The emirate of Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is launching a free zone exclusively for digital and virtual asset companies called the RAK Digital Assets Oasis (RAK DAO).

What Happened: The zone is designed to support emerging technologies such as blockchain, the metaverse, utility tokens, virtual asset wallets, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and decentralized applications (DApps).

The zone will be open for applications in the second quarter of 2023.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Humaid bin Abdullah Al Qasimi, chairman of the RAK International Corporate Centre, which operates the free zone, said, "We are building the free zone of the future for companies of the future."

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Why It Matters: Free zones in the UAE are areas where entrepreneurs have complete ownership of their businesses, and their own tax schemes and regulatory frameworks, except for the country's criminal law.

The Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) is one of the UAE's main financial regulators, but it does not have authority over the financial free zones such as Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

The RAK DAO will be the latest addition to the more than 40 multidisciplinary free zones in the UAE, which have already attracted a significant number of crypto, blockchain and Web3 firms, including the DMCC, DIFC and ADGM.

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Photo: oneinchpunch via Shutterstock