The Sui blockchain has launched an incubator hub in Dubai UAE in partnership with UAE based Ghaf Group which includes Ghaf Capital.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Kostas Chalkias, Co Founder and Chief cryptographer at Mysten Labs, the developer of Sui blockchain network, said he had a vision to bring an army of solution engineers to Dubai. He noted that for example if a government entity would want a blockchain based solution to a problem and instead of spending days to create the solution, this hub would have the capacity to build the solution as a smart contract more or less on the spot.
“When you’re preaching an idea we will be able to sit down for two hours and build the proof of concept there. No other blockchain can do a POC on the spot. This hasn’t happened before,” Chalkias said.
The hub is in collaboration with Ghaf Group, a blockchain firm in the region. Ghaf Capital Partners is one of the first locally managed blockchain / Web 3 only private capital firms based in Dubai, U.A.E and acts as an extended version of the team of all their partners and portfolio of companies so as to add value as strategic partners and growth accelerators.
Speaking to Lara on the Block, Feras Al Sadek, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Ghaf Group noted, “Ghaf Group is extremely pleased to join with the Sui team in launching the first official SuiHub in Dubai. The initiation of this innovative new resource for local builders and entrepreneurs represents a key milestone in the development of Ghaf’s venture studio arm. What began as a simple advisory has grown into a global initiative that will power technology advancement here for years to come.”
The Dubai hub will be first in a global series of hubs. “UAE is top for deals UAE but not the actual development,” said Chalkias. “The vision is to be the heart of hackathons and implementation even in Dubai.” Initially, the hub would be hoping to help the government with digitalization, he added.
“We are building solution engineering here in Dubai,” said Chalkias. “We want to invest in the region. We want to bring engineering capacity. I am bringing solution engineers. I want to run hackathons every month in Dubai where we don’t sleep for three days.
The announcement is not new, In May 2024, Co Founder of Mysten Labs, Kostas Kryptos Chalkias, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that he was in the midst of creating a modern cryptography and AI Innovation hub in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
As he noted, ” The aim is to intellectually grow the whole UAE community with deep tech education and brainstorming meetups. So deep that some hackathons will run non stop 24/7 for a whole week, with support from local hotel and office-desk owners for accommodation.”
He adds,”My goal is to gradually advance the whole MENA region in a unique tech excellence level + see technologically competitive startups to emerge. There is already a plan to publish some unique ideas around ZKP, MPC, FHE, Differential Privacy, Web3 UX, Anon Credentials, AI on chain, AI for audits, DePIN data compression and parallelization, Novel Key Management, Identity, Voting and Verifiable Execution.”
