Dubai Land Department launches tokenized real estate secondary market
The Dubai government, represented by the Dubai Land Department, (DLD), and Ctrl Alt, a tokenization infrastructure provider, launched phase two of Dubai’s Real Estate Tokenization Project Pilot, a controlled secondary market trading capabilities for tokenized real estate assets. DLD had announced that it would be launching the secondary market previously.
During phase one, Dubai Land Department, Prypco, Ctrl Alt, utilizing Ripple XRP Ledger and Ripple Custody, sold 10 tokenized properties for $5 million. The 7.8 million tokens issued during these sales will not be traded on the controlled secondary market.
As per the press release, the secondary trading phase is designed to evaluate market efficiency and operational readiness while strengthening transparency, governance, and investor protections.
The trading of tokenized real estate will take place within a regulated pilot framework on the project’s distribution platform to ensure transaction integrity and alignment with existing land registry processes. All on-chain transactions in this phase will continue to be executed on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and secured by Ripple Custody.
As the tokenization infrastructure partner for the project, Ctrl Alt minted and issued the original title deed ownership tokens during Phase One and will now help deploy secondary market functionality for Phase Two. Ctrl Alt is directly integrated with the DLD systems, allowing property title deeds to be issued, managed, and transferred on-chain. All secondary market transactions in this phase are executed through the Ctrl Alt tokenization engine, ensuring ownership records remain accurate and fully aligned with official registries.
The 7.8 million tokens are what VARA calls ARVA tokens (Asset References Virtual Asset) and these are what will be transferred in regulated secondary market. Both ownership and management tokens will be recorded on-chain, creating a single, immutable record of ownership. This infrastructure is underpinned by Ctrl Alt’s role as a licensed Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP), the first firm to receive an Issuer license from VARA, and a holder of a Broker-Dealer license.
Robert Farquhar, CEO, MENA at Ctrl Alt said noted, “We’re proud to work with the Dubai Land Department and VARA on Phase Two of the project, demonstrating what is possible when governments and institutional-grade innovation come together to build market-leading digital rails. Native tokenization only reaches its full potential when assets can move efficiently post-issuance, and secondary market trading is essential to that outcome. By establishing robust tokenization infrastructure that supports the regulated transfer of tokenized land title deeds, Dubai is setting a global benchmark for how assets can be issued, traded, and managed on-chain.”
Matt Acheson, CPO at Ctrl Alt, added, “Our goal was to build a secondary market infrastructure that is efficient for the entire ecosystem while maintaining the controls and governance required by the DLD and VARA. To achieve this, Ctrl Alt engineered a sophisticated technical framework to facilitate the dual operation of ARVA management tokens and ownership tokens seamlessly on-chain. We manage the underlying complexity of this tokenization technology so that distribution platforms like PRYPCO and others can deliver smooth, fractional real estate experiences to their end users, without the requirement of building and managing the tokenization infrastructure themselves.”
This is a very important stage of the real estate tokenization project in the UAE. According to Ziad El Chaar, CEO of Dar Global, tokenization is a hobby if not accompanied with secondary markets.
Saudi Arabia has also started its real estate tokenization across the entire nation. RER under REGA has tokenized the property registry in the country as well as launched the second cohort of its Proptech sandbox.
