Commonlands

There is an estimated $9 Trillion of capital locked in undocumented land in the developing world. Nearly every government in the world has a formal property system but it is estimated that 70% of land parcels in the developing world are not protected by up-to-date records or held by legally recognized owners. 

That means that over 3 billion people have no reliable way to prove ownership of the land they live on, and use their land as a means to improve their livelihoods. These people are often difficult to discover because their livelihoods are informal: their title to their land, their rental agreement, their business all sit outside official records. They also cannot offer up collateral because their assets and land titles are informal. Yet the land that they occupy holds the key to unlock economic development and prosperity.

Informally, however, communities know who owns what parcel of land, and are more often than not able to regulate ownership across a variety of regimes and customary arrangements securely, thanks to the strong bonds of social capital that bind them together. Yet these arrangements and community level governance are not recognized by governments nor the banking sector.  Banks are therefore unable to discover the good borrowers and distribute funds effectively and efficiently, without building out massive, expensive hands on onboarding processes with loan officers  -  which drive costs up prohibitively. 

While geospatial technology has engendered a multitude of mapping solutions, these fail to provide trustworthy land registries that can enable collateralization of land for credit delivery purposes. They are also unable resolve claim conflicts, provide tangible incentives for mapping and verification, and enable credit delivery models that do not require risky liens to be put on land titles. 

Commonlands instrumentalizes the bonds of social capital through a platform that strengthens and legitimizes community-based  land registries,  making trustworthiness directly proportional to the level of community involvement, participation and agreement.

Commonlands enables communities to map out their plots, verify each others’ claims, and issue trustworthy land certificates in a transparent and cost effective way.  It offers accurate land mapping without costly surveyors or officials, to form blockchain-based Claimchains whose plot certificates can serve as collateral, with an immutable ledger recording info about any transaction, repayments, & defaults. 

With the help of a single smartphone, an entire community can map out their land claims.The ledger records individual claims to land across a community.  Neighbors invite each other and recognize each other’s claims. As members add claims and verify each other, a web of interconnected claims will be established, creating a Claimchain once 150 have mapped their claims. This process strengthens trust by involving all members in the verification process and fostering collaboration.  

Individuals can then use these claims as credit guarantees to begin investing in their livelihoods. They can use their claims to obtain credit from financial institutions, or within the community itself,  encouraging local exchanges.  Individuals build bankability via usage, but default rates also affect the quality of the Claimchain as a whole, incentivizing communities to promote repayment.  Communities can also lock their certificates together and make collective investments, without the need to set up complex governance schemes. 

A formed Claimchain is a valuable tool for credit scoring for a variety of credit instruments and social lending schemes. Claimchains are searchable and verifiable on a map, and secured in a blockchain ledger, along with a full history of transactions and any outstanding loans. The platform is customizable so as to enable different lenders to create and/or search for specific criteria to suit their strategic impact needs. 

The solution can be easily adopted for disbursement from MFIs & lenders adopting our solution as part of their credit scoring/portfolio management processes. The platform will dramatically lower the cost of credit scoring and derisk investment through community accountability. For communities, the system unlocks credit at lower interest rates thanks to the verifiable land credentials and direct access to social lenders. 

All disbursements are recorded on the ledger, which accrue to form a credit history, of the individual as well as the community - the Claimchain’s credit score:  ClaimRank. This creates an incentive for repayment between neighbors, whose scores are affected by their neighbors’ scores. High default rates  - on verified impact or loan repayment - will allow investors and lending partners to have more accurate insight when deciding to do business with this community, as well as the ability to lock ClaimChains when ClaimRanks drop below a certain threshold, who must then work together to recover their credit score. The interconnectedness provides both security and credibility.  In addition to individual loans, the Claimchain can also serve as a vehicle for community level, collective investment.

The total addressable market for Commonland’s solution is tremendously big, over 3 billion people cannot document their land claims and 1.6 billion people unbanked. We have also identified a significant amount of especially pertinent use cases, amongst which:

• Smallholder farmers for sustainable value chains: farmers in the developing world are perhaps some of the most underserved by credit systems, and lack of clear understanding of land holdings is a key hurdle that Commonlands can resolve to support the transition to more resilient and sustainable value chains;

• Favelas and slums: by definition, favelas are urban neighborhoods without official land titling. Yet millions of people occupy these neighborhoods, and many of them have for generations. Mapping claims can unleash tremendous economic development, as well create conditions for much needed investments in climate adaptation in what are often precarious living arrangements. 

