On Tuesday, Romania’s National Institute for Research and Development In Informatics, also known as ICI Bucharest (ICI), announced that it would be building an institutional nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, marketplace and a decentralized Domain Name System.

Both services will be built on the Elrond (EGLD) blockchain, which is known for its ability to speed up transactions via sharding. ICI was founded in 1970 and is currently the most institution for government-sponsored research in the field of information technology in Romania. It currently supervises the Romanian National Register for Domain Names. 

As told by Elrond, the initiatives would be the first of their kind within the European Union. One use for the NFT marketplace would potentially be to digitize, access, transfer and store official documents, property deeds, or various certificates via a decentralized blockchain identity.

Meanwhile, ICI seeks to leverage Elrond’s 3,200 strong network validators to overcome the security vulnerabilities of legacy DNS and TLD systems. Adrian Victor Vevera, general director of ICI Bucharest, commented:

“Web 3.0 technologies can transform public administration and help its institutions and processes leap forward in terms of efficiency and speed while decreasing costs, overhead, and excessive bureaucratic activities.”

Elrond claims its blockchain can process up to 15,000 transactions per second with six-second latency, is carbon-negative, and has negligible transaction costs. This was not Elrond’s first venture in Romania. Three months prior, the National Bank of Romania approved Elrond’s proposal to purchase Romanian fintech Capital Financial Services, also known as Twispay.