14 September 2024, Doha – Qatar: Qatar Financial Centre (QFC), a leading onshore financial and business centre in the region, has activated the QFC Digital Assets Lab with twenty-four participants who have successfully cleared a meticulous screening process. This cohort will benefit from a comprehensive support system for developing, testing and commercialising their digital solutions and services.

The participants will develop transformative solutions tailored to a variety of use cases across different industries. By leveraging distributed ledger technology, these innovators seek to address industry challenges and drive digital transformation in their respective sectors. Among the 24 successful candidates are ALT Realtech, Bladelabs, Polygon, and Partior.

To bolster the capabilities of the Digital Assets Lab, QFC has partnered with leading international organisations such as Google Cloud, Masraf Al Rayan, The Hashgraph Association, and R3. These strategic partners will offer subject matter expertise, providing participants with valuable knowledge and industry insights. The full list of partners and participants is available on the QFC website

The Digital Assets Lab supports the stakeholders in exploring and experimenting with various use cases, such as trade finance, real-world asset tokenisation, carbon credit tokenisation and various ancillary services to support the end-to-end tokenisation. To facilitate these processes, the Lab and its participants will operate under the newly launched QFC Digital Assets Framework, established to ensure a secure and transparent digital asset ecosystem for asset tokenisation processes and the implementation of a trusted technology infrastructure.

Yousuf Mohamed Al-Jaida, Chief Executive Officer, QFC, commented on the diversity of the first cohort, stating: “I am delighted that the Digital Assets Lab has officially commenced, with 24 participants working on technologies with different applications. Their collective effort and expertise will be pivotal in advancing digital asset solutions across multiple industries. The technologies we aim to develop through the Lab will support our goal of creating a resilient and secure financial sector, fostering a thriving wealth management hub, and positioning Qatar at the forefront of innovation.”

The QFC Digital Assets Lab was launched in October 2023 to accelerate the development of Qatar’s digital ecosystem and provide a platform for transforming promising digital concepts into cutting-edge technologies that can be practically applied in various industries.