• Forest communities often lack proper land titling and recognition, and this often precludes them from investing and benefiting from sustainable forest management, as well as participating in biodiversity and carbon credit schemes, for which Commonlands’ solution can dramatically lower transaction costs; 

• Communities in communal customary land arrangements: these communities often struggle to have communal systems recognized by official land registries, and are often left in limbo with respect to their claims, and locked out of investment opportunities. 

At present, Commonlands is working with Care International and CEFORD to begin piloting the solution in Uganda’s Northern region, where the Commonlands team has strong historic ties and working experience. Care’s current work in the region focuses on strengthening Village Savings and Loans Associations through technical assistance and the provision of digital tools -  the Digital Care Package. Although these women-led groups have become well organized and experienced at managing their common pool of funding, they remain entirely cut off from the “official” banking sector, which stifles their ability to grow. Through Commonlands, they can begin to use their certificates, individually or as a group, to access credit. We are currently in discussions with Ensibuuko to use them as a credit delivery mechanism. Through this pilot, our aim is to, using a human centric approach, test out key hypotheses regarding the value proposition and user experience, both for communities and lenders, as well as our business model. 

Darius Golkar, our founder and CEO, has a deep understanding of and connection to the communities we aim to serve, gained through his extensive experience living and working abroad in countries such as Kenya, South Sudan, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Honduras. His firsthand interactions with marginalized populations in East Africa and Central America have shaped his perspective and commitment to social impact, ultimately inspiring him to create Commonlands.

Rebecca Mason, our Strategy, Impact, and Partnerships lead, is an experienced social entrepreneur and development professional with a background in environmental sustainability, social entrepreneurship, and strategy.  Rebecca lived in Uganda for ten years, where, as the co-founder of KadAfrica, she  empowered out-of-school girls in Uganda to become successful entrepreneurs. She has extensive experience in the region where the pilot will be implemented and is connected to an important network of stakeholders in the region. Rebecca's personal investment in social impact, combined with her experience in engaging with local communities, makes her a valuable asset to our team.

Dr. Monique Vanni, our Advisor for Grants and Financial Inclusion, and an MIT alum,  is a seasoned professional specializing in the intersection between digital innovation and international development. Monique has led the design and implementation of over 50 digital inclusion programs worldwide, and has worked extensively in East Africa.  Dr. Vanni's global outlook and entrepreneurial attitude enable her to develop and implement innovative strategies that drive financial inclusion, and making sure the user experience works in the challenging contexts where we plan to implement.

Together, Darius, Rebecca, and Monique bring a wealth of expertise and dedication to our team. They actively engage with the communities throughout the design and implementation process, prioritizing their input, ideas, and agendas. To better understand the needs of those we serve, our team conducts regular community consultations, focus groups, and participatory workshops. This ongoing dialogue fosters a strong sense of partnership and collaboration between our team and the communities, enabling us to deliver solutions that are not only designed for them but with them.

By grounding our work in the voices and experiences of those directly affected, we ensure that our initiatives are culturally sensitive, contextually relevant, and genuinely driven by the communities' needs. This inclusive approach helps us create tailored solutions that are both effective and sustainable, while empowering the communities we serve to take ownership of their development.

We have successfully conducted field tests for our land surveying and documentation process using only a smartphone, which has effectively transitioned our idea from concept to a tangible prototype. In addition to this, our solution is built on a functional web3 infrastructure, providing a solid foundation for our product.

Claimchain's progress is further evidenced by the development of algorithms for our application, as well as the endorsement and validation from industry experts and potential customers who have expressed interest in our product. Thus, our solution has moved beyond being just an idea and has already demonstrated practical applications and potential for real-world use.

We will begin piloting in the second semester of 2023

Becoming a Solver opens up great opportunities to achieve the level of system change the solution can deliver. At present we are focused on moving from prototype to actively piloting, so we can establish to our stakeholders that the solution works and is scalable. MIT’s Solve industry expertise will likely be of crucial importance to us in this next phase, as we fine tune our user experience for communities. Being connected to MIT’s network of Solvers will allow us to gain access to crucial intelligence about what has and what has not worked in the field, how to fix problems, and refine our business model. 

 A core pillar of our proposition is interoperability, and MIT can help us tap into the financial inclusion ecosystem so that we can offer our platform for others to use, as well as use our own pilots to test and implement solutions from other Solvers. As start-ups, working collaboratively is key to making the best of opportunities to pilot and engage, and becoming part of the Solve environment will help us achieve this. 

