Philippine government introduces document notarization on Polygon
In the Philippines, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has introduced an on-chain system utilizing the Ethereum layer-2 network Polygon to notarize and track documentation and the expenditure of public funds.
The government contracted Manila-headquartered blockchain technology company BayaniChain Ventures in order to implement the system. The firm took to social media on July 31 to provide details on the DBM Blockchain Project.
Building trust into infrastructure
BayaniChain Ventures CEO Paul Soliman outlined that the new system “builds trust into the infrastructure itself.” The DBM Blockchain Project connects a DBM internal platform, the Action Document Releasing System (ADRS), which creates official budget documentation, with the Lumen Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) system created by BayaniChain.
Lumen functions as a core framework, enabling government systems to connect securely with blockchain infrastructure. Consequently, Lumen facilitates the tokenization of government documents, managing access to those documents and publishing data to a portal.
A third system, Prismo Protocol, interacts with Lumen and ADRS, determining what documentation should be shared with the public and what documentation should remain accessible exclusively to DBM staff.
The upshot of the interaction of these systems is that select budget documentation is published to the Polygon blockchain. Soliman stated that the system provides transparency, enabling members of the public to “see proof, not just promises” with regard to the activity of the government department.
Integrating blockchain into public governance
The Undersecretary at DBM, Maria Francesca Montes Del Rosario, took to Facebook on July 30 to confirm that the DBM blockchain initiative had gone live. She described it as the “first ever Transparency Government Blockchain for immutable and verifiable action documents.” She added:
“We are using cutting edge technology like AI, blockchain, satellite imaging to enhance how we do public policy and governance.”
Del Rosario was quoted by local media as stating that the technology combats the problem of AI deepfakes and fake documents.
Another stakeholder in the development of the system was Exakt IT Services, a local company that specializes in assisting government organizations in the Philippines to bring about digital transformation. Exakt was awarded a contract by DBM to act as a technology partner, supporting the project with technical expertise and infrastructure in order to bring about the implementation of the blockchain solution.
BayaniChain’s Soliman believes that the new system “sets a precedent for transparency and accountability in public finance.” However, the timing of the launch of the service proved to be unfortunate, as it coincided with an outage suffered by the Polygon network.
The outage, which lasted for one hour, disrupted apps running on Polygon. On X, Polygon CEO and Founder Sandeep Nailwal asserted that the incident didn’t prevent the blockchain from operating or producing blocks and with that, user transactions on the network were still being processed.
In better news for the blockchain network, Crypto Analyst Lennaert Snyder reported on July 31 that Polygon has reached a yearly high of $1.2 billion in total value locked (TVL), an 80% increase since March.
