It is no surprise that Norway ranks among the most technologically advanced nations in the world. But how far has it progressed in its digital transformation efforts with one of the highest GDP per capita worldwide and billions streaming into R&D each year? Let’s zoom in on three of the hottest industry examples.
Norges Bank Uses Ethereum to Build its First National Digital Currency
This year, the central bank of Norway has reached an important technological milestone when it released the open-source code for its central bank digital currency (CBDC) sandbox. As announced in Norges Bank’s tweet, the prototype infrastructure will be built on the Ethereum blockchain.
After appointing Nahmii, a Norwegian startup, as its CBDC partner, Norges Bank released the sandbox on GitHub where developers can interact and experiment with the test network.
According to Nahmii’s recent blog post, this enables the “testing of basic token management use cases, including minting, burning and transferring ERC-20 tokens”. The goal is to make issuing, redeeming, and distributing CBDC as seamless as possible for its future users.
The company also stresses that this version of the code does not, by design, support the major wallet MetaMask used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. It is also only accessible by users with the appropriate credentials, meaning that test transactions on the network remain private — at least for now.
Despite still exploring the early stages, it seems like we are witnessing major steps towards a decentralized financial system — not only in Norway, but gradually in every country in the world.
Norway Enters the Metaverse with Tax Office in Decentraland
The Brønnøysund, Norway’s central register, and Skatteetaten, the national tax authority, are making historical progress in their technological transition into Web3.
The government organizations have recently announced that they have partnered with Ernst and Young (EY) to establish an office in Decentraland. The platform is a virtual destination for digital assets, and offers its users the chance to buy, sell and trade land using MANA, a digital currency powered by Ethereum.
Magnus Jones, EY’s Nordic Blockchain Lead, described the project as an “information lighthouse” that will “assist and help users to register a company and assist in how to report your cryptos correctly”.
The initiative was introduced at the annual NOKIOS conference in Trondheim, where it was clearly articulated that the project’s purpose is to deliver services to younger, tech-native individuals while establishing their Web3 footprint.
CoinSurvey Boosting Online Questionnaire Responses Through Bitcoin SV
Let’s be honest, who actually enjoys online surveys? They are time-consuming, annoying, and most of the time, they offer no real incentive to participate.
This is where CoinSurvey steps in with a solution. After taking part in the second cohort of the incubator Satoshi Block Dojo, the Norwegian startup continues its efforts towards helping survey creators boost the quality and frequency of survey responses.
To compete with major industry players like SurveyMonkey, the startup has developed a clever way of gamifying the survey-taking experience. CoinSurvey offers small rewards for each answer, progressively leading the respondents through each survey question. The scaling power of the Bitcoin SV blockchain allows for varying rewards depending on a question’s difficulty or length — from a couple of dollars to as low as a fraction of a cent.
In an interview with CoinGeek, Ole Andre Knutli, CEO and co-founder of CoinSurvey, stated that the software can increase survey response rate by 180%. He also added that the company is dealing with an $80 billion market, so there is immense potential for future growth.
Conclusion
Norway is clearly among the early-adopters of Web3 technologies, both in the public and private sector. Even though initiatives involving blockchain and the metaverse are already being tested and developed, we are still observing the very beginnings of a major technological revolution.
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