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

China’s largest city, Shanghai, officially plans to boost the development of innovations such as blockchain, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), metaverse and Web3 in general during the 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”. A paper establishes the mission of “promoting the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy”, with “scientists assessing technological prospects” and “entrepreneurs discovering market demand”.

The plan proposes to support the firms that intend to build the NFT trading platforms and “research and promote the digitization of NFT and other assets”. A separate section is devoted to blockchain, with a strong commitment to promote the development and adoption of “blockchain+” technology and build a blockchain development ecosystem with strong innovation capabilities and independent scrutiny.

There is also room for metaverse ambitions as the municipal government plans to accelerate the research and deployment of the platform for the interaction between the virtual world and the real society by carrying out the development of core technologies and 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 includes exploring a multi-platform OpenID, distributed data storage, decentralized domain name resolution system (DNS), and end-to-end encrypted communications technology, complemented by hardware base update and implementation of 6G, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), sixth generation wireless networking technology (Wi-Fi6) and quantum communications.

Related: NFT Platforms in China Grow 5X in Four Months, Despite Government Warnings

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

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

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