BAGUIO CITY, September 23, 2026. The City Government of Baguio today launched Katibayan,a public records system powered by BYC Ventures (BayaniChain Tech Inc.). Katibayan makescity records audit-ready from the moment they are created and lets both officials and citizensanalyze them with AI. The records range from ordinances to infrastructure procurement.As of September 2026, Katibayan holds 246 city ordinances and 106 infrastructure contractsdated 2021 to 2026, with a combined contract value of ₱275,557,149.66. Each record isanchored on the blockchain, and the city continues to add records as archiving proceeds.

Withover ₱275 million in infrastructure records now verifiable, the city can use AI to audit andanalyze every contract in the archive, not only the ones that draw a complaint.Katibayan succeeds GoodGovChain, the blockchain transparency platform Baguio piloted withBYC Ventures in 2025. GoodGovChain showed that a city's records could be sealed andverified. Katibayan makes those records useful. It runs on Lumen, BYC Ventures' operatingsystem for verifiable truth, which makes each record tamper-evident at creation and turnsverified records into answers. Lumen's AI is powered by Google's Gemini, and its cloudinfrastructure is powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“When I was an investigator in the Philippine National Police, most of the time you could onlydetect an anomaly in a project if someone reported it, if someone spoke up, if someonetestified,” said Mayor Benjamin Magalong.

“Now that we have evolved from the originalblockchain to Katibayan, we can use artificial intelligence to detect potentially anomalousprojects. It will help investigators and auditors fast-track their investigations. It is not the onlysolution to corruption, but it is one of the solutions.” For the public, Katibayan opens the record to plain-language questions. A resident can askwhat the city approved, how much it spent, and who delivered the work. Every answer tracesback to a record that cannot be quietly changed.

“With over ₱275 million in infrastructure contracts now on the blockchain, Baguio can put AI towork on records it knows are intact,” said Gelo Wong, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer ofBYC Ventures and a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2026 honoree.

“The city can look back across years of ordinances and contracts, see which programs delivered and which stalled, and design programs that outlast a single term. Any resident can check their city's records and ask about them in plain language. A city that can prove its own records sets the standard for the rest of the country. We thank Mayor Benjie Magalong for his continued trust and support. His leadership is why Baguio is leading this.”

Baguio's work has already shaped the national debate. Magalong took GoodGovChain to the Senate, delivering a position paper that argued blockchain was built to secure documents. At Senator Bam Aquino's hearing on the Blockchain the Budget bill, the measure now known as the CADENA Act, Magalong called corruption a “cottage industry” and said blockchain would strengthen the city's corruption investigations.

Aquino praised Magalong's leadership onGoodGovChain and said he hoped other local governments would follow Baguio's lead. The Senate passed the Citizen Access and Disclosure of Expenditures for National Accountability (CADENA) Act in December 2025, and the measure awaits action in the House.

Katibayan is Baguio's next step. It shows at city scale what the bill asks of the national government, and it shows what a CADENA-ready local government looks like before the law requires it. “Senator Bam's CADENA Act is good because it will mandate all agencies in the government toupload and use blockchain technology,” Magalong said.

For Magalong, the goal goes beyond efficiency. “Trust is the cornerstone of an institution,” he said. “For the government to be effective and efficient, it has to build trust with the people itserves. When you have trust, people will be more responsive to government.”

“Our vision for Katibayan is to become the go-to platform for audit-ready, verified informationacross public governance,” said Paul Soliman, CEO and Co-Founder of BYC Ventures. “Ourlong-term partnership with Baguio City, which we consider our model city, and the leadershipof Mayor Benjamin Magalong prove our thesis: technology can strengthen transparency andaccountability when it is backed by sustained institutional commitment.”

“In the long term, Katibayan is about preserving evidentiary data, creating digital records that can endure beyond administrations, systems, and political cycles,” Soliman added. “The goal is to give institutions, auditors, journalists, and citizens the ability to independently verify public information, so that years from now, the evidence remains accessible, verifiable, and intact. We are building Katibayan for a world that demands proof.”