Republic of Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. Inaugurates Tim Draper as Founding Digital Resident

The President of the Republic of Palau, His Excellency Surangel Whipps Jr., honored Silicon Valley giant Tim Draper as Founding Digital Resident of Palau’s newly-introduced RNS Digital Residency Program. The Inauguration Ceremony took place on Tuesday, February 1st, with top blockchain and technology leaders in attendance. The event was also open to the general public and live streamed to the global community.

The inauguration of Tim Draper as Founding Digital Resident comes on the heels of Palau’s launch of their digital residency platform, which has had more than 300,000 people sign up for on the waiting list. The Palau RNS Digital Residency Program, made possible by the President’s signing of the Digital Residency Act last December, marks the first time global citizens can claim blockchain digital residency backed by a sovereign entity.

President Whipps Jr.’s inauguration of Tim Draper commemorates a landmark event, as the RNS Digital Residency platform opens up the doors for individuals from around the world to apply for digital resident status regardless of geographic location. Draper, a prominent venture capitalist and figure in the blockchain industry and an early investor in companies like Twitch, Coinbase, and Tesla, has spoken about digital residency at great lengths, with a vision that started more than two decades ago.

“Most people are feeling like they are citizens of the world and they will choose the best governance that they can find out there in the world, and I suspect more and more of that will be done virtually.” – Tim Draper, speaking on the movement from physical to virtual governance.

In his speech, President Whipps Jr. compared digital residency to the inventions of democracy and the World Wide Web–innovations that disrupted the status quo and have become widely adopted in the world. The President made clear that digital residency was not the end of the journey, but rather the first step of their vision. A vision that includes “building the foundational infrastructure for digital existence.”

“Just like democracy or the World Wide Web, digital residency is starting with just one idea, one vision. But soon, it will be ubiquitous, and take the world by storm…Already, we’ve seen more than 300,000 people sign up for our digital residency waiting list, and that’s in entirely less than one month. Truth be told, a world of 7 billion digital residents is only just a few years away.” – President Surangel Whipps Jr.

Via the RNS platform, the application process for new digital residents is a seamless Web3 experience, enabling users from around the world to apply and get approved from the comfort of their homes. Once approved, users will be issued a digital resident ID card, both physically and on the blockchain as a non-fungible token (NFT). Interested users can apply for Palau Digital Residency at www.rns.id.

About RNS

RNS is the world’s first sovereign-backed blockchain-native digital residency platform.