The United Arab Emirates is integrating the Avalanche blockchain into UAE PASS, the national digital identity platform used by more than 12 million residents, according to statements from the country’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority, advisory firm Deca4 and the Avalanche ecosystem. The upgrade targets the Digital Vault, where users store certified documents such as licenses and academic degrees, rather than replacing the entire identity system.
UAE PASS launched in 2018 and has grown to more than 12.5 million registered users, with over 15,000 connected services and more than 350 government and private-sector entities relying on it. The Digital Vault will operate on an Avalanche L1, a dedicated chain controlled by the operator, so traffic elsewhere on the network does not compete for capacity. The design keeps personal documents off-chain and stores only a cryptographic fingerprint, or hash, that allows institutions to verify whether a document has been altered.
Saeed Belhoul, Dgov Operations Director, said the Digital Vault had become essential to daily life in the Emirates and that the upgrade would move it onto infrastructure capable of handling growing demand. John Nahas, chief business officer at Ava Labs, described digital identity as 'one of the clearest examples of technology that has to work reliably at real-world scale' and said the system operates behind the scenes to keep digital services secure.
The integration arrives as the UAE’s federal crypto framework becomes mandatory. Federal Decree Law 6 of 2025 places virtual assets, DeFi protocols, stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, wallets and bridges under Central Bank oversight, with a compliance deadline of September 2026. Domestically, licensed dirham stablecoins remain the only virtual assets generally permitted for payment, while free zones such as ADGM and DIFC can handle non-dirham assets under separate rules.
Avalanche has positioned itself in the region for this kind of work. The Avalanche Foundation incorporated a DLT Foundation inside Abu Dhabi Global Market in December 2025, and the network has prior public-record experience, including a California DMV effort to digitize 42 million vehicle titles and a New Jersey county land-parcel project. However, details remain nuanced: Avalanche and Deca4 have communicated the integration, but UAE authorities have not separately published full technical confirmation naming the chain. Earlier TDRA documentation pointed to a Quorum-based federal network, so the full technical scope still awaits official disclosure.
For residents, the change is expected to be invisible, while for the market it is structural: a verified person, a regulated dirham payment token and an on-chain asset can move through a single administrative flow. That gives Avalanche significant reputational leverage and signals to rival Layer 1 networks that sovereign deals in the region may depend on local incorporation and regulatory posture as much as technical performance.
