Main Points:
- Bergen County will digitize 370 000 property deeds worth approximately $240 billion (¥34.5 trillion) on the Avalanche blockchain under a five-year agreement with Balcony.
- The system will modernize record-keeping for nearly 1 million residents across 70 municipalities, boosting security, transparency, and efficiency.
- The initiative exemplifies the broader real-world asset (RWA) tokenization trend, with the tokenized real estate market projected to reach $4 trillion by 2035.
- Comparable implementations include California’s DMV digitizing 42 million vehicle titles on Avalanche and Dubai’s Land Department launching an XRP-based tokenization platform.
- Avalanche’s high throughput (>4 500 TPS) and sub-second finality make it well suited to handle large-scale asset registries.
- Tokenization can reduce deed processing times by up to 90%, mitigate fraud, and recover lost municipal revenue from outdated records.
Project Overview
In late May 2025, Bergen County, New Jersey, announced a landmark initiative to migrate its entire real estate deed registry—370 000 deeds valued at roughly $240 billion (¥34.5 trillion)—onto the Avalanche blockchain. Under a five-year contract with blockchain software provider Balcony, the county will transition these deeds to an immutable, searchable ledger. The system is designed to serve nearly 1 million residents spanning 70 municipalities across the affluent New York City suburb, simplifying property transfers and strengthening data security.
County Clerk John Hogan emphasized that this effort “is about improving the lives of our residents” by transforming cumbersome, paper-based workflows into streamlined digital procedures. By leveraging Avalanche’s infrastructure, the county aims to make property record searches faster, reduce manual errors, and eliminate the risk of fraudulent deed alterations.
Benefits of Blockchain for Real Estate Records
Blockchain technology offers a suite of advantages over traditional record-keeping methods. First, immutability ensures that once a deed is recorded, it cannot be retroactively altered or erased, significantly reducing the risk of fraudulent transfers. Second, the decentralized ledger model fosters greater transparency: authorized entities can instantly verify the provenance of any deed without relying on a centralized database. Third, searchability and instant access to records will replace lengthy manual searches in county archives. Finally, smart contract capabilities can automate escrow releases, tax lien verifications, and title insurance checks—further reducing operational bottlenecks.
Balcony claims that its blockchain-based platform can cut deed processing times by up to 90 percent while simultaneously addressing fraud and record discrepancy risks. In Orange, New Jersey, similar deployments uncovered nearly $1 million of previously overlooked municipal revenue due to outdated or inaccurate property data.
By shifting to a permissioned Avalanche subnet, Bergen County will benefit from high throughput (> 4 500 transactions per second) and sub-second finality, ensuring that each deed update is verified and committed in less than two seconds. This performance (Avalanche processes over 4 500 TPS with < 2 s finality) positions the network as a compelling choice for high-volume, data-intensive applications such as statewide registries.
Tokenization Trend and Market Outlook
The Bergen County project aligns with a larger global wave of “real-world asset (RWA) tokenization,” wherein traditional assets—ranging from bonds and securitized loans to real estate—are represented by on-chain tokens. A Deloitte Center for Financial Services report forecasts that the tokenized real estate market alone could swell to $4 trillion by 2035, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent from its sub-$300 billion size in 2025.
Similarly, a joint study by the Boston Consulting Group and Ripple projects that the broader tokenization market (including real estate, funds, and bonds) could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033, with real estate constituting a substantial share.
Tokenization’s appeal stems from its ability to fractionalize illiquid or high-value assets, democratize investment access, and automate compliance. By coding ownership rules and transfer conditions into smart contracts, tokenized real estate enables 24/7 trading, faster settlement, and streamlined cross-border transactions. These advantages present fertile ground for new crypto-native investment vehicles—such as tokenized REITs and fractionalized property shares—that cater to retail investors seeking diversification beyond traditional equity markets.
Comparable Implementations and Recent Developments
California DMV: Digitizing 42 Million Car Titles
In 2024, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) partnered with Oxhead Alpha to digitize 42 million vehicle titles on Avalanche, modernizing the state’s title transfer process. By replicating each title as a blockchain record, the DMV reduced manual verification steps and enabled near-instantaneous ownership transfers. This deployment demonstrated Avalanche’s capacity to handle large-scale registries, processing millions of transactions in a short timeframe without performance degradation.
