Layer 1 blockchain Sui has launched a hub in Dubai, a first in a global series of hubs, to support blockchain developers and entrepreneurs.
“The vision is to be the heart of hackathons and implementation even in Dubai,” said Kostas Chalkias, co-founder and chief cryptographer at Mysten Labs, which developed the Sui network.
Dubai – The Sui blockchain has launched a hub in Dubai which will act as an incubator for blockchain developers and entrepreneurs, one of its founding developers told CoinDesk in an interview.
Kostas Chalkias, co-founder and chief cryptographer at Mysten Labs, which developed the Sui network, is originally from Greece and has moved to Dubai from California. He said his vision is to bring an army of solution engineers to Dubai.
“Like Leonidas, the Greek war hero, we are bringing an army of developers and if it is super successful in the very first month we will probably make it like Leonidas’ 300,” said Chalkias. “”Initially, we are bringing a small army but with big brains.”
Chalkias painted a scenario where 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.
The Dubai hub will be first in a global series of hubs, the entity announced. Dubai has been attracting the Web3 community with reasonably clear regulations and licensing processes which has seen crypto exchanges like Binance, Crypto.com and OKX win approvals this year.
“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.
The Sui network which was built by former Meta (META) employees, including Chalkias, overtook the likes of Cardano, Near and Aptos in terms of total value locked (TVL) in February this year. For some, Sui has emerged as the chosen blockchain over Solana.
“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.
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