In a very interesting tweet on the X platform, RAK DAO ( Ras Al Khaimah’s Digital Asset Oasis) free zone welcomed the founder and creator of the Ethereum Blockchain, Vitalik Buterin.

In the tweet, RAK DAO states,” At RAK DAO, our fundamental belief in the transformative power of community has played a pivotal role in shaping our ecosystem. Our commitment to fostering innovation through collaboration recently materialized in a significant event, graced by the presence of His Highness Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, UAE Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, alongside Vitalik Buterin, the Co-Founder of Ethereum, here in Ras Al Khaimah. This gathering reaffirmed our ongoing dedication to providing a platform where innovative ideas flourish, collaborations thrive, and the spirit of progress prevails. “

In February 2023, the Government of Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) announced that it would be launching the RAK Digital Assets Oasis free zone dedicated to digital and virtual asset companies for non-regulated entities.

This meant that the UAE would now have two crypto Blockchain Oases, one in DMCC for regulated blockchain and crypto entities and one in RAK for soft regulated entities. As per the announcement RAK DAO was supposed to launch in Q2 of 2023, but its official launch happened in October 2023.

Ras Al Khaimah Digital Assets Oasis (RAK DAO), marked the inception of a new era in digital evolution and Web3 collaboration within Ras Al Khaimah. Businesses dealing with digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, could operate under fewer regulatory restrictions.RAK Digital Assets Oasis, is the first common law and specialized free zone exclusively dedicated to companies involved in digital and virtual assets.

Since then, RAK DAO has been setting up partnerships as it entices blockchain, Web3, metaverse, and crypto companies to set up base in the Oasis. It partnered with The HBAR Foundation having signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with them. According to the MOU, The HBAR Foundation would support RAK DAO ecosystem members to leverage the power of blockchain and build economies and applications on Hedera, the most used enterprise-grade public network.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Trust Wallet, self-custody crypto wallet, majority owned by the former CEO of Binance announced its operations in the UAE both in RAKDAO (Digital assets Oasis) free zone in Ras Al Khaimah and in ADGM in Abu Dhabi.

Vitalik’s visit comes after he released Ethereum’s roadmap for 2024 which will focus on scalability, security and sustainability improvements.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced the plan on social media on Dec. 31, outlining several key initiatives for the platform’s development. ‘The Surge,’ a crucial component of Ethereum’s roadmap, aims to increase network scalability through data sharding. By dividing the blockchain into smaller parts, Ethereum intends to boost its transaction processing capabilities and reduce costs, addressing one of the most pressing issues faced by blockchain technologies today.

This development is expected to bring Ethereum closer to achieving its goal of processing over 100,000 transactions per second, as noted by Buterin in recent statements

Could this visit be another partnership in the making? Is the Ethereum founder finally interested in the UAE and Middle East?