UAE regulators are moving the infrastructure behind UAEPASS, the country’s national digital identity and electronic signature system used by 12.5 million citizens, residents, and visitors, to the Avalanche blockchain ecosystem.
The UAE Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) is moving the blockchain infrastructure behind UAEPASS to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1 network. The upgrade is intended to improve performance and support further scaling. Specifically, it will affect Digital Vault, the UAEPASS component used to receive, store, and share verified documents.
UAEPASS is the UAE’s national digital identity system. It allows users to verify their identity online, sign documents, and access government and private-sector services. The platform operates at a significant scale:
- 12.5 million users;
- more than 15,000 available services;
- over 350 government and private-sector organizations using the system.
Digital Vault uses distributed ledger technology to securely manage verified documents. Users can receive and store a document, then share it with an organization that needs to verify its authenticity. This reduces duplicate checks. If a document was issued by a trusted government authority, another organization can verify its origin through the shared infrastructure.
Digital Vault previously used Quorum, an enterprise blockchain platform based on Ethereum. Moving to a dedicated Layer 1 blockchain gives UAEPASS its own computing resources, so the system’s capacity won’t depend on activity from third-party applications. TDRA also retains control over network access and configuration, an important consideration for a government platform serving millions of users.
Avalanche blockchain infrastructure is already used in major government projects. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), for example, digitized 42 million vehicle records within the Avalanche blockchain ecosystem. The initiative cut the time required to transfer vehicle ownership from around 2 weeks to just minutes.
