Dubai, an emirate that is part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is reportedly taking some of its government departments into the metaverse, to allow users to perform actions in these facilities in the future. This would be the next step for the country, which has previously presented its Dubai Metaverse Strategy to position this technology as an important part of the future of the emirate.
Sharad Agarwal, chief metaverse officer of Cybergear, a Dubai-based metaverse company, talked about this process at a local metaverse-themed event. He stated:
We have started getting a lot of inquiries from government departments and ministries to make them Metaverse-enabled. It is just a matter of time before Dubai becomes the crypto and Metaverse hub of the world.
However, the construction of these areas and the establishment of their functions will take time. “There is hard work involved, so you need to decide what services you want to offer and business model and then onboard community just like it exists in the physical world,” Agarwal further explained.
Dubai has been one of the countries that has put a global plan in place to make the metaverse a profitable industry in the future. The Dubai Metaverse Strategy, a group of directives that aim to make the metaverse contribute 1% to the GDP of the country for 2030, aims to provide 42,000 virtual jobs by that same year. Other countries like South Korea are also investing heavily into developing their own metaverse industry, allocating $177 million for this endeavor.
While some fail to see the enticement of the metaverse for Dubai, Agarwal expounded on one of the applications that metaverse tech can have in the future: the real estate market. He declared:
Dubai has a huge real estate market. In the future, people will be able to fly like superman to a community, look at the villas and view the villas and also configure the interior decoration to their liking. Once they’re satisfied, they can pay digitally.
The virtual asset regulator of the country recently established its operations in the metaverse, being one of the pioneers in this space.
