Rentible Expands to Real World Assets: Introducing the Deposit & Rental Contract
After exploring the Fundraising Smart Contract in our previous installment, we’re now set to delve into how Rentible structures Tenant-Landlord deposit and rent payment interactions within our system. This technology is designed for integration into real estate listing sites and other user-friendly interfaces, making the entire process seamless and intuitive.
Supporting Fractional Ownership and Tokenization
Firstly, by supporting asset tokenization and fractional ownership, Rentible enables Landlords to be represented not just by user wallets, but also by Smart Contracts — particularly our own Yield Distributor smart contracts. This setup allows tenants to pay deposits and rental fees directly to a blockchain entity, which then distributes the yield to fractional owners.
Solving the Big Deposit Mystery
Deposit frauds, including let-and-run schemes, are rampant in the globalized rental market, with criminals often targeting foreign tenants or those searching for flats online. Rentible’s Deposit & Rental Smart Contract introduces a novel structure that prevents such malpractices, ensuring a secure and transparent flow of funds.
To make a deposit payment, a Tenant uses the “Pay Rent Deposit” function, where they can specify the receiver’s address, the stablecoin token address (e.g., USDT is 0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7), the amount in stablecoin (e.g., 2800), and an escrow time interval during which the deposit is frozen in the smart contract. The deposit is only released once the tenant has safely moved in. Similar to blockchain transactions that require a gas fee, each transaction here incurs an RNB flat fee.
Once the deposit is made, it remains under escrow until the originally specified release date. The Tenant may interact with the smart contract again to allow for early release directly to the Landlord, or, if issues arise — such as the property not being in the agreed condition, or the Landlord failing to uphold their end of the contract — the Tenant can initiate an Arbitration process:
In this scenario, Rentible acts as a mediator, requesting evidence and statements from both parties before making a decision on how to allocate the deposit (e.g., refunding the Tenant, splitting the amount, or fully honoring the Landlord).For example in this case the Arbitror decided a 30%-70% split:
When Things Go The Right Way
If no issues arise, once the Landlord is entitled to receive the deposit, they can use the “Claim Deposit” function to transfer the deposit amount from the smart contract directly to their own wallet:
Assuming the tenant has moved in, they can then start paying monthly rent by interacting with the smart contract again and selecting the “Pay Monthly Rent” function. The monthly rent is transferred directly to the Landlord without any limitations, maintaining a transparent record of all payments on the blockchain:
This contract addresses numerous property management and common market issues while facilitating efficient transactions between crypto-friendly tenants and landlords. In our next article, we’ll showcase the Yield Distributor Contract, which will illustrate how fractional owners can directly collect yields from tenants using Rentible’s infrastructure.
The deployed test contract and all associated transactions are available for review on the Sepolia test network:
https://sepolia.etherscan.io/address/0x9b6163a414425d44ba6532c1a3f716924f37d775