As  a platform business, we also need to, simultaneously, engage key clients and  stakeholders, such as microfinance institutions, mobile network operators, as well as large donors such as USAID and World Bank.  We know that our solution could tremendously accelerate their impact goals, and MIT could help us connect to the right players to learn, exchange ideas, and pitch our solution 

MIT is also a unique hub of industry and academia. We particularly anticipate challenges in fine tuning UI and data visualization, as the solution matures and gains momentum. We hope that by becoming part of the MIT Solve community, we will get the opportunity to observe best practices and access expertise, but also be connected to the right providers that can help shape the Commonlands proposition into its optimum form. We are also at the forefront of building out tangible value propositions from unique decentralized IDs (DIDs) and blockchain, and welcome the opportunity of joining these discussions and debates within the MIT environment. 

All of Commonlands development to date has been entirely self-financed. We are currently at a make or break moment, where a convincing proof of concept confirmation in the field will enable us to successfully fundraise to continue building and growing. MIT Solve’s guidance and support throughout this delicate phase will be of tremendous value. We also hope that MIT can help us access impact oriented investor networks to pitch our solution so that we can continue to grow.

In summary, winning the MIT Solve Challenge can provide a range of benefits for our solution. These include increased visibility, access to a global network of innovators and investors, financial support and resources, and the opportunity to build a reputation as a thought leader and innovator. By leveraging these benefits, we  can take your solution to the next level, and make a real difference in the lives of millions of people who are currently excluded from the financial system.

To date, the challenge of securing land rights for the 3 billion people locked out of official registries has been addressed in extremely ineffective ways. Billions are being poured into a system that is inherently broken. The process through which land rights are recognized requires investment into armies of field surveyors who have no knowledge of local communities and customary arrangements to try make sense of land use systems, and then push information into registry systems which are often analog, expensive and outdated. This makes land right recognition extremely costly and slow. Although a host of solutions use GPS to facilitate mapping, the official  process itself remains unchanged, and inherently problematic. 

Meanwhile, communities are well aware of who owns what parcel of land, who rents and occupies what. Commonlands harnesses their knowledge and social capital to put them at the center of the solution, enabling them to easily map out their plots and verify each others’ claims, as well as settle disputes.  The Web 3.0 solution allows us to build out a community-based, bottom up system for land registry, which can simultaneously provide privacy and agency to communities, while enabling the security and transparency required for credit delivery. 

The immutability of the registry of liens enables the solution to be a direct tool for managing credit delivery, rather than requiring a multitude of other solutions and partners to unlock value. Users lock their certificate when taking out credit, and unlock it when they pay it back, making the Claimchain itself a powerful disbursement and scoring mechanism. While Commonlands can help governments leapfrog towards much more advanced  land registries, the solution works irrespective of government bureaucracy. 

At community level, the system facilitates exchanges and builds further trust into what are often informal contractual arrangements, including credit, but also renting and even sharecropping. It also creates the opportunity for shared investment into community assets, without the need for extraneous and costly governance processes such as the officialization of associations or cooperatives. Communities can simply choose to pool their certificates together and invest. The opportunity to sponsor community investments easily addresses a huge pain point in the donor and impact investment community, who struggle to find mechanisms to invest in climate adaptation measures such as wells, for example, without incurring prohibitive transaction costs. 

Commonland’ solution facilitates interoperability and layering of a multitude of products: microfinance for entrepreneurs, pre-financing of carbon credit and resilience initiatives, impact finance or pay-for-impact models and even grants - simultaneously and transparently, at very low cost with little or no integration required. Working through partners, we can literally put communities on the map, and they can easily access finance and investment. 

For lenders, the platform will dramatically lower the cost of credit scoring and derisk investment through community accountability. For communities, the system unlocks credit at lower interest rates thanks to the verifiable land credentials and direct access to social lenders. A platform business model, further enables network effects to drive costs down and create new forms of value. 

Our goal is to issue 1 billion land certificates by 2030. This creates 3 billion new economic identities and unlocks $5 trillion in land value for currently undocumented land. 

We will achieve this by reaching 22,000 claimants through the mapping of 8,000 plots by 2024, which will increase to 7,750,000 claimants through the mapping of 2,500,000 plots by 2027. 

