21/11/19

UAE: Dubai Launches new Blockchain Policy.

As published on smartcitiesworld.net, Thursday November 21, 2019.

The Dubai Future Council for Blockchain Dubai has launched its Dubai Blockchain Policy at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.

The policy is one of three initiatives from the Council for 2019 and 2020 and aims to establish Dubai as a global blockchain capital and provide a platform for exploring blockchain-based solutions. It also plans to issue reports on Dubai’s cryptocurrency positioning and its future blockchain landscape.

Blockchain transactions

The launch of the Dubai Blockchain Policy complements Smart Dubai’s efforts to implement the Dubai Blockchain Strategy. Launched in 2016, the strategy seeks to make the Dubai Government the first in the world to conduct 100 per cent of applicable transactions via blockchain by 2020.

The policy comprises three core areas:

• Foundational capabilities, which cover technology platform and services, architecture and standards, shared network services, and legal support.
• Network governance, which includes network ownership and membership, intellectual property, funding and monetisation, and network expansion.
• Network operations, which covers data formats and interoperability, data privacy and confidentiality, node and network security, audit and compliance, and communication and adoption.

Director general of Smart Dubai, Dr Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, said the emirate has been embracing advanced and emerging technologies and described blockchain as one of the most “prominent and promising of these breakthrough technologies”.

She added: “With that in mind, the Dubai Future Council for Blockchain sought to develop a policy to support government entities and private companies to implement the technology and form value-creating blockchain networks.”

The Dubai Blockchain Policy was drafted and launched following a four-stage process. Initially, challenges were identified from multiple sources, including government entities and private companies, and a global benchmarking exercise on blockchain policy development and implementation was conducted.

The second stage was about identifying a set of focus areas to guide the development of the blockchain policy, based on findings from stage one. The third stage consisted of a number of workshops that brought together 68 attendees, representing 20 government and semi-government entities, 12 banks and 14 start-ups, to discuss requirements and options for blockchain policies.

The fourth and final stage evaluated the policy options against a set of guiding principles, including their ability to foster innovation, enable efficiency and drive adoption of blockchain. Stage four also examined potential policies’ compliance with regulations, their security and privacy features, and the extent to which they can be technology-agnostic and future-proof.