By Aleksandr Hebultivskiy, COO at Sabai Protocol
Everyone's talking about tokenization like it's already won. The numbers look impressive — BlackRock's BUIDL fund, Franklin Templeton's FOBXX, billions locked in tokenized treasuries. But here's what most of those headlines skip: the majority of that market is built for institutions, not people. Not the entrepreneur trying to raise capital on a commercial property. Not the investor who wants a slice of a Warsaw apartment building for €500.
So let's do something more useful than celebrate the headline numbers. Let's look at who actually made tokenization work in 2026 and who didn't, and why.
How the RWA Market Is Actually Structured
By 2026, the Real-World Assets tokenization market has matured into four distinct segments.
Tokenized Treasuries
This is the biggest segment by volume, but the least relevant for most readers. This is BlackRock (BUIDL) and Franklin Templeton (FOBXX) territory. The idea: keep capital on-chain, earn US Treasury yields, avoid the friction of converting in and out of fiat. Genuinely useful — if your minimum ticket is $5 million and you're an accredited institution.
Tokenized Private Credit
It is the second-largest category and essentially a tool for banks and funds to repackage debt into tokens and trade it between themselves more efficiently. Smart infrastructure, wrong audience for most people reading this.
Tokenized Commodities and Collectibles
Wine, gold, luxury watches, racehorses — is where things get interesting. Tokenization lets owners of illiquid physical assets break them into fractional ownership and unlock capital without selling outright. For investors, it's a way into asset classes that previously required large checks and specialized storage infrastructure.
Tokenized Real Estate and Business Equity
This is the segment that most directly serves the people this article is for. For property owners and business operators, tokenization means faster, cheaper capital raising — selling tokens representing income rights or equity stakes instead of going through traditional lending or equity rounds. For investors, it means access to previously closed markets with lower minimums and the potential for on-chain secondary liquidity.
The first two segments are, honestly, not for most of us. They're old financial products in new wrappers, accessible to the same institutions that always had access. What follows focuses entirely on the last two — where real-world technology meets real-world stakes, and where the clearest lessons live.
Successful Tokenization Projects
MetaWealth
Romania / Ireland | 2023 | Volume: $50M+
MetaWealth is a fractional investment platform for income-generating European real estate, founded in 2023 and registered in Ireland. Minimum investment: $100. Assets across Romania, Spain, Greece, and Italy. Built on Solana.
In July 2025, MetaWealth became the first RWA platform to surpass $1 million in cumulative rental income paid directly to retail token holders. Total tokenized assets at that point exceeded $50 million, with investors across 23 countries. In June 2025, pan-European asset manager APS (€13B AUM) acquired two tokenized properties in Rome for €3 million — the first institutional purchase of assets that were simultaneously available to retail investors on the same platform. The platform reached operational profitability in its second year.
Lympid — Portugal
Portugal | 2022 | Transaction volume: €15M+
Lympid is a Portuguese fintech platform for fractional blockchain-based investing, founded in 2022 by lawyer André Lages in Braga. It started with tokenized US government bonds, luxury watches, and prize-winning racehorses, then expanded into real estate in 2025. By 2025: €15 million in transactions, 14,200 registered users.
What sets Lympid apart is deliberate asset diversification. It is not just a real estate tokenization platform, but an attempt to build “alternative assets for everyone.” In one portfolio: a champion racehorse worth €1.2 million (ridden by Olympic medalist Simon Delestre), Hermès bags, wine, watches, and real estate. The pitch is straightforward — €500 gets you co-ownership of a property in Comporta next to the Sublime Comporta resort. In 2025, the company moved fully to a MiCA-compliant operating model under Portugal's new law 69/2025.
Lofty AI — USA
USA | 2021 | TVL: ~$37.6M
Lofty AI is a fractional ownership platform for US rental properties, built on Algorand. Over 148 properties across 11 states, $50 minimum, rental income paid daily directly to wallets. Average number of owners per property: ~231 investors. TVL hit a record $37.6 million in September 2024, making Lofty the second-largest dApp on Algorand.
The key differentiator from a classic REIT isn't just fractional access — it's daily payouts. Someone who invested $200 sees income credited every single day. That's a fundamentally different psychological relationship with an asset. The platform operates under Regulation A+ in the US, giving retail investors access without requiring accredited investor status.
HoneyBricks — USA
USA | 2022 | Volume: $180M
HoneyBricks is a tokenized multifamily real estate platform for accredited US investors. In 2025, it closed $180 million in deals for 3,500+ investors. The platform was acquired by EquityMultiple — one of America's leading alternative real estate investment platforms — in late 2023 or 2024.
The acquisition matters as a market signal. A traditional player in alternative investments recognized that blockchain infrastructure for income-producing assets delivers real operational value — lower administration costs for managing ownership stakes, automated distributions, and transparent cap tables. Plans for 2026 include on-chain yield implementation and 20% growth in the tokenized portfolio.
PRYPCO Mint × Dubai Land Department
UAE / Dubai | 2025 | Volume: $5M+
PRYPCO Mint is the official real estate tokenization platform launched jointly with Dubai Land Department (DLD), the UAE Central Bank, and regulator VARA in May 2025. Built on XRP Ledger, minimum investment AED 500 (~$136), projected net yield 8-12% annually.