Activity Metrics: 2024/2025

• 22,000 claimants  - measured through platform data

• 8,000 plots mapped (SDG target 1.4.2) - measured through platform data

• 50% women (SDG target 5a.1) - measured through platform data

• 3 microfinance institutions using Claimchain- measured through platform data

Output Metrics

• 3,000 loans / contracts (SDG target 8.3) measured through platform data

• 95% repayment rate measured through platform data

Outcome Metrics

• 15% increased productivity in MSMEs (SDG target 8.2) measured through field partner surveys

• 5 jobs generated by Claimchain (SDG target 8.5.2) measured through field partner surveys

• 2 microfinance institutions building capacity and improving credit delivery process (SDG target 8.10) - measure through stakeholder interviews

As a platform business, Commonlands acts both at community level and the donor/investor level to effect change. With communities, we work on mapping land claims to form Claimchains. The resolution of land tenure issues is a crucial, and recognized step towards financial inclusion, as recognized directly in SDG 1.4. De Soto’s work on the relationship between land tenure and financial exclusion serves as a foundation for myriad investment programs, spearheaded by donors including the World Bank, and the EU, amongst others. Yet de Soto, and many of these programs, fail to recognize the traps and inefficiencies of formal land registries.  This is why Commonlands creates Claimchains, which improve on formal land systems. We go one step further, and utilize these claims as a credit scoring mechanism, unlocking access to much needed finance -  the core output of our work. Access to credit enables people in vulnerable communities to become entrepreneurs, and increase their productivity dramatically. According to the IFC, informal entrepreneurs in the developing World have an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion every year, which is equivalent to 1.4 times the current level of the global MSME lending -  due to lack of collateral and credit histories. This has a direct and known impact on productivity and job creation. In this way, when we unlock financing for communities, we are able to support increases in productivity and job creation in ways that reduce structural inequalities, reduce poverty and promote economic growth and decent jobs. 

As we work to engage our donor and investor clients, our activities center around enabling them to use our data to upgrade their credit scoring system and investment/aid strategies (output). The outcome here is the improvement of the targeting of aid and investment. More efficient, transparent investment vehicles, as recognized by SDG 8.10, also foster decent work and economic growth. A study by Mckinsey estimates that delivery of digital financial services could add $3.7 trillion to the GDP of emerging economies.  

Our innovative solution harnesses the power of cutting-edge and traditional technologies to address pressing global challenges. At the heart of our solution lies an Android app, which serves as the primary interface for users to access and manage their information. This app is designed to be user-friendly and accessible, ensuring that it can be easily adopted by a wide range of individuals, regardless of their technological expertise.

To guarantee secure and efficient access, our solution employs SMS authentication, allowing multiple accounts to be managed from a single smartphone. This approach ensures that users can access their information from a central location, while minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.

A key component of our technology is the integration of unique decentralized IDs (DIDs) and the Self-Sovereign Identity ethos. By tying these DIDs to real-world identities through the use of facial photos and uploaded documents, we enable users to take control of their digital identities and protect their personal information. This approach not only increases security but also fosters trust and transparency in online transactions.

To further enhance the security and reliability of our solution, we leverage blockchain technology. This decentralized system allows us to maintain a secure and tamper-proof record of transactions and user data, ensuring that the information is both accurate and up-to-date. Blockchain technology also promotes trust among users and enables seamless and secure data sharing between different parties.

Our solution also incorporates the use of Verifiable Credentials, which serve as digital attestations of a user's attributes including land ownership, trust metrics or transaction history. These credentials can be securely shared with others, allowing users to prove their identity and qualifications without the need for physical documentation. This streamlined approach greatly simplifies the process of validating a person's credentials and reduces the risk of fraud.

Finally, our technology makes use of our advanced Claimchain methodology which links a knowledge and trust graph based on social bonds with our land registry. These interconnected components work together creating a comprehensive and easily navigable network of data. By utilizing this approach, we enable users to efficiently access and manage their personal information, as well as share it with trusted parties when needed.

In summary, our solution brings together a diverse array of technologies, including Android and web apps, SMS authentication, DIDs, blockchain, Verifiable Credentials, and advanced data management systems. This unique combination enables us to deliver a robust, secure, and user-friendly platform that empowers individuals to take control of their digital identities and engage in secure online transactions. By leveraging both modern and traditional technologies, our solution has the potential to greatly benefit communities across the globe, driving innovation and fostering a more equitable and sustainable future for all.

To view our demo click here: 

Commonlands is supported by a global team of mixed gender and race and takes a human-centered approach to our technology and user interface. Given our work in developing countries and the cultural and gender sensitivity around land rights and customs, we also incorporate a gender-lens into our technology offerings to make sure that women across the globe are empowered, rather than marginalized, by Commonlands solution. This includes particular attention being given to the risks inherent to providing women with increased access to capital, and putting in safe guards to make sure that their money and agency in decision making is protected.

Commonlands integrates DEI into our internal workings through equity driven compensation practices. Currently, in our early stage, our staff are primarily working on a fee for service or equity basis; we have ensured fairness and gender-benchmarking into our current compensation scale. Additionally, each Commonlands team member brings more than 10 years of experience leading for profit social enterprises and non profits, and this lens will inform the creation of our policies, practices, and culture moving forward. We are also excited to learn and gain access to resources from the Solver Community as to how to best implement DEI into startup culture as we prime ourselves for growth.

