Blockchain poised to shape UAE's digital future

Dubai - The technology is currently playing a pivotal role in supply chain, fintech, edutech and heathcare.

Blockchain technology is poised to shape the UAE's future as the nation adopts its digital economy agenda. Businesses have realised that the only option to remain competitive is to embrace digital route.
"The post covid-19 work is increasingly focused on digitisation of services and therefore needs better trust models to cater for this new medium of trade and interaction. Blockchain technology will play a central role in providing online trust, assurance and auditability of transactions," said Dr. Marwan Alzarouni, CEO, Dubai Blockchain Center. "Blockchain is currently playing a pivotal role in the sectors of supply chain, financial technology, educational technology and heath care."
In supply chain, it provides the whole chain with a single source of truth that can be used to track items from origin to destination in a reliable and trusted electronic documentation based manner. In fintech, it is used for instant settlements and auditing of transactions. In the educational sector in the UAE, it is used for record keeping and digital authorisation of documents and fraud or counterfeit protection. In health care, it is used to provide a layer of privacy to electronic patient records.

Walid Daniel Dib, co-founder of Addenda, said: "Decentralisation and replacing legacy bureaucratic processes is now no longer a luxury, and the UAE is at the forefront of this process by being one of the earliest nations to pilot several blockchain use cases. Around 9 insurers in the UAE have adopted the Addenda blockchain and have cut up to Dh40 per claim by digitising their motor claims reconciliation. In other industries, we're seeing banking consortiums form in DIFC, as well as partnerships between airlines and blockchain-bases loyalty reward programmes. 
Jibrel Network expanded from Switzerland to the UAE through the DIFC Fintech Accelerator, and has set-up an entity in ADGM that is currently part of the RegLab.
"Our work in the UAE is focused on linking startups with investors using our financing platform. Going forward, Jibrel's focus is decentralised finance, as it has huge potential to expand financial services to users that are currently under-banked," said Talal Tabbaa, coo and co-founder, Jibrel Network.
"Blockchain has the potential to improve many processes that depend on intermediaries across many industries. Having said that, the financial sector is the one that will be disrupted the most, as it currently heavily relies on intermediaries of all sorts. I see great potential for the use of blockchain in democratising access to investments across different asset classes, especially ones that are hard to invest with smaller investment tickets like real-estate, venture or private equity."
Meanwhile, Maksab a deal making digital platform, was launched on Monday. Maksab is an easy-to-use platform that makes it possible for corporate advisors and consultants to serve and assist SMEs with streamlined deal-making through exclusive emerging transactions and efficient management features.
Maksab connects advisors and private professional investors with SMEs that are seeking growth capital in a virtual environment. The platform is developed for corporate finance consultants and transaction agents known as (advisors), SME business owners (sell-side) and private investors (buy-side).
The Maksab Platform leverages the Ethereum blockchain to allow confidential, secure, streamlined, efficient and reliable transactions between platform users by deploying Ethereum-based ERC-20 smart contract. The smart contract allows for Maksab tokens (MXAB) to be utilised on the network as a bridge currency and anti-spam mechanism to manage and close deals in a B2B environment.
"By adopting blockchain as an underlying transaction protocol and using the internet's existing communication protocols, we allow deal-makers to facilitate B2B transactions in a streamlined and more efficient way. The deals that would usually take 8 to 12 months to close, can now take weeks or even days", said Mohamed El Masri, founder, Maksab. - sandhya@khaleejtimes.com