Republic of Palau Partners With Cryptic Labs to Launch Digital Residency Programme, Residents to Get NFT IDs

The Republic of Palau has teamed up with blockchain development firm Cryptic Labs in order to digitally educate the residents of the nation. The government of Palau has rolled out a digital residency programme called Root Name System (RNS).The RNS will provide people a blockchain-based legal ID and a digital residency to open access to global business opportunities. The RNS will also allow people to control how much information about themselves they wish to share with others via their IDs that will be issued physically, as well as in the forms of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

The President of Palau, Surangel Whipps Jr., has signed an agreement to grant “all global users” digital residency through the RNS.

“Our Digital Residency Programme will have capacity for internationally recognised standards of identity verification to ensure that Palau upholds the rule of law and our reputational integrity. We welcome all global citizens to apply to participate in Palau's digital residency programme,” a report by CoinTelegraph quoted the President as saying.

Digital residency applicants can create an account and pay via their credit card or using cryptocurrency.

This is not the first time that the Republic of Palau has adopted an approach favouring the crypto space.

In November 2021, the Republic of Palau partnered with San Francisco-headquartered crypto solutions provider Ripple to explore the creation of its national digital currency.

According to an announcement at the time, if Palau gets a national digital currency, authorities there are open to experimenting with its use cases on decentralised public blockchain called XRP Ledger (XPRL).

Palau is a country comprising approximately 340 islands, forming the western chain of the Caroline Islands located in the Pacific Ocean.