Phase 1 results exceeded all forecasts. The first property — a two-bedroom apartment in Business Bay priced at AED 2.4 million — was fully funded in one day by 224 investors from 44 countries. The second property sold out in 1 minute 58 seconds, generating a waitlist of 10,700 people. The fourth property attracted 326 investors from 51 countries, with 70% investing in Dubai real estate for the first time. In February 2026, DLD launched Phase 2 — a secondary token market allowing investors to sell their stakes before project completion.
PRYPCO Mint is the only project in the world where tokenization is run by government entities directly. That eliminates the first question any token investor asks: "Who's actually behind this?" — the answer is Dubai Land Department and the state property registry.
What These Five Have in Common
Across geographies — from Portugal to Dubai — the same pattern holds:
Real assets, real income. None of these successful tokenization projects depends solely on token price appreciation. Rental income, dividends, physical commodity backing — there's always a base cash flow or tangible collateral.
Regulatory clarity from day one. Each platform chose a legal structure before the first token was sold.
A defined exit path. Lofty has a secondary token market. PRYPCO has Phase 2. HoneyBricks gained a traditional platform partner through EquityMultiple. None of them left investors asking "how do I get out?"
Retail accessibility as a deliberate strategy. $50 (Lofty), $100 (MetaWealth), $136 (PRYPCO), €500 (Lympid) — the entry barrier was intentionally broken.
Failed Tokenization Projects: What Went Wrong
These are real projects where tokenization as a technical exercise was done correctly — and failed as capital raising. Three different failure points: deal, asset, and platform.
Harbor × Convexity Properties
South Carolina, USA | 2018–2019 | Target: up to $20M | Raised: $0
The Hub at Columbia is the textbook case of technology and legal structure failing to save a deal. The platform was ready, the token was ready, the REIT was structured, KYC was configured. What didn't work was the economics — between the asset owner, the platform, and the potential anchor investors, no one reached agreement.
The lesson for anyone planning an STO today: by the time you press "start" on a tokenization platform, you need to have your anchor investor already committed — on paper, on terms, with a clear plan for what happens if you don't hit your soft cap. Otherwise tokenization just makes it faster and more transparent to discover that the deal doesn't exist.
CurioInvest × MERJ
Switzerland / Seychelles | 2019–2020 | Target: $200M+ / 500 cars | Result: only a handful tokenized
The plan was to tokenize 500 collectible cars totaling $200+ million. What got tokenized in practice: a handful of vehicles. The problem was audience mismatch.
The person who pays $1 million for a Ferrari wants to own it — put it in a garage, drive it to events, and maybe sell it at Sotheby’s later. The person who buys a token in a Ferrari wants to earn money — steadily, predictably, ideally with cash flow. Those are two completely different investors. The marketing targeted the first group's emotional relationship with the asset, but the token was a product for the second group's financial logic. Neither audience got what they actually wanted.
Brickblock
Germany / Gibraltar | 2018 | ICO: ~$5.7M | Real placements: only a few
Brickblock raised ~$5.7 million in an ICO, built the platform, obtained licenses and only then started looking for developers willing to tokenize real properties and investors willing to buy those tokens. It turned out that a developer pipeline doesn't appear on its own just because good software exists somewhere. And investors don't show up to buy tokens simply because a platform is live.
Infrastructure without deal flow is software with no one to sell to. The order of operations was wrong from the start.
What These Three Have in Common
None of these failures were about tokenization as technology. All three were about basic capital raising preparation:
No anchor investor before launch. In projects like these, launch often happens before enough committed capital is secured. A healthier structure would have 30–50% of the target already covered by anchor investors before going live. Without that, a placement doesn't close — in tokenization exactly as in classical private placement.
No distribution channel. Assuming investors will come because "it's blockchain" doesn't work. Distribution has to be built before launch: channels, partners, broker-dealers, family offices, community — not a whitepaper.
No clear token lifecycle. Lock-up terms, redemption mechanics, dividend structure, secondary liquidity, exit — none of it was defined clearly enough for investors to commit. No one pays for theoretical liquidity.
No match between asset and token buyer profile. The token buyer wants to earn, not to own. If the asset's appeal is emotional and the token's pitch is financial, you have a mismatch that marketing can't fix.
Remove these four problems and you won't appear in this list.
Final Take
Reduce all eight cases to a single observation and the conclusion sounds almost too simple: the difference between "worked" and "didn't" isn't the blockchain, the jurisdiction, or the platform. It's preparation.
MetaWealth, Lofty, PRYPCO Mint, HoneyBricks — these aren't stories about brilliant technology. They're stories about teams that had a secured asset, a clear legal structure, a distribution channel, a secondary liquidity plan, and a defined investor audience before the first token was sold.
Harbor, CurioInvest, and Brickblock did almost everything right — except one or two things. That was enough.
There's no silver bullet. There's a set of four questions that need simultaneous answers before you launch: asset economics, anchor capital, distribution, token lifecycle. Tokenization amplifies what's already there. If the deal is solid, the capital is ready, and you understand your investor — the tool gives you faster market access, broader geography, and a lower entry threshold. If any of that is missing, the same tool will just show it faster and more publicly.
So the only honest recommendation for a business owner looking at tokenization in 2026: don't start with the token. Start with the deal, the investor, and the distribution. The token will come at the right moment — as a technical solution, not as a strategy.
If you want to understand whether tokenization fits your project, book a free diagnostic with the Sabai Protocol team. We’ll review your asset, business model, and goals, then help you see which tokenization approach may be practical for your case.
