Mata Capital: Blockchain Case Study on Real Estate Investment Management

Mata Capital is a French real estate fund management company that manages a diverse portfolio of assets. The company is committed to promoting trust, transparency, and efficiency for real estate investors. It aims to enable greater participation in real estate investment by decreasing the costs associated with investor registration, investor onboarding, and subscription operation. Mata Capital's long-term vision is to reduce minimum investor subscription amounts, thereby attracting a wider and more diverse pool of investors to real estate asset investments. The company is also keen on leveraging technology to modernize and optimize its processes, as evidenced by its adoption of blockchain technology for tokenizing ownership of a Paris hotel.

Mata Capital, a French real estate fund management company, was facing challenges in distributing fund shares and maintaining its investor registry. The traditional processes were cumbersome, costly, and relied heavily on paper-based systems. The company was also grappling with substantial administrative costs, especially for small investment tickets for Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and registration activities. This resulted in high minimum investment subscription amounts, limiting the pool of potential investors. Furthermore, investors had limited access to secondary markets, making it difficult for them to trade assets as required by their portfolio allocation strategies. Mata Capital sought to modernize and optimize these processes, with a long-term vision to reduce minimum investor subscription amounts from €100,000 to €1, thereby attracting a wider and more diverse pool of investors to real estate asset investments.

To address these challenges, Mata Capital partnered with ConsenSys Codefi to issue security tokens for three separate funds worth a combined total of €350m. The first of these tokenization projects involved ownership of a planned 11-story hotel under construction on the outskirts of Paris. Codefi Assets’s Ethereum-based platform, powered by AWS cloud, was used to describe the real estate asset, define its compliance requirements, validate the investor KYC profile, and issue corresponding fund shares to each verified investor. The platform also allowed eligible investors to define the nature and number of shares they would purchase, make the payment via wire transfer and receive the shares upon payment validation. The solution leveraged the precision and automation capabilities of Ethereum, reducing the burden on Mata Capital to research investors’ eligibility and risk profile.

• The implementation of the Ethereum-based platform resulted in several operational benefits for Mata Capital. The company was able to save costs, ensure accuracy, and achieve better oversight for its investors. The solution also provided greater flexibility for customising products and opened up access to new classes of investors. The investor registry is now automatically updated and maintained in one place, ensuring accuracy, transparency, and security of the information. The digitisation of the investment process on Ethereum also provides Mata Capital opportunities to distribute more globally, as international investors can access the platform just as easily as domestic investors. As a broader objective, Mata Capital expects to attract more retail investors who will take advantage of the ease at which they can invest in a complex financial product.

• The tokenization project resulted in a €26m issuance, making it one of the largest real estate tokenization projects in Europe.

• The solution enabled Mata Capital to manage three separate funds worth a combined total of €350m.

• The long-term vision is to reduce minimum investor subscription amounts from €100,000 to €1.