BUILDING BLOCKS

Mysa Finance is an up-and-coming blockchain project laying the foundations for a new era of real estate. BLOCK magazine sat down with them following their well-deserved win at last year's AIBC Startup Pitch.

Congratulations on winning the 2021 AIBC Pitch! Now that the excitement has died down, how does Mysa intend to follow up on this success?

Thank you! And thanks to all the unsung heroes at AIBC/SiGMA for putting on a great show, conference, and giving startups such a great opportunity! As for us... who said the excitement has died down? We are very proud of our victory and will surely be yelling about it from the rooftops for the foreseeable future! Needless to say: our team is just as excited as ever. If this a reality, it will serve as a “proof of concept”.

MOST PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO DEDICATE THEIR LIVES TO LEARNING THE INS-AND-OUTS OF REAL ESTATE, THEY JUST WANT TO BUY OR RENT A NICE PROPERTY AND LIVE THEIR LIVES, AND THAT’S WHAT WE INTEND TO EMPOWER THEM TO DO.

As someone who just bought a house, I know first hand that buying property is complicated and tedious - how will putting the real estate economy on the blockchain help make transactions simpler and more accessible?

First of all, congratulations on buying a house! I’m sure you did your research and made a smart purchase, and that is one of the keys to growing your wealth, so bravo to you! The goal of making transactions simpler and more accessible is to lay everything that people need to make wise investment decisions (and follow through with them) right in front of them on a silver platter. Although the legal landscape of many countries may not allow for it today, we are taking solid steps towards having all real estate transactions on a public blockchain.

This means that eventually, all or most price (and other) data will be publicly available, trustworthy, and verifiable… and that will allow people to have all the data they need to make wise investment decisions. After that, it will just be an arms race full of healthy competition (ideally) for platforms to organize this data and allow users to interact with the DeFi world. Mysa intends to be one of, if not the, top platform like this.

Is the industry moving in this direction yet, what are some of the hurdles to adoption?

Yes. It is moving in the direction, but very slowly. The reason it’s not moving more quickly is the legal framework around real estate. It’s very hard to e.g. tie the ownership of real estate to a virtual token. While we can move very quickly in the blockchain and DeFi worlds… when it comes to physical real estate, you are still oftentimes limited to the speed of your local government. We’re doing the best we can to work with and show lawmakers the power and utility of DeFi, but at the end of the day… It will take time before it’s adopted on a governmental level. This is why so many blockchain real estate projects before us have failed — they underestimated or just couldn’t find a way to work with the legal aspects of real estate. We are patient, we believe we can soldier through the tough times, and we are committed to fighting the good fight.

Crypto investors can earn passive-based income from your NFT-based investment tool - tell us more about this.

Soon we will release our utility token, $MYSA. If you stake $MYSA, you get an NFT. That NFT entitles you to a portion of the profits from the real estate we manage. The profit is paid out regularly in our token, so you earn income without lifting a finger. I’m simplifying here, but essentially: owning our NFT is just like owning income-generating real estate, without having to manage it. Long story short: staking $MYSA = sweet, sweet passive income for you.

When can we expect the MYSA token to be released?

I can’t make any promises, but if all goes perfectly well: our public sale should go live by the end of next year (2022). We’d prefer to under-promise and over-deliver, so emphasis on the “if” and “should”.

OWNING OUR NFT IS JUST LIKE OWNING INCOME-GENERATING REAL ESTATE, WITHOUT HAVING TO MANAGE IT.

Can you explain in more depth about how you employ machine learning to value property and perform risk analysis?

Property value and risk assessment are some of the most important factors when it comes to real estate investment. Machine learning is an incredible technology that has come a long way in recent years… So it’s only natural for us to put 2 and 2 together: We source lots of good, clean real estate data and use machine learning to model how the value of any given property might change over time. This backs up our investment decisions, allows users to know the value of their investments, and identifies potential investments we might not have found ourselves. We have a very talented and passionate expert in AI, Prof. Maciej Komosiński from the Poznań University of Technology, leading our efforts in AI and machine learning.