Last week the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) unveiled the first participants in its Digital Assets Lab, “powered” by the Qatar Central Bank. The QFC avoided using the term sandbox, although the Lab’s aims sound similar, but broader. The goal is to encourage innovation and development in the distributed ledger technology (DLT) space. Plus, it provides regulatory support and is one of the pathways for landing a license to operate in Qatar.
It follows the recent launch of Qatar’s Digital Asset Regulations at the start of the month.
The creation of the Lab involved partnering with Google Cloud, local bank Masraf Al Rayan, The Hashgraph Association (THA) and enterprise blockchan firm R3.
“As the base product for the QFC ecosystem, R3’s Corda will power tokenization projects across Qatar’s financial industry, supporting the issuance, transfer, and redemption of digital assets,” said R3’s CEO David E Rutter.
However, some applications are likely to be deploy on the public Hedera DLT. In May the affiliated Hashgraph Association (THA) announced a $50 million Digital Assets Venture Studio in Qatar which is part of the Lab.
THA is planning to work in five areas:
- Equity Tokenization
- Sukuk (Islamic Bonds) Tokenization
- Real Estate Tokeniszation
- Sustainability/ESG – Carbon Credits
- Consumer engagement and loyalty programs
The Middle East is becoming a hotbed for tokenization, with multiple regulatory enclaves within the UAE alone, never mind Saudi, Qatar and elsewhere. Qatar’s banking sector is already internationally diversified, with around 30% of deposits from foreigners.
The Qatar Central Bank, which is involved in the Digital Assets Lab, completed its central bank digital currency infrastructure in June.
Digital Assets Lab participants
The Digital Assets Lab isn’t purely for new startups. We’ve regularly covered several of the participants, including Partior, Polygon, Settlemint, Taurus and Citi-backed xalts.
The full list of initial participants are: AISCIA, ALT DRX, arca-x, AssetShare, Audtye, Blade Labs, BlockStead, DMZ, evergon, Finrock, Falcon Nest Labs, itoo technologies, mintus, oori, Partior, Polygon, PropTech, ScieNFT, SettleMint, SidraChain, Skargard, Taurus, xalts, and Verity.
