ETH Phoenix 2025

Sarah Richardson

Founder & CEO · reTEQ

I spent 25 years in real estate before I ever touched Web3 — now I'm bringing distributed ledger technology to an industry that hasn't changed its core system since the early 90s.

Who Gave Me My First Break

I'm a local Phoenician, based in Scottsdale, Arizona. My background and domain expertise is actually in real estate — a highly, highly compliant environment. I've been in real estate for 25 years, and I've worn a lot of different hats: broker, agent, residential, commercial. I founded a fairly large female-owned real estate brokerage, sold it, and then created AI to help support and create efficiencies for that brokerage.

We've now re-architected that into a generative AI solution, and that solution is embedded into a larger platform I presented on today — a blockchain-based MLS system.

What I'm Building Now

Is it true that the velocity of real estate is hampered by a fragmented underwriting process? Yes. It's hampered by legacy systems, and by the inability for different vendors to speak to one another — that lack of communication extends all the way to the consumer actually purchasing real estate. The MLS was digitized in the early 90s, and we're still on that same legacy system.

What does it really take to bring the MLS to distributed ledger technology? Not very much. It's just creating adoption among the users. The average age of a real estate agent is about 56 to 57 years old, and when they hear Web3, decentralization, transparency — they glaze over. So it's really coming down to almost not mentioning those things, and just providing a better user experience. A real estate agent or broker logs into five to even ten technologies a week, and they don't communicate with one another. When we can create an ecosystem that mimics all of those technologies with one login, plus access to the inventory, we believe we can have mass adoption.

We need to be the source of truth for the data, and we've found a way to be a source of truth above what those MLSs are. We can show them how one login can push into all the other logins.

Blockchain-based MLS combined with generative AI for real estate
Single-login ecosystem replacing 5-10 disparate agent/broker technologies
Positioned as B2B — sold to real estate agents, brokers, and associations, not consumers
Built to be the source-of-truth data layer above existing legacy MLS systems

Sarah Richardson: DLT Meets MLS

Sarah Richardson on bringing distributed ledger technology to a real estate MLS system that hasn't changed since the early 90s.

Future

Where We're Going

One of the primary obstacles to onboarding the early majority is that they're not even good at remembering one password, let alone the many that come with crypto wallets.

From 2009 to 2025, crypto has been creating user experiences for innovators and early adopters who use technology because it's new and exciting. The early majority we want to reach doesn't work that way — they adopt because they're forced to, and it has to be the same seamless experience they're used to, just better.

We've found ways to make it better. When we can be a source of truth right now that pushes into those legacy systems, we can show the industry how one login replaces all the others.

Fast Facts