Dubai is stepping up its tokenization campaign, launching a second phase of a project that tokenizes real estate and enables these tokens to trade on secondary markets.
The Dubai Land Department (DLD) has partnered with Ctrl Alt, a local tokenization company, on the project. The tokens will be issued on the XRP Ledger and secured by Ripple Custody.
In the second phase, the two partners have introduced controlled secondary market trading, allowing holders to trade their tokens and transfer ownership instantly, all documented on-chain. The trading will take place on a regulated framework provided by the partners for maximum transaction integrity.
Ctrl Alt and DLD first tokenized Dubai property last year in a project that also involved the city’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and the Dubai Future Foundation. According to the latest report, the first phase tokenized ten properties, worth over AED 18.5 million ($5 million) in value.
It issued 7.8 million tokens, allowing fractional ownership where thousands of retail investors can co-own a property, eliminating the barriers to entry in a sector reserved for institutional investors. All these tokens can now be traded on the upcoming secondary market.
Speaking on the latest project, Ctrl Alt’s head of MENA, Robert Farquhar, commented:
Dubai has one of the region’s most valuable real estate. Last year, real estate transactions hit a record $250 billion, with this year projected to set a new record. Tokenizing this industry would attract billions of dollars to the XRP ecosystem at a time when RWA tokenization has emerged as the biggest growth area for blockchain networks.
According to rwa.xyz, tokenized RWAs have a represented asset value of $376 billion. However, most of the activity has been concentrated in US Treasuries, private credit and commodities, with real estate at a distant ninth. Additionally, Ethereum dominates the sector, with the XRP Ledger ranking ninth, behind others like BNB Chain, Solana and Avalanche.
With the Dubai project, XRP Ledger has the opportunity to make headway in a sector and region that other major networks have ignored.
The second phase of the Dubai land tokenization project is the latest instance of Ripple partnering with Ctrl Alt. As CNF reported earlier this month, the two also jointly enabled Dubai-based Billiton to tokenize $280 million worth of diamonds on XRPL.
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