What Is Dubai’s Metaverse Strategy And How It Will Boost Its Digital Economy?

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai’s Higher Committee of Future Technology Development and Digital Economy recently approved the new phase of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy to boost the digital economy and take steps to make it easier to use the metaverse and new technologies in the future. The Dubai Metaverse Strategy was launched in July 2022.

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“Through this Committee, we seek to develop a new model for the development of technology and futuristic sciences with a special focus on digital technologies and the metaverse as part of our broader strategy to promote digital growth and innovation and achieve the goals of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy,” said Sheikh Hamdan.

 The term “metaverse” was first used by science fiction author Neal Stephenson in 1992, and video game companies commonly used the concept. It is the next version of the Internet focused on social connection. The Metaverse is a futuristic digital world where people can use their digital avatars to immerse themselves in virtual and augmented versions of reality.

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Metaverse is a digital simulation of the real world that creates spaces for rich user interaction by incorporating social media concepts, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and blockchain.

It is possible to imagine it as a 3D virtual world with constantly changing aspects that its inhabitants all share, a virtual world with real-time events and an online infrastructure. Understanding it theoretically, it encapsulates everything happening in the real world and will provide future updates and events in real-time. The user exists in a virtual world without borders.

The Dubai Metaverse Strategy aims to establish the Emirate as a global hub for the metaverse community and one of the top ten metaverse economies in the world. It focuses on building on Dubai’s success in attracting more than 1,000 blockchain and metaverse businesses. 

It is introduced to support the development of Web3 technology and its applications for the creation of new governmental work models and development in vital sectors like tourism, education, retail, remote work, healthcare, etc. Further, the strategy aims to develop metaverse infrastructure and regulations to accelerate the adoption of these technologies as well as global standards for building safe and secure platforms for users.

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Creation of over 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030

The strategy supports Dubai’s vision to generate over 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030. This is expected to support the UAE government’s goal of five times the current number of blockchain companies and further boost Dubai’s economy.

During the launch in July, Sheikh Hamdan stated “ Dubai Metaverse Strategy aims to foster innovation in new technology. Dubai is home to over 1,000 companies operating in the metaverse and blockchain sector, which contributes $500m to our national economy.”

What are the major pillars of the strategy? 

 Extended reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality, and digital twins (a virtual representation of an object or system) are the key pillars of the strategy. It focuses on improving human thinking processes by utilizing real-time data, machine learning, IoT, AI simulation, and blockchain.

 The metaverse strategy’s technology pillars are data, network, cloud, and edge computing, all of which concentrate on real-world data acquisition, validation, storage, processing, and management. Different support points incorporate advancing the full arrangement of 5G organizations to empower edge processing and give on-request PC framework assets. Instead of sending data to the cloud, data can be collected, stored, and processed locally using smart devices and local networks.

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Is it the next stage of social connection evolution?

It is an open platform and nobody owns it.  Facebook claims that the metaverse is the next stage of social connection evolution. Within the virtual world, numerous individuals and businesses will operate their own spaces. A metaverse is a type of mixed reality that combines virtual and augmented reality. Digital elements will be introduced into the real world in Metaverse and it will support Virtual 3-D spaces.

The metaverse concept has been successfully implemented on numerous gaming platforms as of now. For instance, Ariana Grande recently performed a concert in the Fortnite game created by Epic Games.

Another successfully realized aspect of a virtual universe is a cryptocurrency, which will be incorporated into the new metaverse world order in exchange for all services.