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

Lumia and Polygon Labs have teamed up to build the world’s first crypto real-estate project, Lumia Towers. Following the announcement, crypto.news had the opportunity to conduct a Q&A with Head of Enterprise and Financial Services for Polygon Labs, Boris Spremo and Lumia CEO Kal Ali.

Spanning over 50,000 square meters and located in the largest city in Turkey, Istanbul, the massive $220 million infrastructure is set to house 300 residential and commercial units and is poised to become a global crypto hub. According to Lumia CEO Kal Ali, the twin skyscrapers will be completed and fully tokenized by the second quarter of 2026.

Ali said Lumia Towers signifies a breakthrough in how people approach real-estate ownership. By using the tokenization model, they hope to make the real estate market more accessible, open and seamless for retail investors.

According to data from Landshares, the current market value for tokenized real-world assets is around $187 billion. However, it is estimated to rise between $3.5 trillion in the bear-case scenario and $10 trillion in the bull case by 2030, reflecting a potential 50-fold growth. This explosive expansion is largely driven by ventures that attempt to fractionalize high-value assets through blockchain technology, making it possible for investors to own commercial and residential properties through buying tokens.

However, despite the promise of democratizing real estate investment, challenges such as regulatory complexities, market liquidity issues, and the technological integration of physical assets with digital tokens still plague this fairly new model and could lead to potential risks down the line.

For instance, the actual liquidity of tokenized real estate would still depend on the development of active secondary markets. Without sufficient trading volume, investors may find it difficult to buy or sell real-estate ownership tokens, limiting the anticipated liquidity benefits. At the moment, the Lumia team has not provided an explanation on how this issue can be solved.

In the past, other tokenization projects focused on existing buildings. In the U.S., Tokeninvest purchased a $740,000 in Longmont, Colorado and tokenized it, allowing third-party investors to directly supply 97% of the purchase capital.

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

Head of Enterprise and Financial Services for Polygon (MATIC) Labs, Boris Spremo stated that real estate has always been one of the markets where the barriers to entry are “sky-high.”

In the case of Turkey, where the Lumia Towers will be built, real estate prices have continued to rise. Analysts have predicted property prices in Turkey will increase by 10% to 15%. However, there is also a high appetite for real estate investors in the region. In January 2025, house sales in Turkey increased by 39.7% year-on-year, reaching 112,173 units—the second-highest January figure on record. Mortgage-backed sales also saw a rise of 182.8% compared to a year prior.

Spremo believes the project will be able to make real-estate ownership more affordable as RWA tokenization is able to take physical assets and “break them down to potentially $1 entry points through fractional ownership.” Though, how much each unit will cost will still depend on the property prices in the region, which has shown no signs of decreasing as of late.

How will ownership rights be distributed through the blockchain?

Ali explained that ownership rights for the tokenized twin skyscrapers will be structured through Special Purpose Vehicles or SPVs, which will acquire the tokenized property. Shares of the SPVs will be minted on-chain in the form of ERC-20 tokens.

“Token holders will have governance rights, allowing them to vote on decisions regarding the use of the property, such as whether to rent or sell,” said Ali.

According to Ali, Lumia Towers tokens will be deployed on the Lumia Chain, granting easier access for retail investors. The tokens will also have access to DeFi protocols through the Lumia Stream and the Lumia Ecosystem.

Throughout the tokenization process, Polygon’s role is making sure that developers like Lumia can customize their blockchain for this specific-use case. Boris Spremo explained that Polygon is able to lower the cost of tokenizing ownership of a $220 million infrastructure without compromising security.

“Polygon infrastructure specifically handles high-value applications where Ethereum alone is too expensive or too slow. When you are fractionalizing ownership of $220 million in real estate, you cannot have $50 transaction fees or wait 15 minutes for confirmation,” said Spremo.

The hopefuls and pitfalls of real estate tokenization

Moving forward, Lumia CEO Kal Ali said Lumia is aiming to expand the Lumia Towers model into other regions outside of Turkey, namely regions like Middle East and North Africa, the United States and Europe.

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

Head of Enterprise and Financial Services for Polygon Labs, Spremo predicts there will be three emerging trends when it comes to RWA tokenization moving forward.

“First is the tokenization of entire neighborhoods or districts rather than individual buildings. This creates opportunities for community governance and aligned incentives between residents and investors,” said Spremo.

Second, he believes the real estate tokenization will be combined with other types of financial products, such as mortgage lending and insurance products. This way, developers can utilize blockchain technology to connect them directly to the tokenized property.

Lastly, he sees the technology as a gateway for more traditional financial institutions to enter the web3 space, specifically banks and investment funds.

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

Furthermore, tokenization of real estate does not eliminate the traditional risks associated with real estate investments, such as property management challenges, tenant vacancies, and maintenance costs.

Most recently, a Florida-based crypto real estate venture firm called RealT launched a real estate tokenization initiative they claimed would “revolutionize real estate investment”, claiming to encompass around 1,200 housing units across 800 properties in Detroit.

Unfortunately the project proved disastrous to its tenants, who struggled with the blockchain-ownership model because they had no idea who to pay rent to, considering the property is owned by numerous nameless token holders around the world who have no identification aside from a few numbers and letters recorded on the blockchain.

In fact, according to the New York Post, RealT’s real estate division Michigan RealToken owes the city of Detroit at least $2 million in unpaid taxes and 1,000 blight tickets. The firm reportedly has 200 properties at risk of closing down due to unpaid debt. However, a spokesperson for RealT has since denied these claims, saying that the real estate acquisitions companies are under a separate ownership from the firm.