According to PANews, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has announced a new initiative aimed at increasing mainstream adoption of digital public goods as part of the country's digitalization plan. The initiative, titled 'Demonstration Project for Building Digital Public Goods Using Web 3.0 and Blockchain,' seeks to develop innovative and practical use cases for blockchain technology in Japan. The project has attracted several industry leaders, including PwC, Rakuten, and NTT Digital, to participate in pilot studies under METI's leadership.
The project is expected to focus on four main themes, which METI states are broad enough to cover multiple sectors of the national economy. In collaboration with NTT Digital and Leaf, the initiative will establish a series of tokenized markets for real-world assets (RWA) and has successfully secured related construction contracts. Reports indicate that the project will develop an RWA market for Leaf's Sake World, allowing consumers to own digital collectibles in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) when purchasing Japanese alcoholic beverages. Rakuten will be responsible for developing an image copyright management platform using smart contracts, while PwC will lead the protection of content intellectual property (IP) based on Web3. The Hiroshima Web3 Association has reached an agreement with METI to use governance tokens on distributed ledgers to promote 'regional revitalization.' METI has abandoned its initial plan to share information with industry insiders, suggesting that the plan may have been canceled due to budget constraints. Other projects under this initiative have received six-figure grants from METI, with the RWA market receiving $307,000 in funding.
METI's latest push for Web3 aligns with Japan's blueprint to integrate the physical world with digital products while promoting rapid mainstream adoption. METI added that the project would assist lawmakers in formulating robust regulations for blockchain and digital assets, similar to the European Union's Horizon 2020 funding program.