Lower entry barriers and attract cross‑border capital, with early activity in fractionalised real estate now joined by digitally native bonds and fund shares issued within supervised infrastructure.

The UAE is accelerating the tokenisation of real‑world assets across property and capital markets, moving from pilot projects to infrastructure‑grade deployments backed by regulators, banks and developers and supported by aligned federal and free‑zone rulebooks, a new report showed. 

According to ‘The UAE Blockchain Ecosystem’, jointly prepared by the Abu Dhabi Blockchain Center and Binance, policymakers frame tokenisation as a way to deepen markets, lower entry barriers and attract cross‑border capital, with early activity in fractionalised real estate now joined by digitally native bonds and fund shares issued within supervised market infrastructure.

In May 2025, Prypco, working with Ctrl Alt Solutions, Zand Digital Bank and the Dubai Land Department, launched a government‑supported pilot that tokenises property title deeds on the XRP Ledger. The model allows fractional ownership from Dh2,000 per share, bringing retail investors into assets traditionally reserved for larger tickets and settling transactions instantly on a public blockchain under local oversight.  Major developers have committed multi‑billion‑dollar pipelines. DAMAC announced plans to tokenise more than $1 billion of luxury property for exclusive on‑chain trading, while MAG Group set out a $3 billion programme to tokenise apartments and offices on the Mavryk network, indicating that tokenisation is migrating into premium portfolios rather than remaining confined to smaller units.  Zand Bank’s Tokinvest platform, licensed by Dubai’s virtual‑asset regulator in December 2024, targets retail and institutional investors with regulated fractional property exposure, embedding issuance inside the country’s supervisory perimeter.

Institutional capital‑markets adoption is advancing in tandem. In 2025, First Abu Dhabi Bank issued the region’s first digitally native bond using distributed ledger technology, listed it on ADX and made it tradable on HSBC’s Orion platform, creating a blueprint for lifecycle‑managed digital debt inside mainstream market venues.  A multi‑chain platform, Kaio, backed by Mubadala Capital, Brevan Howard, Laser Digital, Hamilton Lane and BlackRock, began offering tokenised shares of institutional funds, pushing tokenisation into alternatives alongside property and fixed income.  Abu Dhabi reinforced the real‑estate transition through a memorandum among the Technology Innovation Institute, VentureOne, Finstreet, the ADI Foundation and the Abu Dhabi Real Estate Centre to automate ownership transfers, tokenise assets and support fractional ownership within the emirate’s registries.

A converging regulatory architecture has enabled this shift. The federal Capital Market Authority introduced a security‑ and commodity‑token regime in June 2025, confirming that tokenised equities, bonds, funds and commodity‑linked instruments fall under securities supervision outside the financial free zones, while ADGM’s FSRA and DIFC’s DFSA apply parallel frameworks within their jurisdictions. Dubai’s VARA licenses retail‑facing virtual‑asset activity but defers tokenised securities oversight to the federal perimeter, producing a layered but coordinated map that aligns issuance, custody and trading under prudential and conduct rules while remaining technology‑agnostic about the blockchains used.

The numbers illustrate early breadth. Announced developer programmes exceed $4 billion across DAMAC and MAG, the Prypco pilot lowers entry thresholds to Dh2,000, and the FAB digital bond demonstrates that DLT issuance can live inside ADX listings and an international platform like HSBC Orion.

The next phase will test interoperability between land registries, tokenisation platforms and exchanges, and prioritise passporting that lets assets, investors and service providers operate across federal and free‑zone boundaries without duplicative friction, the report notes. With sovereign‑linked institutions active in fund backings and banks running live digital debt, the UAE’s tokenised market looks poised to move from proofs of concept toward routine primary issuance and secondary trading across real estate, funds and bonds, building liquidity while anchoring investor protection in maturing rulebooks.