Subunit
Onchaining The $400T Real Estate Industry
Created on 13th May 2025
•
Subunit
Onchaining The $400T Real Estate Industry
The problem Subunit solves
Traditional real estate investing is mired in high entry costs, low liquidity, and complex management processes. A single rental property often requires tens of thousands of dollars in capital and ongoing hands-on oversight, effectively shutting out most everyday investors from real estate’s wealth-building potential . Even those who can participate face illiquidity—properties can’t be sold on short notice—and lack of diversification, since it’s difficult to split ownership of a single asset.
Subunit addresses these challenges by leveraging USDC stablecoins on Base to enable true fractional ownership of real estate. Members stake USDC into the onchain Subvault and receive STS tokens representing their share of the pooled capital. When a property is acquired, the resulting UNIT property tokens are distributed pro rata to STS holders, delivering:
- Lower barrier to entry: Invest with as little or as much USDC as you like.
- 24/7 liquidity: STS (and the underlying USDC) can be withdrawn (subject to chosen lock-up) whenever no deal is in flight .
- Global access & diversification: Anyone with a Web3 wallet can participate, and a single Subvault funds multiple properties, automatically diversifying holdings.
Transparent, automated governance: Acquisitions occur via DAO vote, ensuring fair, community-driven decision-making.
By combining Base’s fast, low-cost USDC rails with Subunit’s staking vault and DAO workflow, we create an accessible, liquid, and fully onchain real estate investment experience that outperforms legacy models.
Challenges I ran into
ecurity & compliance integration. We needed a non-transferable vault token (STS) with pause and reentrancy protections, plus Chainalysis sanctions-list checks. Integrating OpenZeppelin’s Pausable, ReentrancyGuard, and Ownable modules alongside a custom Chainalysis Oracle adapter was complex—but essential to lock down the Subvault against both technical exploits and regulated-entity requirements .
Time-lock logic for multiple staking durations. Supporting 0, 90, and 180-day locks involved tracking an array of StakeRecord structs per user, each with its own lockEndTime. We encountered edge cases around early withdrawals and overlapping stakes, which we resolved by refining our state-machine logic and adding exhaustive tests for every lock/unlock scenario .
Bootstrapping initial Subvault funds. To drive early property acquisitions, we designed a Subpoints rewards program to incentivize longer lock-ups and seeded the vault ourselves, aligning incentives and ensuring the protocol could move quickly on its first deals.
Building & scaling our community. Gaining user trust and network effects early was critical. Through targeted Twitter Spaces, Discord AMAs, and a referral rewards program, we grew to over 3,000 combined community members across our socials—providing both valuable feedback and a ready pool of early stakers.
Tracks Applied (1)
Stablecoins
Technologies used
Cheer Project
Cheering for a project means supporting a project you like with as little as 0.0025 ETH. Right now, you can Cheer using ETH on Arbitrum, Optimism and Base.