As of May 2025, the DMV’s Avalanche subnet recorded daily peaks of over 500 000 transactions, showcasing the network’s reliability under heavy load. High adoption by dealerships and title agents has resulted in a 75 percent reduction in paperwork, faster lien releases, and a more transparent audit trail for law enforcement agencies.
Dubai Land Department: XRP-Based Real Estate Platform
In March 2025, the Dubai Land Department unveiled a real estate tokenization platform built on the XRP Ledger, aiming to process 7 percent of all property transactions (approximately $16 billion) on-chain. This strategic move signals the Middle East’s keen interest in RWA tokenization as part of the Dubai Economic Agenda 2030. By creating “Emirates Tokens” for residential and commercial properties, Dubai’s initiative seeks to attract international investors, reduce transaction costs, and bolster regulatory compliance.
Dubai’s platform employs a permissioned model with on-chain KYC/AML checks, allowing only authorized participants (e.g., licensed brokers, banks, and government registrars) to mint, transfer, or redeem tokens. Early pilots indicate a 50 percent decrease in processing time for escrow and title verification compared to legacy systems.
Technical Infrastructure: Why Avalanche?
Consensus Mechanism and Network Architecture
Avalanche’s unique consensus protocol—sometimes referred to as the “Snowman” protocol—combines aspects of classical Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) with Nakamoto-style probabilistic voting. Validators repeatedly sample random subsets of peers to confirm transaction validity, achieving consensus faster and with lower energy consumption than proof-of-work chains.
The platform comprises three interoperable blockchains:
- X-Chain (Exchange Chain): Manages the creation and transfer of assets.
- C-Chain (Contract Chain): Hosts Ethereum-compatible smart contracts (EVM), enabling DeFi and decentralized applications.
- P-Chain (Platform Chain): Coordinates validator staking, subnet creation, and protocol upgrades.
Bergen County’s tokenization solution leverages a dedicated Avalanche subnet—an independent, customizable instance of the network—for enhanced privacy and tailored governance. Subnets allow counties to enforce specific validator sets (e.g., county servers and state auditors) and set custom transaction fees, ensuring that only authorized nodes can write to the ledger.
Performance Metrics
As of mid-2025, Avalanche supports over 4 500 transactions per second (TPS) with transaction finality under two seconds—orders of magnitude faster than Ethereum’s 15–30 TPS average. The Avalanche 9000 upgrade, rolled out in early 2025, further optimized throughput, driving network activity to record highs: over 12 million transactions executed on a single day in May 2025, with a sustained average daily volume of 350 000–400 000 transactions.
These performance benchmarks make Avalanche particularly well suited for large databases of small, frequent updates—such as residential or commercial deed registrations, where each property record update constitutes a separate transaction. The sub-second finality ensures that once a deed transfer is submitted, both the new owner and relevant government offices see the update in real time.
Operational Workflow and User Experience
Registration and Verification
Under the new system, all existing paper deeds will be digitized and hashed on the perimeter of the Avalanche network. County record clerks will scan deed documents, verify metadata (such as legal descriptions and tax identifiers), and create a corresponding on-chain token representing each property. Each token’s metadata links back to an off-chain storage system (a secure IPFS or similar), preserving the full document image.
Prospective buyers and title companies can query the Avalanche ledger to confirm current ownership, liens, or encumbrances. Smart contracts auto-verify that tax payments are current and that no outstanding judgments exist. Once verified, the deed transfer can be approved with a single click, and the smart contract automatically redistributes escrowed funds according to predefined conditions (e.g., mortgage payoff, seller net proceeds).
Security and Compliance
Permissioned subnets restrict ledger writes to approved validators—county record offices, state auditors, and Balcony’s node operators—preventing unauthorized actors from spoofing records. End-to-end encryption, secure key management, and multi-party approval workflows ensure that only legitimate transactions enter the ledger.
In addition to immutability, Avalanche’s decentralized architecture protects against single points of failure. Even if one validator goes offline—due to cyberattacks, hardware issues, or natural disasters—the remaining validators sustain network operations, ensuring uninterrupted access to property records.
Implications for Investors and Market Participants
New Crypto-Native Investment Vehicles
Tokenized real estate opens the door to fractional ownership, enabling retail investors to purchase “shares” of high-value properties. In practice, a $10 million commercial building could be represented by 10 million tokens priced at $1 each, with each token conferring ownership rights, rental income entitlement, and voting privileges over property management decisions.
