One of my predictions for this year was that we would see the mainstream adoption of tokenized real-world assets. More specifically, I said that we'd see some noteworthy office building or apartment building get tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain.

Maybe. I'm not sure that we'll see a singular event this year or that we'll be able to call it "mainstream" just yet. According to this recent article by Chris Lehman, co-founder of a tokenized REIT called Groma, it's still early days.

Real estate is the world's largest asset class, with an estimated global value of around $400 trillion. But only about $500 million of it has been tokenized, which is a relatively small amount, though it's not nothing. So, what is it going to take for us to say it's "mainstream"?

Some of the obvious benefits of tokenization are that it makes transactions cheap and efficient, and it allows for composability, meaning the various smart contracts on a blockchain can then be combined and interconnected with other protocols and applications to unlock additional use cases.

Lehman gives the specific example of being able to split yield and appreciation for tokenized real estate. My mind always goes to codifying the financial terms of something like a Limited Partnership Agreement such that all of the cash flows get automatically distributed as per the agreed-upon deal.

Importantly, though, and this is mentioned in the article, the fractionalization of real assets is unlikely to be the killer feature of tokenization. Notwithstanding that it does bring some additional benefits, we've already figured out how to "democratize" the ownership of large and expensive real estate assets through REITs and other vehicles.

Instead, Lehman argues that "improving real estate's utility as collateral is likely to be the most significant improvement tokenization can offer."

One of my predictions for this year was that we would see the mainstream adoption of tokenized real-world assets. More specifically, I said that we'd see some noteworthy office building or apartment building get tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain.

Maybe. I'm not sure that we'll see a singular event this year or that we'll be able to call it "mainstream" just yet. According to this recent article by Chris Lehman, co-founder of a tokenized REIT called Groma, it's still early days.

Real estate is the world's largest asset class, with an estimated global value of around $400 trillion. But only about $500 million of it has been tokenized, which is a relatively small amount, though it's not nothing. So, what is it going to take for us to say it's "mainstream"?

Some of the obvious benefits of tokenization are that it makes transactions cheap and efficient, and it allows for composability, meaning the various smart contracts on a blockchain can then be combined and interconnected with other protocols and applications to unlock additional use cases.

Lehman gives the specific example of being able to split yield and appreciation for tokenized real estate. My mind always goes to codifying the financial terms of something like a Limited Partnership Agreement such that all of the cash flows get automatically distributed as per the agreed-upon deal.

Importantly, though, and this is mentioned in the article, the fractionalization of real assets is unlikely to be the killer feature of tokenization. Notwithstanding that it does bring some additional benefits, we've already figured out how to "democratize" the ownership of large and expensive real estate assets through REITs and other vehicles.

Instead, Lehman argues that "improving real estate's utility as collateral is likely to be the most significant improvement tokenization can offer."