Pakistan to Establish Sovereign ICP Subnet Under New Government MoU

• The Pakistan Digital Authority has signed an MoU with the DFINITY Foundation to establish a sovereign subnet on ICP for national-scale applications.
• The MoU includes expanding access to the Caffeine AI platform, a national messenger app and for DFINITY to become an integral part of Pakistan’s AI strategy.

Pakistan has signed a new agreement with the DFINITY Foundation to launch a sovereign national subnet on the Internet Computer (ICP) network.

The agreement was signed between DFINITY and the Pakistan Digital Authority (PDA) and focuses on ensuring that the country’s data is protected  and remains in the country in an era where AI systems continue to feed on large amounts of data.

The Pakistani subnet is the second national subnet on the Internet Computer network. The first was in Switzerland, launching three weeks ago during Davos, as we reported. It features 13 independent nodes based in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, ensuring that all the country’s data remains within its borders. This boosts security and allows Swiss enterprises to comply with the GDPR stipulations.

On ICP, a subnet is a group of independent nodes that operate their own implementation of the protocol. Each subnet’s nodes arrive at their own consensus, store data and process transactions away from the main network. This allows the network to scale more effectively, isolates security issues as they are limited to specific networks, and allow specialization.

Pakistan Bets its Digital Future on ICP

Under the new MOU, the South Asian country will build the Pakistan Subnet on ICP. The subnet will offer a national messaging application for private, secure and verifiable communications.

“By investing in sovereign cloud infrastructure and modern AI‑ready platforms, we are strengthening national resilience, supporting innovation, and creating new opportunities for our public institutions, students, and entrepreneurs,” stated Sohail Munir, the PDA chair.

DFINITY will also expand access to Caffeine, its AI platform which has become one of the largest in the blockchain world. As CNF reported, the second version of Caffeine, dubbed v2, is now fully live and with hundreds of thousands of builders. Founder Dominic William and his team are now working on v3, which he says will be ready in the next few weeks.

Additionally, DFINITY will establish a local Pakistani office to better serve the country, which is home to over 250 million residents.

William commented:

Pakistan is one of the world’s most crypto-active nations. It ranked third in the most recent Chainalysis global crypto adoption index, only trailing India and the US. The government has also been reported to be in talks with World Liberty Financial, the crypto entity ran by the Trump family, to introduce a dollar-linked stablecoin, as we reported last month.