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.

Lumia and Polygon Labs have joined forces to create 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 will be the first large-scale project in the crypto space, adding that the project aims to revolutionize 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 by 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.

According to Spremo, 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