The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is moving the blockchain infrastructure supporting its national digital identity platform to Avalanche, according to statements from Avalanche and the UAE’s federal telecommunications regulator.

The platform, UAEPASS, is used by about 12.5 million people to access government and private-sector services. The UAE’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), the federal body overseeing UAEPASS, selected Avalanche for the infrastructure change.

UAEPASS enables residents, citizens and visitors to log in to digital services, sign documents and access online platforms. Its Digital Vault feature stores verified documents and allows users to hold credentials that can be shared with institutions for verification. The announced change concerns the infrastructure supporting this vault, while the platform’s existing identity and document functions remain the focus of the service.

UAEPASS serves 12.5 million users

According to figures cited by Avalanche, UAEPASS provides access to more than 15,000 services and is used by more than 350 government and private-sector entities. Documents shared across such a broad network of institutions require a trusted way to verify their issuers without each organization conducting a separate investigation.

Recording the credentials on a blockchain allows institutions to perform a routine verification lookup rather than begin the process from scratch each time, according to the announcement.

Saeed Belhoul, Dgov Operations Director, said the UAEPASS Digital Vault had become an important part of daily life in the UAE. He said the government aims to continue protecting the trust that people place in the system.

Belhoul added that the upgrade would move the vault to infrastructure capable of handling its growing requirements and supporting the platform over the long term.

Digital Vault to operate on Avalanche L1

The UAEPASS Digital Vault will operate on an Avalanche L1, a dedicated blockchain controlled by its operator rather than a network that shares capacity with unrelated activity. Avalanche said the design prevents traffic elsewhere on the network from competing with the Digital Vault for capacity.

The arrangement also gives TDRA control over network membership, permissions and configuration. Those controls are relevant to a government-operated identity system because they allow the regulator to determine which participants can connect to the network and how it is configured.

“Digital identity is one of the clearest examples of technology that has to work reliably at real-world scale,” said John Nahas, chief business officer at Ava Labs. He described the system as high-performance infrastructure operating behind the scenes to keep digital services secure and seamless.

The announcement is available from Avalanche at UAE’s identity system serving 12 million people upgrades to Avalanche.

California DMV also uses an Avalanche L1

The UAE is not the first government to use an Avalanche L1 for a public-record system. The California Department of Motor Vehicles has moved 42 million vehicle titles onto a DMV-operated Avalanche L1. Avalanche said the change reduced the time required for title transfers from around two weeks to only a few minutes.

Avalanche said the California and UAE projects are similar in that both serve tens of millions of people, although one focuses on digital identity and the other on property records. The company also said public-record systems tend to favor this type of dedicated blockchain design.