RockawayX launches UAE HQ, unveils Solana City to position Dubai as global blockchain hub

Arabian Business

25-04-2025

RockawayX, a global venture capital firm backing Web3 founders, announced the launch of its UAE headquarters.
It also unveiled Solana City, a pioneering collaborative workspace and ecosystem designed to establish Dubai as the epicentre of global blockchain innovation.
'Moving the headquarters to the UAE was a strategic decision, given that the country has the highest crypto penetration rate in the world – 3 million crypto owners, accounting for 30 per cent of the population,' RockawayX said in a media release.
Viktor Fischer, CEO of RockawayX, said Dubai is on track to overtake Europe and rival the United States as the next global blockchain hub.
'With forward-thinking regulation, infrastructure designed for speed and scale, and crypto adoption rates surpassing 30 per cent – the highest in the world – it offers exactly what the next decade of Web3 innovation needs,' said Fischer, a former McKinsey associate partner and alumnus of HEC Paris and INSEAD, who is steering RockawayX toward long-term expansion in the UAE.
RockawayX expands to Dubai
Solana City will launch in Q East, an iconic landmark in the shifting and technology-centric landscape of Dubai with state-of-the-art facilities built with technology at its core.
'Dubai has become a global hub for blockchain innovation. I'm excited to support RockawayX on Solana City — a bold initiative giving our ecosystem in the UAE the infrastructure it needs to scale, benefiting both Solana and the local economy,' said Alex Scott, Superteam Middle East.
The announcement on new headquarters and Solana City follows a year of foundational work in the region, during which RockawayX relocated senior leadership and engineering talent from Europe, hired regional professionals, and deployed to date over $3 million in local investments.
Dubai now serves as a permanent base for a 10-person team, positioning the firm at the heart of one of the world's fastest-growing crypto economies, the engineering-first blockchain investment firm managing over $2 billion in assets, said.
Under Fischer's leadership, RockawayX is emerging as a regional counterpart to firms like Galaxy Digital, combining venture capital, infrastructure, and innovation — all anchored in deep technical expertise.
A cornerstone of the firm's UAE vision is Solana City, a co-working and ecosystem-building initiative conceived by RockawayX.
With 48 initial units and plans to scale tenfold, Solana City is designed as a dedicated hub for blockchain builders, funders, and founders.
It represents the first physical blockchain city in Dubai, echoing the emirate's successful vertical clusters in media, healthcare, and fintech, and opens new partnership opportunities across sectors.
RockawayX's local activity already includes major investments in Squads, a multi-signature wallet infrastructure platform built on Solana, and Exponent, a fast-scaling DeFi protocol.
Globally, the firm operates dedicated bare-metal servers supporting 54 Proof-of-Stake blockchains and ranks as the top Ethereum validator on rated networks.
It also runs specialised GPU servers for zero-knowledge proof generation and actively supports network reliability through snapshot infrastructure, ensuring validators can rejoin congested networks at speeds of up to 10GB per second.
The firm's strategic alliances with hundreds of major players, including Binance, Bybit, A16z Crypto, Solana, and the Wormhole protocol – where RockawayX is one of only 19 global guardians – amplify its ability to scale ventures across liquidity, infrastructure, and distribution.
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