Penthouse Protocol

Imagine wanting to invest in real estate but finding traditional options too expensive or complex. Our application changes that by bringing property ownership onto the Hedera blockchain. Property owners can list their real estate on our platform, transforming its value into many small digital shares, like company stock, represented as unique tokens (HTS tokens). This makes it easy for anyone, from small investors to larger ones, to buy a piece of a property they believe in using a stable digital currency like USDC, all managed securely through their personal HashPack wallet. The platform ensures every investment payment is verified directly on the Hedera network for transparency. For tenants, the app serves as a straightforward marketplace to find and rent these tokenized properties, also paying their rent in USDC. The magic happens when rent comes in; our platform automatically calculates each token holder's proportional share based on how many tokens they own (information pulled directly from the Hedera ledger) and distributes the rent income to them in USDC. This creates a seamless cycle, unlocking liquidity for property owners, making real estate investment accessible to everyone, and simplifying the rental process, all powered by Hedera's fast, low-cost, and transparent technology.

We built this project using Flutter for the mobile app and a Node.js Express backend with Firebase Firestore for storing user and property data. Firebase Authentication handles user logins. The core uses Hedera: Owners list properties, and our backend mints HTS tokens representing shares, holding them in a platform treasury. Investors and tenants use HashPack, connected via WalletConnect, to approve USDC payments for shares or rent, directed to our platform. Our backend verifies these USDC payments by querying the Hedera Mirror Node API. After confirming payment, the backend uses the Hedera SDK to either send HTS property tokens to the investor or update the rental status in Firestore. For rent distribution, the backend queries the Mirror Node to find all property token holders and their balances, calculates shares, and then sends proportional USDC payments from the platform treasury using the Hedera SDK. Key simplifications for the hackathon include a mocked KYC process and having the backend manage rent distribution based on on-chain data, rather than using a complex smart contract. Hedera's HTS simplified tokenization, while Firebase and WalletConnect sped up development significantly.