Tenure Conversion
A structured workflow for converting informal, communal, and customary land tenure into formal digital records.
The challenge
In many countries, a significant portion of land is held under informal or customary arrangements — community land, ancestral holdings, settlements that predate formal registration systems, or land transferred through family and community practice rather than legal instruments.
These landholders have real, legitimate rights. But without formal registration, those rights are invisible to lenders, courts, and other registries. They can't be used as collateral, defended in cross-border proceedings, or verified by external institutions.
The Tenure Conversion Workflow
Landblock's Tenure Conversion Workflow is a reusable, configurable seven-stage process for bringing informal and customary tenure into formal registration. It is built into the Registry Template and can be adapted to the legal and cultural context of each jurisdiction.
- Stage 1 — Application intake: Claimant submits a tenure claim with supporting evidence
- Stage 2 — Community consent: Affected community is notified and consulted; objections recorded
- Stage 3 — Boundary demarcation: Physical parcel boundaries are surveyed and documented
- Stage 4 — Public notice: Claim is published for a statutory notice period
- Stage 5 — Objection resolution: Any objections are reviewed and resolved by the registry authority
- Stage 6 — Rights registration: Formal right is recorded in the registry
- Stage 7 — Proof publication: Cryptographic proof is published to the Landblock federation
Configurability
The workflow is designed to be configured — not imposed. Different jurisdictions have different legal requirements for tenure formalization. The stage sequence, notice periods, authority roles, and evidence requirements are all configurable by the registry operator. The workflow engine enforces the configured process consistently.
Standards alignment
The workflow is designed to align with internationally recognized frameworks for tenure security: the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT), the UN-GGIM Framework for Effective Land Administration (FELA), and the World Bank Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF).