Philippines Rely on Blockchain Technology to Combat Corruption

After massive protests against corruption allegations involving multi-billion dollar flood control projects, the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways has introduced a blockchain-based transparency system. The "Integrity Chain," developed by BayaniChain Ventures, was presented as a platform to record the department's contracts and project progress in a tamper-proof digital ledger. BayaniChain CEO and co-founder Paul Soliman stated that the goal is to "transform government records into digital public assets that can be immutable, verifiable, and openly validated." In the long term, the initiative aims to help secure the entire annual budget of the Philippines, estimated at $98 billion. This measure was launched after around 130,000 people participated in protests on September 21, which marked the 53rd anniversary of the imposition of martial law by former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. The protesters demanded greater accountability following revelations of overpriced contracts and substandard construction work in the department’s flood control program. For the technical implementation of the Integrity Chain, the system directly accesses the department's data and tags each contract, budget release, and project milestone as a digital public asset. The platform operates on the Polygon network, an Ethereum-compatible scaling solution that serves as a consensus and transparency layer. Various independent organizations act as validators of the system to confirm the accuracy of the entries. Each action of these validators is also recorded as a public asset to ensure transparency and accountability. A unified voting system prevents any one sector from dominating the validation process.