How Dubai is Becoming the World Economy’s Blockchain Capital?
Back in 2016, the Dubai government shared an aspiring plan to use blockchain for all government documents. The intention behind the program was to build the world’s first entirely digitized government by 2021. The Global Blockchain Council was created the same year by authorities. It is a group made up of technological companies, government organizations, and banks. The long-term objective is to scale and apply embryonic innovations.
Since then, the city has piloted a range of ground-breaking blockchain projects. These projects investigated one-of-a-kind use cases from a variety of industries. These sectors include education, municipal services, health, transportation, etc. And continuing with their progress, Dubai announces a joint initiative with Smart Dubai and IBM. This new approach makes them the first government-endorsed blockchain in the entire Middle East.
What is the Dubai Blockchain Strategy?
Blockchain technology is a powerful tool to shape the future of the Internet with secure and simple digital payments. The Dubai Blockchain Strategy, initiated by His Highness Sheikh Hamdan, results from collaboration amidst the Dubai Future Foundation and the Digital Dubai Office. This association continually evaluates and explores the latest technology innovations. It further helps to demonstrate an opportunity to render impactful, seamless, efficient, and safe city experiences.
The Blockchain Strategy aims to usher in economic opportunity for all the sectors in the city. Dubai possesses a long tradition of practical digital ideas for its region. This is the first time it pioneers the application of new technology and shares it with the world. After its complete success, this first-ever blockchain-powered government will drive the future economy. To sum up, this strategy focuses on the following three pillars:
- Utilizing blockchain to improvise government efficiency
- Positioning Dubai as an international leader in this sector
- Supporting the development of new industries surrounding the blockchain
How will the Blockchain Strategy affect the way Dubai runs?
This once cumbersome process has now successfully built multiple frictionless and efficient government agencies. As an example, one of the use cases explored around controlling the lifecycle of a vehicle. It covers everything from the entry date of the vehicle to its ultimate export. Several steps include registering the car or renewing the registration, which gets digitized through blockchain. The digitization procedure increases the efficiency of the work. It even helps to increase its visibility in the second-hand car market. This allows buyers to view all the facts and history of the car. Similarly, registering a trade license or business also involves several documentation and regulators. Hence, it is another area where blockchain eases the process for the citizens.
Role of Tech Giants and Startups
Undoubtedly this initiative envisions the betterment of the region. But even after that, Dubai’s blockchain strategy showcases challenges due to a lack of infrastructure and technical skills. This lack of resources acts as a broken reed for all the technology functions. To meet these challenges, the city planned to introduce a shared platform. This platform, known as blockchain as a Service, helped the Dubai government agencies use it in several projects.
The local startup ArabianChain also helped to promote inter-governmental paperwork onto the blockchain. Along with that, a program called Dubai Future Accelerators paired top businesses and technologies to develop breakthrough solutions. Back in 2017, they produced some blockchain startups like RSK Labs, CrossVerify, Otonomos, Loyyal, and Luther Systems for the rapid growth of the strategy across Dubai.
Tech giants like Cisco, SAP, and Microsoft also became a part of the Global Blockchain Council. A group of 32 worldwide commercial businesses and government institutions were formed to work on this application in Dubai. The UAE’S central bank also shared the joint project with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority to use blockchain. The purpose behind that was to issue a digital currency received in cross-border transactions amidst the two nations.
A few years back, the government of Dubai collaborated with U.K. startup ObjectTech to introduce blockchain-based security at Dubai International airport. It then also developed digital passports for eliminating manual checks. Dubai Trade and Dubai Customs then tested blockchain for trade finance with IBM. With the efforts of startups, global tech giants, and the government to establish blockchain plans, it’s making its way into the market faster than expected.
How IBM Blockchain Platform becomes an Ideal Environment?
The IBM Blockchain Platform is the ideal technology to handle the workload of the plans. Their characteristics ground up with resiliency and security in mind to support the requirements of the Dubai government.
At the hardware level, IBM offers a high level of security with independent and tamper-resistant components. It runs blockchain components in safer service containers that are inaccessible even to IBM. Apart from that, this is also a localized platform in Dubai. Hence, it complies well with data residency rules.
The platform is established on open standards with the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric blockchain protocol. They possess governing tools that take care of who can join and leave the network.
The usefulness of blockchain for the Entities
Blockchain creates a distributed and shared ledger with the added benefits of provenance, immutability, finality, and consensus. This demonstrates the genuineness of the plans and encourages people to trust this point of view. Participants can examine all the network’s state records rather than just their own. Because of blockchain, they can even update a single ledger. This implies less time spent reconciling opposing viewpoints, less paperwork, less third-party involvement requirements, and less time spent resolving conflicts.
