- Senator Bam Aquino proposed putting the national budget on a blockchain so citizens can trace government spending.
- The plan would extend the DBM platform that already records selected financial documents on Polygon.
Philippine Senator Bam Aquino told the Manila Tech Summit that the national budget should be published on a public blockchain so citizens can track outlays in real time. The proposal would build on a Department of Budget and Management platform that already records selected financial documents on Polygon.
Aquino urges on-chain budget tracing and codified release controls
Aquino described the goal as greater auditability of appropriations, allotments and disbursements across agencies. An on chain budget would require a data model that maps appropriations to implementing units and projects with smart contracts that encode release schedules and spending caps.
Agencies could post hash commitments for detailed line items while maintaining sensitive information in existing systems. That approach would limit on chain storage and protect personal data while still allowing independent verification of the state of accounts. Role based permissions for officials who authorise releases would need to be defined alongside public read access for citizens.
DBM uses Polygon for records and could link procurement and payments
The existing DBM platform on Polygon offers a technical base for expansion. Polygon is EVM compatible which allows the use of standard developer tooling and established audit practices. Low per transaction fees support frequent updates if the government posts granular obligation and disbursement events.
A reliable oracle layer would still be required to reconcile entries with treasury and banking systems and to reflect reversals or corrections when needed. Governance rules would need to specify who can submit transactions, how amendments are recorded and how disputes are escalated without undermining immutability guarantees.
Transparency depends on end to end linkage. If the plan advances, agencies could connect purchase orders, contract awards and delivery receipts to the same ledger path as budget releases.
That connection would allow the public to trace funds from appropriation to supplier payment subject to legal privacy constraints. A phased rollout could begin with non sensitive categories such as agency level releases and capital outlays before progressing to programme level details and beneficiary information.
Interfaces with existing enterprise resource planning systems would be necessary to avoid duplicate data entry and to keep cash management intact.
Philippine Senator Bam Aquino proposed at the Manila Tech Summit to put the national budget on-chain so citizens can trace government spending. The plan would expand on the DBM’s current blockchain platform, which already records some financial documents on Polygon.…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 28, 2025
The legal framework will shape the timetable. Congress would need to define the status of on chain records, retention rules and admissibility for audit. The Department of Information and Communications Technology would have to set standards for identity, access and key management for officials who sign transactions.
Business continuity plans must cover recovery from outages and the transfer of signing authority when personnel change. Funding lines for integration and training would be required in the national budget to support the transition and to maintain operations at scale.
Market impact in digital assets looks limited in the near term because the work concerns public administration rather than trading. Even so, government adoption can stimulate local infrastructure providers and systems integrators.
Observers will watch whether Aquino’s proposal receives committee study and whether the DBM publishes a technical roadmap that sets milestones for expanding the Polygon based platform to cover a larger share of the budget record set.
At the time of writing, Polygon is trading at $0.243055 per POL, reflecting a decline of exactly $0.00007, which corresponds to a −0.03 % change from the previous close. The intraday high reached $0.245728, while the low dipped to $0.238452.
