The blockchain story in the UAE is increasingly defined by execution rather than experimentation. A new flagship research report released by The Blockchain Center Abu Dhabi and Binance highlights the country’s transition toward regulated, large-scale blockchain deployment across finance, governance and public-sector efficiency.
At the center of that shift is a layered regulatory design that has created the conditions for institutions to move beyond pilots and begin integrating blockchain into payments, tokenization, custody and market infrastructure.
UAE moves to execution phase
The report highlights that the UAE has moved into an execution phase defined by scale, regulatory clarity and institutional adoption. Domestic payment systems processed over AED20 trillion in transfers in the first ten months of 2025, while the UAE continues to rank among the world’s largest remittance-origin countries.
The report also cites a set of behavioral and market indicators that shape demand for modern settlement rails, including the fact that 95 percent of UAE residents send international remittances at least once per year, more than 71 percent of UAE e-commerce payments are completed using cards or mobile wallets and cross-border flows supported by the UAE economy exceed $40 billion annually.
Against this backdrop, blockchain use cases are increasingly acknowledged as tools that can improve settlement speed, transparency and operational efficiency when deployed responsibly.
Shift toward institutional market structure
The core theme revolves around a structural shift in the UAE’s blockchain ecosystem. It has evolved from early-stage startups to a dense, institutional landscape spanning regulated exchanges and custodians, payment providers, tokenization platforms, infrastructure vendors, enterprise solution providers, banks and multinational technology firms.
“The UAE has created an environment where regulators, financial institutions and technology providers can work together to deploy blockchain in a controlled and meaningful way. The result is an ecosystem focused on real use cases, regulatory clarity and long-term financial infrastructure,” said Abdulla Al Dhaheri, CEO of The Blockchain Center Abu Dhabi.
National economic infrastructure
The report also positions blockchain as a national economic infrastructure in the UAE, comparing its trajectory to other foundational technologies that reshaped economies. It highlights regulated deployments across real-world asset tokenization, stablecoins and AED-backed tokenized deposits, payments and wholesale settlement platforms, and blockchain-powered trade, logistics, and government services.
At the same time, digital public infrastructure is scaling. The UAE Pass serves 11 million users and has processed over 2.5 billion authentications, reflecting the scale of digital identity usage across the country. This further points to the role of sovereign and quasi-sovereign capital – with more than $2.5 trillion in assets under management – in supporting and scaling compliant blockchain initiatives.
UAE reaffirms commitment to production-grade digital finance
The UAE’s emphasis on regulated, large-scale digital asset infrastructure is reflected by choosing Binance to operate locally as an ADGM FSRA-regulated entity. MGX’s $2 billion investment into Binance in 2025, executed using regulated stablecoin infrastructure, is another signal of the UAE’s commitment to production-grade digital finance and its growing credibility as a hub for globally scaled platforms.
“What distinguishes the UAE is not just innovation, but execution within a regulated, institutional-grade framework. This research reflects how blockchain is now being deployed across payments, tokenization, custody and market infrastructure as part of the country’s core economic systems. Binance’s participation in this initiative reflects our long-term commitment to operating within these structures and supporting the UAE’s vision for secure, scalable and compliant blockchain infrastructure that serves real economic use cases,” said Tarik Erk, Regional Head for MENAT and Senior Executive Officer, Abu Dhabi at Binance.
This report presents the UAE as a global benchmark for moving blockchain from promise to production, showing what becomes possible when regulation, capital and ecosystem coordination reinforce each other. The shift to real deployments becomes practical when there’s a market structure that has clear rules, credible supervision and institutional participation that make blockchain systems dependable enough to support real economic activity at a national scale and relevant enough to compete globally.
