UAE's Ministry of Economy Set to Make Metaverse Debut, Adopt Web3 Technology at Wider Level

Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, UAE’s economy minister made the announcement earlier this week in while addressing the Dubai Metaverse Assembly.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 29 September 2022 14:43 IST

UAE's Ministry of Economy Set to Make Metaverse Debut, Adopt Web3 Technology at Wider Level

Photo Credit: Pixabay/ Danor Aharon

The market opportunity for the metaverse projected to reach $800 billion (roughly Rs. 59,58,719 crore)

Highlights

The UAE's Ministry of Economy has physical offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi
The UAE government is looking to expand use cases of Web3 technology
Other projects have been lined up for the metaverse by the UAE

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has significantly increased its pace in adopting blockchain and Web3 technologies. In a fresh development, the UAE Ministry of Economy has announced plans of inaugurating a headquarters in the metaverse. UAE Economy Minister Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri made the announcement earlier this week, while addressing the Dubai Metaverse Assembly. Alongside Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the ministry has called its metaverse the country's "third address". With this launch, the ministry is exploring avenues to expand the use cases of Web3 technologies.

In a live tour of the virtual office, Marri showed that great while lobbies with lavish interiors have been created for the Ministry of Economy's office in the metaverse. A decked-up virtual auditorium looked ready to host events and conferences. People will be able to visit the metaverse office as avatars and will also be able to sign legally binding documents, eliminating the need for signatories to visit one of their physical locations just for signatures.

“Our digital address represents the full building of the ministry. Each floor can serve different purposes. A visitor will get a virtual ticket/ token and a notification will be sent to our customer happiness centre to let the visitor enter our office in metaverse,” said Khalifa Al Jaziri, who is the avatar representing the ministry in metaverse.

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A Nasdaq report expects the market opportunity for the metaverse to reach $800 billion (roughly Rs. 59,58,719 crore) by 2024.

UAE has lined-up a bunch of promising projects ready to feature in the metaverse.

In April, UAE's Emirates airlines announced its entry into the metaverse and non-fungible token (NFT) sectors.

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In May, Dubai's recently formed Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) officially began work on its metaverse presence. Having partnered with metaverse player The Sandbox, VARA has disclosed plans of creating a virtual headquarter in the digital world. This VARA office in The Sandbox is called ‘MetaHQ'.

Back in July, the UAE had announced plans to launch the world's first hospital in the metaverse, where patients will be able to visit for virtual consultations in the form of avatars.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Metaverse, UAE, Web3

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More