What does it take to get a government to react? In the Philippines, 130 people took to the streets and a $33 billion scandal. On September 21, 2025, Manila ground to a halt: citizens demanding to know where the flood control funds had gone. Projects that were "completed" but didn't exist, inflated contracts, buildings that collapse at the first rain. A system of corruption that has no qualms about human lives.
The response came three days later, but it wasn't just another commission of inquiry. It was a blockchain system called Integrity ChainEvery public contract now exists on a distributed ledger, validated by universities, NGOs, and the media. Hiding becomes impossible.
An immutable digital ledger worth $98 billion
Integrity Chain, the system developed in the Philippines, works in a rather radical way. Every Department of Public Works (DPWH) contract, every payment, every project phase is recorded as a digital asset on a Polygon network, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain that ensures transparency.
The data is encrypted, cryptographically timestamped, and anchored on-chain before reaching independent validators. "Any attempt to hide or manipulate information becomes visible rather than hidden," he explains. Frost Wong, chief growth officer of BayaniChain, the company that developed the system.
The mechanism provides that Over 40 non-governmental organizations, universities, media groups, and civic associations review and certify each entry. Their actions are in turn recorded as public assets, creating a double level of accountability. Validator keys are hardware-protected, periodically rotated, and assigned randomly to avoid conflicts of interest. Finally, the "one organization, one vote" model prevents a single sector from dominating the process.
The declared objective is ambitious: Once extended to other government agencies, the system could “protect the entire annual budget of the Philippines”, estimated at around $98 billion. “Accountability becomes permanent, measurable, and inevitable,” says Paul Soliman, CEO of BayaniChain.
“Public trust is rebuilt not on promises, but on encryption, open validation, and a system where citizens themselves verify the results.”
Philippines, from the squares to the code
The protests of September 21 were no accident. That date marks the anniversary of martial law declared by Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1972, father of the current president. A period remembered for human rights abuses, censorship, and systemic corruption. When revelations emerged about overpriced contracts, shoddy construction and ghost projects in the flood control program, the square asked for an account. According to theAustralian Institute of International Affairs, over 33 billion dollars had been allocated over 15 years for these projects.
The "Trillion Peso March" demonstration filled Manila and other Philippine cities. Between 50 and 130 citizens marched peacefully, but there were isolated clashes with law enforcement: 216 arrests, 95 officers injured. The anger was directed at a system that promised flood protection (the Philippines faces an average of 20 typhoons a year) but delivered non-existent projects or infrastructure that collapsed at the first storm.
When technology becomes a civic tool
Integrity Chain is not an isolated experiment. The Philippine government had already implemented a system similar to the Department of Budget (DBM) in July 2025, publishing key financial statements on Polygon. The project Prism, the orchestration layer that manages data, encryption, and validation, had already been tested. But the extension to the DPWH, the agency at the center of the scandal, marks a turning point. This is no longer passive transparency: it is active accountability, where civil society becomes an integral part of the verification process.
The Senator Paul Benigno Aquinas IV he proposed the Senate Bill 1330, known as “Blockchain the Budget Bill”, which plans to include the entire national budget on blockchain. If approved, the Philippines could become the first country in the world to completely manage its public spending through distributed ledgersA model that other governments are observing with interest, from France to Germany, where pilot projects are already active but not on a national scale.
What if Italy did the same?
Italy is no stranger to public procurement scandals. From North to South, investigations into bribes, shady subcontracts, and unfinished projects regularly fill the courtroom news. The new Public Contracts Code It already provides for the digitalization of the procurement lifecycle, but a distributed validation system like the one in the Philippines is missing. The adoption of a blockchain for procurement could radically transform the relationship between citizens and Italian public administration..
Imagine every tender, every award, every SAL (State of Work Progress) entered into a public register and validated not only by the Court of Auditors but also by universities, professional bodies, and trade associations. The effects would be multiple: Drastic reduction of mafia infiltration in public procurement (the 'Ndrangheta controls approximately 15% of public works according to DIA estimates), the impossibility of creating inflated invoices or phantom supplies, and complete traceability of PNRR funds. Transparency enforced by encryption could expose inefficiencies long, long before they become scandals.
Un recent study from King's College London su LabTrace It has demonstrated how blockchain can effectively certify scientific data and prevent fraud in medical research. The same principle applied to Italian procurement would mean: every design change tracked, every variation during construction publicly justified, every delay documented in an immutable manner. No more ex post facto commissions of inquiry, but real-time prevention.
Philippines, trust in algorithms
The Philippines is betting that trust in institutions can be rebuilt through mathematics. A distributed ledger where truth doesn't depend on those in power, but on consensus verifiable by anyone. It's an experiment worth watching, because if it works in Manila, it could work anywhere corruption hides behind opaqueness.
As Soliman says: "Responsibility isn't promised. It's codified." Perhaps it's time for other countries to take note. In Italy, we still have a lot of opaqueness to illuminate.
