Russia is witnessing the emergence of the first digital financial assets secured by residential real estate. A major business publication notes this shift, highlighting a new type of asset linked to property ownership.
The initial pilot of these digital financial assets occurred on the Atomize platform, with Samolet Plus CFA LLC, a unit of the Samolet development group, serving as the issuer. This marks a milestone in the way real estate can be financed and traded within a digital framework.
Each CFA token represents one square meter of housing in the Zapadny Quarter residential complex, with an estimated value of 233 thousand rubles per square meter. The issue volume is 10.4 CFA, and the offering is limited to a select group of qualified investors as determined by the issuer. The plan is to repay the issuance using proceeds from the sale of a monitored apartment set aside as a guarantee, with repayment targeted for December 31, 2025.
Industry observers interviewed by the publication say that DFAs create new avenues for real estate investment and can lower the barrier to entry for potential buyers. In this model, ownership is recorded on a digital ledger, and there is no requirement to register the real estate title in the traditional sense, mirroring some aspects of mortgage participation in investment properties. Yet experts caution that investment diversification may be constrained and price dispersion could be wide. They argue that regulatory and legal safeguards will be necessary to protect investors and provide clear dispute resolution channels.
In this context, DFA are digital records, or tokens, recognized under Russian law within blockchain systems. They confer digital rights to their holders and enable a range of civil transactions specified by the Civil Code. This includes actions such as purchase, sale, exchange, gift, and inheritance, all conducted through the digital rights framework established for these assets. The evolving framework reflects a broader trend toward tokenized ownership and the digitization of real estate markets, with ongoing discussion about how these instruments will integrate into traditional financial and property-law structures.