Creating 1 million "e-Kaga citizens": Kaga City Web 3.0 Division's initiative to become a "digitally designated city"

First, please tell us about the background to the launch of the Kaga City Web 3.0 Division.

Satoshi Yamauchi (hereinafter, Yamauchi): Kaga City is a small municipality with a population of about 62,000 people, and its biggest challenge is population decline, which has led to the city being designated as a municipality at risk of disappearing. As population decline has also created a negative chain reaction, Kaga City is promoting policies related to digitalization and smart cities in an effort to somehow escape from the category of cities at risk of disappearing. In this context, the introduction of advanced technology and human resource development are the two pillars of our growth strategy.

There are many different types of advanced technology, but we have used Estonia, an electronic nation, as a benchmark. Last year, we signed a sister city agreement with the Estonian city of Haapsalu. Kaga City is also exploring ways to realize Estonia's policies, and one of them is the existence of an electronic citizen card.

This electronic citizen card is called "e-Residency" and is an initiative to digitally organize related populations. This initiative utilizes blockchain, and having e-Residency will enable business in the EU. Kaga City also wants to advance this initiative, so we launched the "e-Kaga Citizen System."

In addition, the use of Web 3.0 was attracting attention in the world, so the idea of ​​"distributing NFTs as citizen cards" came up, and that was our introduction to Web 3.0.

In the first place, Kaga City announced the "Blockchain City Declaration" in 2018, and has been focusing on blockchain among advanced technologies and trying and erroring to incorporate it into administration. In that sense, it was a natural progression to launch the e-Kaga Citizen System.

Estonia's e-Residency has an incentive in terms of starting a business, but Kaga City also wanted to accumulate industries from outside the city and create support projects for entrepreneurs who will start new industries and startups. The idea is that by focusing on entrepreneurs, we can create a related population.

In fact, Kaga City Web 3.0 Division is a general term for entrepreneur support projects. Therefore, one of its characteristics is that it is not actually a single division located in the city hall. Kaga City has been designated as a National Strategic Special Zone, so we want to create a business environment that is comparable to overseas and make it the easiest city in the world to do business in.

▶The newly launched Kaga Web 3 Division is not an actual division, but a collective name for entrepreneur support projects being carried out in the metaverse. This digital support environment, which also includes start-up support under the special measures of the National Strategic Special Zone, is the first of its kind in the country.