As a platform, we create value by fostering new connections. Yearly, a variety of organizations invest around $700 billion in emerging and frontier markets that are complex, as they lack transparency, reliable metrics, and risk mitigation tools, making it challenging to operate in them. They struggle to meet their impact and revenue targets in what is a high cost and high risk business environment. Meanwhile, billions of people remain unbanked in the developing world, unable to prove their credit-worthiness and generate  wealth. 

Commonlands provides a seamless, frictionless mechanism for communities and customers to connect and create value together. For communities, the system is easy to use, enabling them to verify their land claims easily. They can readily share their certificates to funders and access needed investment directly through their phone.  

Our customers can now easily make informed decisions about which markets to enter and whom to partner and do business with, reducing the time, costs, and uncertainties typically involved. It also allows them to leverage social capital as a repayment mechanism for “chains” of users whose ClaimRank. They can deploy capital more efficiently, with greater security and specificity, leading to higher success rates and greater impact outcomes. The platform’s intuitive interface enables customers to easily scan and analyze data, and incorporate Commonland’s solution into their existing processes. Commonlands is built for interoperability. Our customers include impact investors, MFIs, businesses with financing models, development banks, local & regional banks, donors, governments, and NGOs. 

The  investments currently being channeled into repairing irremediable land tenure systems, deploying field teams to discover communities and run them through complex credit scoring schemes, reviewing loan applications, and managing mostly unsuccessful credit recovery mechanisms can now go  directly into creating meaningful impact at community level. By providing a tool for communities which enables them to, through the existing bonds of social capital that bind them together, put themselves on the map and access financing,  we no longer need to invest in discovery, management, and the host bureaucratic processes that plague the development sector, and impact investment community, with prohibitive transaction costs. The platform model further unlocks a host of indirect network effects, enabling seamless collaboration between businesses, donors, and investors, who can easily verify the types of activities happening at community level, and work in synergy, without the need for extensive partnership discussions and protracted legal processes. 

Regarding our go to market, we count on our network of current and potential partners such as Care International, Ensibuuko, and MTN, who are currently working on the ground seeking to promote the financial inclusion of vulnerable communities as the key channel to build out the community side of the platform. Meanwhile, we work at the institutional level, reaching out to networks of impact investors such as Kiva, and global institutions such as the World Bank, to ensure that once communities are discoverable, they will be able to access the funding they need to thrive.

As Commonlands is a platform business, we have chosen to operate on a transaction fee based revenue model. We charge between  $1 or 1%, for issuing credentials. The first ten Claimrank “Credit” checks are free, and then a transaction fee of $1 is paid thereafter. Other transactions, such as credential locking and transfer also incur a 1% fee. With a lean team, and technology-based operation, we can keep operating costs low and maximize utility to the ecosystem. 

To encourage the success of these Claimchains, we will bring in partners who can offer incentives. For example, we are reaching out to a mobile operator’s foundation that promotes cashless economies. The goal is for the mobile operator to sponsor Claimchains by providing rewards to CCC holders on their cashless mobile money system.

Once a Claimchain is formed we will approach businesses & institutions working in the area and teach them how they can benefit by using the system.   Our objective for the first 2 years is to go to areas where we are needed and our partners want us to be. Once we have an established model we plan to open the system to the world for anyone to build on top of with their own partnerships & incentive structures. 

We count on network effects to accelerate platform growth. Each plot needs to be verified by neighboring claims, so for a claim to be valuable, it needs to generate more verified claims within the system. To help with this process, we collaborate with NGOs like CARE, which have strong connections and are trusted by the communities they serve. As a result, our system grows naturally, and becomes increasingly valuable for communities, institutions, businesses and all users.

This low cost model requires substantial scale to be viable. In the meantime, we aim to grow through a mix of investment capital and grants. We also envisage creating revenue through services such as API setup fees, white labeling, the production of market reports & business expansion consulting on potential new markets, government contracts, development Trust management fees (if managed by Commonlands) and the creation of  high resolution imagery for urban or densely populated areas for customers that require more specificity. 

We estimate a  claimholder acquisition cost of  $10-$25 (paid by Commonlands Development Trust & In-Kind Partner rewards), with a projected 10yr revenue per Claimholder: of over $100. Exponential Growth starts 2024 with estimated growth rate 5% with growth slowing in 2029 which achieves our target of 1 billion claims by the end of 2030.

we have been self funded thus far.