Smartlands confirms its near-term roadmap to revenue generation

With this article, we describe our activities over the last few months and present our token holders and other interested parties with our short-term roadmap to revenue generation in both Liechtenstein and Ukraine.

Ukraine

As announced earlier this year, Smartlands confirmed the “soft” launch of the beta version of our asset tokenization platform in Ukraine. Since the launch, we have gathered together an impressive list of real estate owners who intend to use the platform to tokenize partial stakes in their real estate portfolios, giving investors the opportunity to enter the commercial and large ticket real estate market as minority holders and receive income on the same terms as the majority owners. 

As with all public-facing investment offerings, it is necessary to ensure that the structure of the business offering the investment opportunities is entirely compliant with the laws in the jurisdiction in which they operate. To this effect, Smartlands appointed Quantum Attorneys to advise us on all matters pertaining to the legal structure of our business in Ukraine. Quantum Attorneys, you may recall, were the lead legal firm advising the Ukrainian government on the national laws that relate to both the issue of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and on how to structure the legal environment that will apply to digital assets inside Ukraine.

Working with Quantum Attorneys, Smartlands put together our own corporate structure for the Ukrainian division in such a manner that it would instantly be legally compliant once the relevant laws have been passed by the Ukrainian parliament, known as the Rada. 

For any business starting operations in a new country, it is generally a straightforward process to make sure that the business plan is legally compliant with the existing laws at the time of company formation. With the Smartlands asset tokenization platform, however, we are creating a new company to operate in a legal environment that at the time had not been formalized by the Rada. This then allowed Smartlands to approach only professional investors, high net worth individuals (HNWIs), and other professionals such as family offices and advisors to HNWIs. We have made contact with many such qualifying investors over the past few months. We have in place a large number of “soft” commitments from such investors on the various real estate offerings that have been presented on the platform. However, in every case, the investors and their advisors wanted to ensure that Smartlands was compliant with the relevant Ukrainian laws before remitting funds.

The same also applied to the real estate portfolio owners whose properties we are in the process of listing on the platform. So, while we have both sides of the transactions ready to go, we need absolute confirmation of the legal environment that will apply to offer legal comfort to both investors and the property owners, and this can only be guaranteed once the Rada has passed the relevant laws and they have been signed into effect by the Ukrainian President.

We are pleased to report that on 29th July, the President of Ukraine signed into law a decree that now allows the Ukrainian Central Bank, The National Bank of Ukraine, (NBU) to issue a CBDC or digital hryvnia. The law also enables the NBU to set up regulatory structures for testing payment services and other allied instruments based upon new and emerging technologies. It is worth noting that the legislation requires the NBU to form a close collaboration with local start-ups in the digital asset space to ensure that the end product of the e-hryvnia takes into account the needs of the private sector. In a further positive for Smartlands, the NBU announced earlier this year that it had chosen the Stellar blockchain network as the platform on which it will build the hryvnia CBDC. So it is instantly compatible with all aspects of the Smartlands platform immediately after it is launched.

In further development, the Rada has under consideration a new law setting out the legal status of crypto trading and crypto investments. This law will have the effect of creating parity between decentralised finance businesses (such as Smartlands) and the more traditional form of old-school banking. An important consideration of this new law is that it will legalise crypto payments conducted through intermediaries, thus facilitating two-way protection for both consumers and businesses in crypto to fiat currency transactions.

All of this is excellent news for us at Smartlands. It brings cryptocurrencies and investments made into crypto-related businesses such as the Smartlands platform into the mainstream. It gives the holders of crypto assets that have been created under the relevant law the same legal protections as investments made using fiat currencies.

Following the official publication of the text of the new laws, we, at Smartlands, were able to structure our Ukrainian operation to ensure that it is fully compliant. To this effect, we have already opened our Ukrainian subsidiary as an LLC being a specialist vehicle that will shortly be issued with a Ukrainian broking license making it legally allowed to offer investments to the general public at large on the Smartlands platform with all investments accorded the same privileges and protections as if they were made in fiat currency under the old-fashioned banking system.

With the work we have put in place in carefully structuring the Ukrainian company and our further activities in finding both investors and real estate owners to populate the platform, Smartlands will be in pole position to maximise returns for token holders once the new law is confirmed and signed into law by the President of Ukraine.

Smartlands remains fully prepared and ready to turn our “soft” commitments into the firm business from both investors and commercial property owners at a moment’s notice. We continue to meet with both asset owners and investors to ensure that there will be a large selection of opportunities on the platform for investors under Ukraine’s brave new world of crypto adoption.

Liechtenstein

In the crypto field, Liechtenstein has an entirely different set of circumstances to Ukraine. There is a full suite of legislation relating to crypto activities and digital assets already in place. To date, no company has created or used an asset tokenization platform under these laws, and Smartlands intends to be the first.

It has been necessary for Smartlands to seek multiple legal opinions on the structure and operation of the Liechtenstein subsidiary to ensure that we are operating fully in accordance with the relevant parts of that country’s blockchain act. This is now largely complete, and we are awaiting approval of the final version of the corporate structure and confirmation that everything is ready to launch.

As part of the structure, it has been a requirement that we appoint a Liechtenstein citizen who is cognizant of both the legal aspects of the Smartlands platform and who also has an understanding of the digital asset marketplace. This person will act as a supervisory type board member, and it is his job to oversee our compliance with all relevant legislation under Liechtenstein Law. We are pleased to confirm we have found the right person for this position. In order to ensure overall legal compliance with our operation in Liechtenstein, we have appointed the law firm BWB Rechtsanwalte of Vaduz to advise us on an ongoing basis.

In our news release dated 16th April on our plans for Liechtenstein, we gave a guesstimate of 6 months for the entire process to be complete, in other words, by mid-October. As things look now, we should be in a position to meet this forecast easily.

The operation of our platform in Liechtenstein in a manner fully compliant with that country’s blockchain act will allow us to offer tokenized assets to a global investment audience. It will be a major source of income for Smartlands across all asset classes, especially regarding large ticket offerings.

Other news

We have not spent the past few months sitting idly by waiting for lawyers to do their stuff on our behalf. Our team in Ukraine continues to seek out suitable asset owners for listings on the platform and maintains an ongoing dialogue with investors.

We have also re-launched our updated and improved Smartlands wallet to reflect all the latest developments in the Stellar protocol fully. The wallet also now boasts single sign-on functionality and 2-factor authentication for the protection of the wallet owners. It is through the wallet that the Smartlands staking system will operate, distributing 33% of all revenues earned by the platform to qualifying SLT holders.

Smartlands has also strengthened its key management team in anticipation of revenue-generating business starting on multiple fronts by appointing a Customer Success Manager.

Smartlands short-term roadmap

Milestone Expected  – Date

• Creation of Ukrainian LLC – Complete

• Issuance of a Ukrainian brokerage license – Q4 2021

• Start of full operations in Ukraine – Q4 2021

• Start of first revenue generation in Ukraine – Q4 2021

• Full operation of Liechtenstein company – October 2021

• Start of first revenue generation in Liechtenstein – November 2021

• The first payment of 33% revenue share to SLT holders – December 1st, 2021

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Smartlands is a digital investments platform with a proven use case for tokenizing shares in real assets. Having its mission of tokenizing the real economy and bringing all its benefits to a broad audience, Smartlands launched an alternative investments project in Ukraine. The SLT is a cryptocurrency of the Smartlands ecosystem. It is limited to a maximum of 7.1mn tokens and runs on the Stellar open-source network.