tZERO declared today that it has entered into a collaboration with Aspen Digital Inc. to allow its digital security (ASPEN) to trade on the tZERO ATS platform. The ASPEN shares design $18 million of indirect ownership in the St. Regis Aspen Resort, Colorado. Saum Noursalehi, the tZERO’s CEO, stated he anticipated to start public trading of ASPEN this quarter.

Real estate tokens have been a blockchain fan-favorite use-case for a while, but few to none have made it more than a business prototype. This declaration by tZERO appears like a prominent step to large scale retail trading of blockchain-based real estate. Noursalehi maintained, “I am excited to announce that we are partnering with Aspen Digital to trade the St. Regis Aspen token. This is a major milestone towards democratizing access to commercial real estate.”

tZERO said in the declaration that ASPEN is the first digital security within Elevated Returns’ portfolio. Elevated Returns is a New York-based real estate asset management and advisory firm aiming to tokenize roughly $1 billion of real estate projects in the future. Elevated Returns President Stephane De Baets stated in a statement, “Investing in commercial real estate projects is often prohibitive for most investors, particularly for high-profile properties. We believe investors will benefit from the transparency, accessibility, and liquidity of the ASPEN digital security through our partnership with tZERO, who we view as the leader in capital markets innovation and secondary liquidity for private assets.”

Interestingly this new security is not connected with the Overstock brand, which owns tZERO as a subsidiary for Medici Ventures. Adding ASPEN as new blood to its blockchain brokerage could assist the start-up in attracting additional companies attempting to access public investment away from traditional IPO markets.