Japan Spearheads the Future of Decentralized Digital Infrastructure: Pioneering Web 3.0 and Blockchain Public Goods

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has launched a call for proposals for the “Fiscal Year 2025 Web 3.0 and Blockchain Digital Public Goods Construction Demonstration Project” starting June 3rd.

Background: In a world where centralized platforms present numerous challenges, there is a growing demand for an open, global exchange infrastructure that does not rely on specific platform providers. This infrastructure aligns with the Society 5.0 vision and leverages Japan’s strengths in cultural and economic sectors to lead the construction of a global, decentralized platform. By enhancing Japan’s presence in existing decentralized platforms and developing new applications, this initiative can invigorate Japan’s economy and industry.

Web 3.0 and Blockchain Technology: Web 3.0 and blockchain technologies are inherently suited for building an open, global value exchange infrastructure due to their governance structures. However, they face three main challenges: lack of apparent value to private businesses, lack of economic rationality for private entities to act alone, and complex, unclear rules. Addressing these challenges is the project’s primary goal.

Demonstration Themes: The project has outlined five key themes for demonstration experiments:

1. Marketplace for tokenization of RWA and intangible assets
2. Information sharing platform for circular economy
3. Smart contract for management of portrait rights in the sports
4. Guidelines for content IP protection
5. Regional revitalization with governance tokens

Implementation Strategy: METI, the secretariat, and an advisory board, including special advisors, will support the demonstration businesses to enhance overall project outcomes and foster organic collaboration between various demonstrations. This includes planning workshops, results presentations, and providing advice on legal, accounting, tax, business, and technical matters.

Advisory Board: An Advisory Board comprising ten experts with knowledge in legal, accounting, taxation, technology, international, and community aspects of the Web 3.0 and blockchain domain has been established. The board’s discussions and advice will inform the institutional design of the project.

Addressing Challenges: Despite the potential of Web 3.0 and blockchain technologies, their social implementation and acceptance have been hindered by the difficulty private businesses face in recognizing their value, the high public nature of infrastructure construction, and the complexity of rule development. To counter these issues, the project will set high-publicity use case themes that contribute to solving societal and industrial challenges. It will support demonstrations related to constructing digital public goods using Web 3.0 and blockchain across various industries. This support aims to lower costs and risks for the industry, establish data standards, build data integration platforms, and assist in developing guidelines and rules. Ultimately, the project seeks to create new use cases beyond speculative Web 3.0 businesses and accelerate the social implementation and acceptance of these technologies.

The call for applications will be open during the following period. Please check the details in the open call for applications and submit your application documents by email to [email protected].

Period: 3 (Mon) – 26 (Wed) June 2024, 17:00.

Source: Jissui