Building homes with DeFi
Introduction
We’re excited to share more information about Rigor with our community!
Over the last 6 months, we’ve been hard at work building a solution to a massive coordination failure we see playing out in today’s housing market.
If you’re unfamiliar, in the US alone, there’s a shortage of about 4–6 million homes. This is due to various causes, for example right now the country’s largest generation (millennials) is forming new households (aka starting families) at ATH rates.
But when we dug into the to the supply-side dynamics of available homes, we were surprised to find that today’s homebuilding industry has actually been *under building* for decades, even relative to historical averages of new home construction. See below:
So, we did what any crypto maxis would do: we built a global protocol.
Rigor is a global protocol for communities to self-coordinate their construction projects. Users can create projects, complete assigned tasks and join Communities to help finance Projects that Project creators ‘publish’ to those Communities.
Here’s a high-level overview of the Rigor’s unique features.
Projects
On Rigor, Projects offer a real-time, holistic view of the construction project to all of its stakeholders, and provide Builders a way to outline a construction plan in detail, upload necessary documents and manage the project budget.
Users create a new Project by minting one from the factory contract. To create a Project, make sure you’re signed in a ‘Builder’ role. Users can add relevant details in the description like it’s location, access codes to the gated community IRL, documents like property title and a description of the project itself.
Users can also maintain a network of colleagues in the app, and can invite General Contractors to oversee the entire project if they’d like.
Next, the user will upload their detailed construction plan.
Tasks
Project creators will upload their construction plan into Tasks. Tasks on Rigor define individual pieces of work, and require a description of the desired work and with a corresponding budget. Once a Task is created with description and budget, the Builder or General Contractor (if present) can invite other users to that project with the assignment of completing a specific Task.
Creating a task can either be done manually, or they can be created in bulk via an excel sheet upload.
Escrows
The Project creator is free to deposit their own funds directly into their Project. When funds are deposited into the project, they are escrowed directly by specific Tasks. Once funds are deposited into the Project, it is escrowed by those Tasks.
To release funds from a specific Task, the Project’s Builder (Project creator), it’s General Contractor and the user assigned to complete that Task (Sub Contractor) must all sign to approve the release-of-funds.
So, once the Task has been completed by the assigned Sub Contractor IRL, that user can upload “proof-of-work,” like a picture they take on their phone, and then “request payment” from the Builder and General Contractor. The Builder and General Contractor will either ‘deny’ or ‘approve’ that Request. If approved, the funds are released and delivered directly to the user who requested payment.
Project Builders can also coordinate financing with their Communities.
Communities
Communities are permissioned on-chain clubs for financing new construction projects. These communities connect Builders and LPs from around the world to finance new Projects, track their progress and even execute repayments.
Communities on Rigor can specialize in certain geographies, types of projects, and any other aspects of construction they so choose. Anyone can create a Community on Rigor and memberships for each Community are managed by that Community’s creator. Users can browse Communities on Rigor and “request to join” if they’d like to get involved in financing projects submitted to that Community.
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If you’re interested in learning more and want to chat with us about your Project (whether IRL or in the metaverse) or simply want to get involved in our community and contribute to Rigor, please join our discord.
Over the next couple months, we’ll be running a series of beta programs with early community members who want to use Rigor for better coordination and more extensible financing of their new construction projects.
Maybe there’ll be air drop too :)
With Rigor, we can build more and build together.
Follow us and join the community!
We welcome and encourage your thoughts, feedback and participation in this exciting opportunity
