Innovation City launches on-chain business IDs in UAE

Innovation City, an AI-focused free zone in Ras Al Khaimah, launched on May 4 a blockchain-based digital business identity system on the OPN chain. The system replaces paper and PDF business licenses with cryptographically verifiable, machine-readable identities that regulators, banks and automated systems can check instantly.

Each registered company receives a unique on-chain identity stored as a ‘living’ digital asset on a decentralized ledger. The identities can be verified without consulting centralized databases and are formatted for machine use in permit processing, compliance checks and tax reporting.

The underlying infrastructure is the OPN chain, an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible Layer 1 blockchain developed by IOPN. Company materials say the chain can process more than 10,000 transactions per second and offers sub-second finality to support high-volume machine-to-machine interactions.

IOPN’s CEO Mojtaba Asadian called the OPN chain the ‘sovereign infrastructure layer’ for the UAE’s emerging AI economy and highlighted on-chain verifiability for enterprise systems.

Innovation City listed operational benefits including faster due diligence, reduced document forgery and lower risk of opaque shell companies. The authority said banks and regulators will be able to validate company credentials in seconds instead of the weeks some checks currently require.

Officials said the rollout aligns with a federal plan for 50% of government services and operations to run on agentic AI within two years, which requires machine-readable, verifiable business identities for automated processing.

Paul Dawalibi, Innovation City’s CEO, described the program as giving registered companies ‘a soul on the blockchain,’ and added that business identity has long been confined to paper, PDFs and fragile databases.

The digital identities went live May 4 and are being issued to companies registered in the free zone. Innovation City projects wider federal adoption over the next two years as AI integration increases in government services.

Innovation City is an AI-focused free zone in Ras Al Khaimah that targets companies working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and decentralized finance.