Fractional tokens can trade 24/7 on secondary markets, allowing investors to quickly enter or exit positions without waiting for traditional closing processes. Some platforms are already offering yield-bearing tokenized REITs, where investors earn rental income payments directly to their crypto wallets.
Revenue Streams for Municipalities
Beyond processing efficiencies, tokenization can uncover hidden revenue. In Orange, NJ, Balcony’s platform identified $1 million in unpaid property taxes or incorrectly recorded liens, representing funds that would have been lost under the paper-based system. Bergen County officials anticipate similar audits upon migrating to the blockchain ledger. By ensuring every deed is accurately recorded, municipalities can bolster their tax rolls and improve budget forecasting.
Additionally, transaction fees from record updates—modest AVAX gas fees set by county policy—can generate recurring revenue to offset network maintenance costs. Smart contracts can automatically allocate a small percentage of each deed transaction to a county-reserved wallet, funding future infrastructure upgrades without raising local taxes.
Challenges and Considerations
Regulatory and Legal Framework
While tokenization offers clear operational benefits, navigating the legal status of on-chain deeds poses challenges. U.S. property law varies by state; in New Jersey, state statutes currently define deeds as paper instruments filed with county clerks. For blockchain-recorded titles to hold legal weight, the New Jersey Legislature must pass enabling statutes or issue regulatory guidance recognizing tokenized deeds as legally equivalent to paper filings. Bergen County is working closely with the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and state legislators to draft appropriate legal frameworks.
Similar precedents exist: Vermont and Colorado have enacted laws recognizing electronic land records, but few have extended recognition to distributed ledgers. As legal frameworks evolve, Bergen County’s pilot could serve as a model for nationwide adoption.
Data Privacy and Off-Chain Dependencies
Although the Avalanche ledger records cryptographic hashes of deed documents (ensuring immutability), the full deed images remain stored off-chain in decentralized file storage (e.g., IPFS). Ensuring data privacy and security of these off-chain repositories is critical: unauthorized access to raw deed files could expose sensitive homeowner information, such as social security numbers or mortgage details.
Balcony and county IT teams are implementing end-to-end encryption, access controls, and zero-knowledge proofs to enable selective disclosure—allowing authorized parties (e.g., title insurers, law enforcement) to verify deed contents without revealing extraneous personal data.
User Adoption and Training
Transitioning stakeholders—from county clerks and title companies to realtors and attorneys—to a blockchain-based workflow requires extensive training. User interfaces must abstract away cryptographic complexities, offering simple, web-based dashboards for deed searches, approvals, and transfers. To that end, Balcony is conducting workshops and providing documentation to ensure a smooth onboarding process.
Early adopters—large title insurers and mortgage lenders—are piloting the system to test integration with existing loan origination platforms. Feedback from these pilots will inform iterative improvements to smart contract logic, role-based access controls, and user experience design.
Conclusion
Bergen County’s decision to tokenize $240 billion of real estate deeds on the Avalanche blockchain represents a watershed moment for RWA tokenization in the United States. By digitizing 370 000 property records spanning 70 municipalities and nearly 1 million residents, the county will benefit from enhanced data security, operational efficiencies, and potential revenue recovery from previously untracked property taxes. Avalanche’s high throughput, sub-second finality, and robust subnet architecture make it an ideal platform for large-scale, permissioned registries.
This project fits within a broader global trend: Deloitte forecasts a $4 trillion tokenized real estate market by 2035, and BCG/Ripple project an $18.9 trillion RWA market by 2033. Comparable deployments—such as California’s DMV digitization of 42 million car titles and Dubai’s XRP-based property platform—underscore the accelerating pace of blockchain adoption in public sector record-keeping. As legal frameworks evolve to recognize on-chain deeds, tokenization will unlock new investment vehicles, streamline property transfers, and bolster municipal finances.
In essence, Bergen County’s pilot could set a template for other counties and states, demonstrating how blockchain can solve complex challenges in property record management. As more governments embrace tokenization, the promise of frictionless, transparent, and secure asset registries moves closer to reality—ushering in a new era where critical public records live on-chain, accessible at the click of a button.
