Qore3 and the Gyalpozhing College of Information Technology signed a memorandum of understanding during TOKEN2049 Week in Singapore, formalizing a partnership that will put MPC wallet infrastructure in front of 21 rural households in Rukha Village, Bhutan. The first piece of joint applied research under what the two are calling Project Digital Village is meant to test whether utility-token community finance and AI-assisted wallets can work outside the usual crypto corridors.
Rukha sits in Wangdue Phodrang district. The Tarayana Foundation, set up in 2003 by Her Majesty Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, is a partner. Its integrated community development programme started in Rukha and has since reached more than 150 villages across the country.
What the Rukha pilot actually deploys
Three things go into the field. The first is a non-custodial MPC wallet with role-based controls and approval thresholds — the same product Qore3 sells to institutions, funds, fintechs and payment platforms. The second is a utility token model for community finance. The third is a pilot of AI-assisted digital wallets.
That's an unusual stack for a rural deployment. MPC wallets split a private key across multiple parties so no single device holds the whole thing, which matters when the user is a household rather than a treasury desk. The token piece is the part with the least precedent — community finance via utility token has been tried plenty of times and stuck almost never, so the pilot is worth watching for what the researchers publish afterward.
Fieldwork already started in August
This isn't a signed-and-shelved arrangement. Researchers from GCIT and Tarayana went to Rukha in August 2026 to assess the village's needs and existing community practices. GCIT President Audrey Low and Qore3 Head of Partnerships Jeffrey Cheong made the trip.
The two institutions aren't new to each other either. Qore3 and GCIT have been working together since early 2025 on capacity development, curriculum design and talent recruitment. The MOU turns that into something with a field component.
HSLU joins as research partner
Switzerland's Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts is also on board, which gives the project an academic layer alongside the industry one. The stated goal is to bring blockchain players, educators and researchers together to build real applications for distributed ledger technology — a line that gets said a lot, but in this case there's a named village and a household count attached to it.
Where the MOU was signed
The signing happened at Digital After Hours, a networking evening Qore3 hosted at CHIJMES during TOKEN2049 Week. The event ran a panel on building trusted infrastructure for institutional crypto, with speakers from Chainalysis, NEAR Foundation, Kiln and Failsafe.
GCIT is based in Kabesa, Thimphu, and runs its programmes through the School of Future Computing and the School of Interactive Design and Development, folding industry projects, technopreneurship and applied research into the curriculum. Qore3 is Singapore-based and a member of the Singapore FinTech Association.
What's next is the pilot itself. The 21 Rukha households are the test group, and the open question is whether a token-based community finance model survives contact with a village that has its own existing practices — the researchers went in August specifically to find out what those are. No timeline for results has been announced.
