Baguio City taps BayaniChain for ‘GoodGovChain’ as pilot site: Aligns with Sen. Bam Aquino’s ‘Blockchain the Budget’ bill
by: Nonnette C. Bennett, photo courtesy of Blockchain
Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong (front row, second from left) and BayaniChain CEO Paul Soliman (front row, second from right), joined by city officials and the BayaniChain team, sign a Memorandum of Agreement to pilot GoodGovChain, introducing blockchain-verified public records to advance open governance and accelerate the city’s digital transformation.
Baguio City — Baguio City Mayor Benjamin “Benjie” Magalong recently teamed up with BayaniChain, a pioneering blockchain firm, to launch and test “GoodGovChain,” a governance platform that enables local government units (LGUs) to record budgets, procurement data, and infrastructure projects on a secure blockchain.
Built on BayaniChain’s Digital Public Asset (DPA) Framework, powered by Prismo Protocol and Lumen Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), GoodGovChain gives citizens open access to verified records through a user-friendly dashboard while protecting sensitive data. The platform runs on a hybrid public-private blockchain so entries are unchangeable and auditable at scale.
In simple terms, blockchain is a shared digital logbook that many parties hold and can check. Each entry is time-stamped and linked to the previous one, which makes the history easy to verify and unalterable.
“GoodGovChain is the blueprint for verifiable governance—replicable, auditable, and tamper-evident by default, so citizens can verify the record directly. Baguio City, the first LGU to adopt it, sets the benchmark in our advocacy for improved accountability in local governance across the Philippines and Southeast Asia,” said Paul Soliman, CEO of BayaniChain.
The pilot runs in the cloud for fast rollout and easy scale. While the cloud adds ongoing operating costs, the program is designed to more than offset them through immediate savings—reduced printing and courier costs, lower storage needs, faster document retrieval, and shorter audit cycles.
GoodGovChain doesn’t replace printed records or finance systems; it adds a secure, tamper-evident digital seal to each approved document so anyone can verify that a PDF or printout matches the original. Powered by Polygon’s energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) network, the platform is far lighter than legacy proof-of-work systems and, by moving verification online, further cuts paper use and transport.
The announcement comes as Senator Bam Aquino files the “Blockchain the Budget” bill, which seeks to secure and monitor the national budget from allocation to disbursement using blockchain. GoodGovChain puts that vision into practice, showing how the technology can be deployed across national agencies and LGUs, beginning with Baguio City.
“One of the basic principles of good governance is transparency, and the use of blockchain will allow us to be transparent, especially in our government transactions, financial transactions, and infrastructure projects,” said Baguio City Mayor Benjie Magalong. “What is very important here is the security of all these documents and transactions, and the only way we’ll be able to truly have open data is to ensure everything is placed on blockchain before publishing it.”
He added that the technology gives the city confidence to open its data without fear of tampering or hacking, and that Baguio will encourage fellow mayors who champion good governance to adopt the same approach.
GoodGovChain follows the same hybrid architecture as the DBM Blockchain System at <blockchain.dbm.gov.ph,> which currently secures Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs) and Notices of Cash Allocation (NCAs)—two critical documents in the national disbursement process. Senator Aquino cited this innovation in his “Blockchain the Budget” bill, calling for blockchain to become a national standard for transparency and accountability.
With Baguio City as its pilot partner, GoodGovChain signals the future of transparent digital governance in the Philippines and sets a clear path for other LGUs to follow.
Additionally, BayaniChain is a trusted blockchain infrastructure provider for government and enterprises. It delivers secure, transparent, and scalable systems that enable institutions to harness blockchain for real-world impact. Through partnerships with fintechs, telecoms, and public agencies, BayaniChain is helping build Southeast Asia’s next-generation digital infrastructure.
