IT & Telecommunications

Saudi Arabia completes world's first tokenised property deed transaction

RIYADH
Saudi Arabia completes world's first tokenised property deed transaction

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has achieved a global milestone in the digitisation of capital markets with the successful execution of the world’s first sovereign-native tokenised property title deed transfer.

The transaction marks the first time a G20 economy has executed a property deed transaction where national property law and registry rules are enforced directly within the digital settlement infrastructure.

The transfer, conducted under the patronage of Majed Al Hogail, Minister of Municipalities and Housing, marks the direct integration of the Kingdom’s Real Estate Registry (RER) with droppRWA’s blockchain transaction layer.

This infrastructure reduces property settlement times from days to mere seconds, transforming once illiquid physical territory into highly liquid, programmable assets. This enhances the attractiveness of the Saudi real estate market for foreign direct investment and is in line with the digital frameworks of Saudi Vision 2030. 

The transaction was executed between the National Housing Company (NHC), the government developer of affordable housing solutions and the Real Estate Development Fund (REDF). 

Built on droppRWA sovereign-grade market infrastructure, a digital token (tokenized deed) representing the property title deed was linked to the RER's official registry, alongside the issuance of a separate token representing a transferable ownership interest. 

Compliance rules were encoded into the ownership transfer logic and settlement was executed securely and simultaneously through stable delivery-versus-payment mechanisms.

Lauding the achievement, Al Hogail said: "Saudi Arabia is building a real estate sector that is digital by design, integrating PropTech and AI across planning and delivery in line with Vision 2030. We have successfully executed the Kingdom’s first end-to-end blockchain verified real estate transaction, using the first government authored standards for tokenizing real estate ownership."

"By linking transactions directly to official records from the outset, this will expand participation, strengthen FDI confidence, improve liquidity, accelerate development financing and enable new PropTech innovation," he added. 

Faisal Al Monai, CEO of droppRWA, said: "The end-to-end infrastructure used to execute this historic transaction, including the token standard, settlement rails, compliance logic, issuance framework and the stable delivery-versus-payment mechanism, was provided exclusively through droppRWA's sovereign-grade infrastructure, our goal is to help Saudi skip the “digital wrapper” era other markets are currently stuck in by entirely by embedding enforceability into the asset at the source, creating a new category of sovereign-grade assets and the industrial engine that will allow the Kingdom’s multi-trillion-dollar real estate pipeline to be accessed by global institutional capital with absolute legal certainty."

While jurisdictions such as Singapore, the UK and the EU have introduced digital asset frameworks, Saudi Arabia is the first in the world to implement the technical code for its own property market, stated Al Hogail. 

Following this successful execution, the infrastructure is slated for a wider rollout across the Kingdom’s multi-trillion dollar real estate pipeline, including designated investment zones, he added.-TradeArabia News Service

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