate transaction in India (refer to Fig. 9). Moreover, the BigchainDB [28] database houses transaction data in this system. Many tests are performed on an Intel(R) Core (TM) i5-8500 Processor running at 3.00 GHz with 8GB of Memory. The rate at which demands are fully met, or requests per second (RPS), is a measure of the system’s throughput. We recommended employing four different peers as the authority to validate the transactions according to different standards [36,37,38]. Throughout the experiment, we only used one peer to validate the transaction. The corresponding data architecture is shown in (refer Table 3).

Fig. 9
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Pre-requisites for environment set up

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Table 3 List of Attributes and Entity
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To verify the proper system flow, we created a dummy dataset that is comparable to the original dataset, which has more than 5000 document records. We have created a utility program that loads the blockchain application to a specific level and analyses the system performance for load-balancing testing. In our situation, the blockchain network is handling a load of 10,000 documents at once, and it does so quickly and accurately. It demonstrates the broad scalability of the suggested system.

5 Results

We have employed a distributed network to process real estate transactions rather than a centralized one. For this reason, peers and participants have been created to invoke and validate transactions. The system’s performance (refer to Tables 4 and 5). is evaluated based on throughput, latency, and success rate. counts throughput as how many transactions are added to the ledger each second, latency as how quickly a blockchain responds, and success rate as the proportion of P2P downloads that are successful [38].

Table 4 Time spent for transactions to finish in the isolated test environment
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Table 5 Analysis of current and prospective real estate document processes
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We followed the full process, which is identical to the initial processing phases, to obtain system outputs. It covers the buyer’s registration process, login procedures, data entry procedures, authority consensus procedures, and final transaction execution procedures. In the Blockchain admin panel, the results can finally be seen (refer to Fig. 10). The particular console-based utility tool, which is built to ensure that the suggested work can be done at a wide scale and demonstrates the scalability, efficacy, and higher performance of the proposed system, is addressed in the implementation section.

Fig. 10
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Blockchain view of finally executed transaction within admin panel

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6 Discussion

To get over the limitation of centralized authority in real estate transaction processing, the proposed framework has developed a distributed peer-to-peer system that incorporates the smart features of blockchain. Without requiring the approval of the central authority, transactions that are carried out utilizing the suggested framework are more secure and immutable. The suggested architecture is more readily expandable [39], and the system can handle more transactions per second.

In a secure environment with trustworthy inputs, the proposed system is put to the test. The system was tested using a limited set of peers, participants, and transactions per second. It could be strengthened to accommodate potential growth in the future. In terms of the number of peers and participants as well as the number of transactions per second, scalability is not a concern with blockchain, but there is an opportunity for advancement in the future. Since the proposed system relies on the Indian Government’s transaction processing policy, the system as a whole might need to be changed if that policy changes [37]. However, it can also be examined in a multi-machine test environment. The proposed model is assessed by utilizing standalone machines with constrained testing conditions.

7 Conclusion

By utilizing private blockchain technology, this study proposes a decentralized approach to managing real estate transactions. We outline the key difficulties within the present transaction procedures in India and propose the adoption of blockchain technology as a solution. The study’s final finding is that the suggested method may be able to improve transaction procedures within Indian government offices, promoting greater efficiency, transparency, and a decline in corrupt behaviour. we have displayed a foundational comprehension of contemporary blockchain technology and its associated principles. we have further leveraged this understanding to address a concrete real-world issue. The strategy of incorporating blockchain terminology into the Indian real estate market demonstrates practical feasibility.

The results of this study also show how blockchain will affect the Indian real estate market. To start, blockchain technology is being developed and is in high demand across a variety of Indian businesses, including the real estate market. The evaluation of the present centralized document processing system for Indian real estate focuses on its shortcomings. Based on the locations where the current system is insufficient, it is recommended that the three primary procedures of new property registration, mortgage registration, and release be implemented utilizing a distributed peer-to-peer network system. The section on the literature review concentrated on the work using blockchain technology that is being done in the same field and identified potential areas for improvement for the suggested solution. This study’s primary objective is to clearly and visually demonstrate how to build a theoretical framework for processing Indian real estate paperwork. The pseudo-code for the first three processes is also displayed. The data structure utilized in the implementation is shown in a diagram in the following portion of the article, which also covers the configuration of the environment setup. The section that follows includes a detailed description of the experimental findings as well as an analysis of the suggested system and a comparison to the current system. The system as it is now envisioned is summarised in the final section, along with a summary of some of the difficulties that might call for further research.