Shanghai included blockchain, NFTs and Web3 in its 5-year plan

China’s largest city Shanghai officially intends to increase the development of innovations such as blockchain, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), metaverse and Web3 in general during its next five-year plan.

On July 13, the Shanghai Municipal Government published the draft of its “14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Shanghai’s Digital Economy”. One document sets out the mission of “promoting the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy,” with “scientists assessing technology prospects” and “entrepreneurs discovering market demand”.

The plan proposes to support the companies that plan to build the NFT trading platforms and “research and promote the digitization of NFT and other assets”. A separate section is dedicated to blockchain, with a stated commitment to promote the development and application of “blockchain +” technology and build a blockchain development ecosystem with strong innovation capabilities and independent control.

It is also a place for metaverse ambitions, as the municipal council plans to accelerate the research and distribution of the platform for the interaction between the virtual world and the real society by implementing the development of core technologies and encouraging the creation of new platforms with richer and more diverse content scenarios. The plan emphasizes the importance of new forms of digital entertainment consumption, such as virtual concerts, virtual idols and virtual sports.

A planned exploration of Web3 capabilities will include multi-platform OpenID research, distributed data storage, decentralized domain name resolution system (DNS) and end-to-end encrypted communication technology, complemented by hardware base update and 6G deployment, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6 ), sixth generation wireless network technology (Wi-Fi6) and quantum communication.

Related: NFT platforms in China grow 5X in four months despite warnings from authorities

While the plan remains silent on the prospects for decentralized finance (DeFi), it mentions “digital finance” with a promise to promote smart contracts and improve asset trading, payment and settlement, registration and custody. However, the section focuses on exploring the pilot of the digital yuan, a digital central bank currency (CBDC), valued by the Bank of China.

Other, non-crypto-related directions for a five-year plan touch on issues of smart cities, low-carbon energy, digital health, intelligent service robots and others.

In his June 26 article, Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology – a major technology company involved in the development of China’s major blockchain project called the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) – called private cryptocurrencies the ‘largest Ponzi scheme in man. life”. history.”