Lumia CEO and Polygon exec talk $220m skyscrapers and real estate tokenization

Lumia and Polygon Labs have teamed up to build the first crypto-immobilier project in the world, Lumia Towers. After the announcement, Crypto.News had the opportunity to carry out a question and answer session with the head of corporate and financial services for Polygon Labs, Boris Spremo and Lumia PDG Kal Ali.

Extending over more than 50,000 square meters and located in the largest city in TürkiyeIstanbul, the massive infrastructure of $ 220 million is expected to house 300 residential and commercial units and is about to become a global cryptography hub. According to the CEO of Lumia, Kal Ali, the twin skyscrapers will be finished and entirely tokenized in the second quarter of 2026.

Ali said that Lumia Towers means a breakthrough in the way people approach the property. Using the tokenization model, they hope to make the real estate market more accessible, open and transparent for retail investors.

According to data From Landrshares, the current market value of tokenized real world assets is around 187 billion dollars. However, it is estimated To increase between 3.5 billions of dollars in the bearing case scenario and 10 billions of dollars in the case of bull by 2030, reflecting potential growth of 50 times. This explosive expansion is largely motivated by companies trying to split high value assets thanks to Blockchain technology, which allows investors to have commercial and residential properties by buying tokens.

However, despite the promise to democratize real estate investments, challenges such as regulatory complexities, market liquidity problems and technological integration of physical assets with digital tokens always afflict this fairly new model and could cause potential risks on the line.

For example, the real liquidity of tokenized real estate would always depend on the development of the active secondary markets. Without sufficient trading volume, investors may have trouble buying or selling real estate tetches, which limits the liquidity services provided. Currently, the Lumia team has not provided any explanation of how this problem can be solved.

In the past, other tokenization projects have focused on existing buildings. In the United States, Tokeninvest bought $ 740,000 in Longmont, Colorado and the Tokenized, allowing third-party investors to directly provide 97% of the purchase capital.

Unlike previous Prokect, Lumia Towers will become the first large -scale RWA real estate project built by a web3 business.

Head of business and financier services for Polygon (Matic) Labs, Boris Spremo said that real estate has always been one of the markets where the barriers at the entrance are “Sky-High”.

In the case of Turkey, where the Lumia towers will be built, real estate prices have continued to increase. Analysts have foreseen Real estate prices in Türkiye will increase by 10% to 15%. However, there is also a great appetite for real estate investors in the region. In January 2025, house sales in Türkiye increase From 39.7% in annual shift, reaching 112,173 units, the second largest figure in January never recorded. Sales backed by mortgages also increased an increase of 182.8% compared to a year earlier.

SPREMO thinks that the project will be able to make the property property more affordable because the RWA tokenization is able to take physical assets and to “decompose them in entry points potentially at $ 1 by fractional property”. However, how much each unit will always depend on property prices in the region, which has not shown any sign of decrease in recent times.

How will property rights be distributed by the blockchain?

Ali explained that the property rights of the token twins skyscrapers will be structured by vehicles or SPVs for special use, which acquires tokenized property. The SPVS actions will be struck with the chain in the form of ERC-20 tokens.

“Hamstock holders will have governance rights, which allows them to vote on decisions concerning the use of property, for example renting or selling,” said Ali.

According to Ali, the Lumia Towers tokens will be deployed on the Lumia chain, giving easier access to retail investors. The tokens will also have access to Challenge Protocols through the Lumia Lumia ecosystem.

Throughout the tokenization process, Polygon The role is to ensure that developers like Lumia can personalize their blockchain for this case for specific use. Boris Spremo explained that Polygon is able to reduce the cost of the tokener property of an infrastructure of $ 220 million without compromising security.

“Polygone infrastructure specifically manages large value applications where Ethereum alone is too expensive or too slow. When you fractionalize the property of $ 220 million in real estate, you cannot have $ 50 in transaction costs or wait 15 minutes for confirmation, “said Spremo.

Hopes and traps of real estate tokenization

In the future, the CEO of Lumia, Kal Ali, said that Lumia aimed to extend the Lumia Towers model in other regions outside Turkey, namely regions like the Middle East and North Africa, the United States and Europe.

“The expansion roadmap will bring innovative real estate to a global audience, helping to revolutionize real estate investments and property on a larger scale,” said Ali.

Head of corporate and financiers for Polygon Labs, Spremo predicts that there will be three emerging trends with regard to RWA tokenization in the future.

“The first is the tokenization of whole districts or districts rather than individual buildings. This creates community governance opportunities and aligned incentives between residents and investors, “said Spremo.

Second, he thinks that real estate token will be combined with other types of financial products, such as mortgage loans and insurance products. In this way, developers can use Blockchain technology to connect them directly to the Tokenized property.

Finally, he considers technology as a bridge for more traditional financial institutions to enter the web3 space, in particular banks and investment funds.

Although Spremo hopes that real estate tokenization will be able to “reduce the barrier” for people hoping to invest in real estate, there are also many potential obstacles that could arrive at a real estate tokenization project. These risks range from intelligent contracts and technological vulnerabilities to overvaluation due to speculative trading. As it is the nature of the tokens, prices could become volatile depending on market activity.

In addition, the tokenization of real estate does not eliminate the traditional risks associated with real estate investments, such as real estate management challenges, vacancies of tenants and maintenance costs.

More recently, a real estate venture company based in Florida called Realt launched a real estate tokenization initiative they affirmed “would revolutionize real estate investments”, claiming to encompass around 1,200 dwellings in 800 properties in Detroit.

Unfortunately, the project proved to be disastrous towards its tenants, who had trouble with the blockchain’s property model because they did not know who to pay the rent, since the property belongs to many names of unnamed tokens in the world who have no identification outside a few figures and letters recorded on the blockchain.

In fact, according to the New York Post, the Realt real estate division, Michigan Realtoken, owes the city of Detroit at least $ 2 million in unpaid taxes and 1,000 burning tickets. The company would have 200 properties at risk of closing due to unpaid debt. However, a spokesperson for Realt has since denied these complaints, saying that real estate acquisition companies are under the separate property of the company.