The United Arab Emirates (UAE) could save around $3billion billion in administrative costs by adopting blockchain technology. This information was released by a report published by the World Economic Forum. The aim of the study was to analyze factual examples of applications of blockchain technology and to concretize them. Mirek Dusek, who is a member of the WWF Executive Committee, emphasized the importance and the use of such technology, while referring to the fourth industrial revolution:

The principles developed in the report have not only strengthened the companies and government initiatives that are located within the UAE and the surrounding region; but will also stimulate meaningful cooperation with other countries that are part of the network for the fourth industrial revolution of the World Economic Forum. The aim of this forum is to achieve greater economic and social impact.

However, the white paper, which is entitled “Inclusive Deployment of Blockchain: Case Studies and Learnings from the United Emirates”, lists obstacles that are not technical in nature and that may cause the ambitious project to fail. Regulatory hurdles also problematic in this case A WWF survey showed that it is difficult to bring different stakeholders together. Both companies and blockchain service providers have also pointed out regulatory hurdles. Despite these identified regulatory difficulties, the Forum has acknowledged the great potential of blockchain technology throughout an abundance of processes that have not been digitized or digitalized. Such processes mainly concern ones that have and are still being carried out by notions on paper and therefore are prone to forgery, theft and decomposition. * Originally published in German at CVJ.ch