Case Study
Keystone Digital Registry
Every property, a verified on-chain passport.
Keystone Digital Registry gives real estate a verified on-chain identity. Each property gets a digital passport backed by county records, tax ID data, and an immutable deed hash, tamper-proof and portable. VTS Labs built the platform end to end, from the smart contracts to the verification pipeline, and it is live with Philadelphia properties minted today.
AT A GLANCE
Client
Jim Onesti
Industry
Real estate / Web3
Services
On-chain property registry
Tech Stack
TypeScript · Solidity
Records
County-verified
Market
Philadelphia, PA
Timeline
[ add duration ]
Status
Live · 11 passports
01 · THE CHALLENGE
Property records nobody can trust at a glance.
Real estate records are fragmented, paper-based, and slow to verify. Deeds sit in county offices, ownership history is opaque, and proving a property's identity means chasing documents across systems. The work was to give each property one verified, tamper-proof record anyone could check.
Fragmented records
Deeds, assessments, and tax data live in separate systems with no single source of truth.
Hard to verify
Confirming a property's identity and history means chasing paper across county offices.
No portable proof
There is no single, tamper-proof record an owner can carry or a buyer can trust.
02 · WHAT WE BUILD
A verified passport, for every property.
An on-chain registry where each property is minted as a digital passport: a verified identity backed by county assessment data, a tax ID record, and an immutable deed hash, with a clear property-type taxonomy and IPFS-hosted media.
Wireframe of a property passport · each minted passport carries county verification, a tax ID record, and an immutable deed hash
From county record to on-chain passport
Source
Pull authoritative data from the county property assessment records.
Verify
Confirm the deed, owner, and tax ID, then hash the deed for an immutable fingerprint.
Mint
Mint the passport on-chain with its type, address, and verification data.
Browse
Anyone can browse passports and check each property's verified record.
What each passport carries
County verification
Sourced from county assessment records, so the identity is grounded in official data.
Immutable deed hash
A tamper-proof fingerprint of the deed, anchored on-chain and impossible to alter quietly.
Property-type taxonomy
Single-family, multi-unit, mixed-use, condo, commercial, industrial, and land.
Tax ID records
Each passport links to the property's tax record for a complete identity.
On-chain + IPFS
The passport lives on-chain, with property media stored on IPFS.
Wallet-native
Connect a wallet to interact with the registry and its passports.
03 · PROOF · LIVE WITH REAL PROPERTIES
On-chain identity, for real Philadelphia property.
11
Passports minted
7
Property types
100%
County-verified
Philadelphia
Market live
Keystone was built for Jim Onesti, a Philadelphia real estate agent with more than 15,000 homes sold and over $4B in transactions, bringing verifiable on-chain provenance to a market he knows intimately.
What the engagement delivered
An on-chain property registry with a verified digital passport per property.
A verification pipeline sourcing county data, tax IDs, and immutable deed hashes.
A property-type taxonomy and IPFS media, live with Philadelphia properties minted.
Why it holds up
Grounded in official data from county assessment records, not self-reported.
Tamper-proof through an on-chain deed hash that cannot be altered quietly.
Portable as a single verified record an owner or buyer can trust.
"[One sentence from Jim on why he built Keystone with VTS Labs and what it delivers.]"
— Jim Onesti, Keystone Digital Registry
HOW WE ENGAGED
Fixed-fee, PRD-first.
No scope creep, no surprise invoices.
VTS Labs scopes the full build in a product requirements document and fixes the price before any production starts, so the work, the timeline, and the cost are locked from day one. You approve a fixed scope and a fixed number, then we build to it.
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Scope locked up front
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Fixed fee, not hourly
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Founder-led delivery