Debate intensifies over the Philippines’ move to put parts of the national budget system on blockchain. BayaniChain founder Paul Soliman spoke up to clarify some of the common misconceptions about the government’s use of “NFT technology” has nothing to do with digital art, collectibles, or speculative crypto markets.

Soliman addressed the issue following renewed public discussion around the Cadena Act and the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) blockchain pilots, including in recent industry conversations facilitated by BitPinas, where questions were raised about whether the government is building real transparency, or just an expensive digital layer.

“The background noise around NFTs is mostly art and speculation,” Soliman said. “But if you actually examine how the standard works, it’s really for preserving a document or a record that cannot be duplicated.”

At the center of the clarification is DBM’s system for securing Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs) and Notices of Cash Allocation (NCAs)—two of the most critical documents in government spending—using blockchain and NFT standards.

The term “NFT” has become shorthand for volatile digital collectibles, a reputation that Soliman says now risks obscuring what the technology is actually being used for in government.

“There’s this idea that it’s not acceptable because it was used in the form of art,” he said. “But technically, if you examine how it’s created, it’s really for you to preserve a document or a record that cannot be duplicated.”

Soliman said the DBM system deliberately uses the ERC-721 standard, not because it is trendy, but because it is battle-tested, widely audited, and designed to enforce uniqueness at the protocol level.

“It’s a battle-tested smart contract standard that has been used since 2017,” he said.

In other words, the architecture was chosen for reliability and constraints, and not for hype.

The DBM began piloting the blockchain-based document system in 2024, focusing on: SAROs, which authorize agencies to commit funds; and NCAs, which allow agencies to draw cash from the Treasury.

On July 30, 2025, the agency launched a public verification portal, allowing users to check these documents by reference number or QR code. Since then, newly issued SAROs and NCAs have been recorded on-chain, turning them into tamper-resistant public records instead of editable files in closed systems.

This means the documents are no longer just PDFs or database entries, they are cryptographically verifiable records that anyone can independently check.

Not Your Typical NFT

Soliman also pushed back against the idea that the system works like typical consumer NFTs, which often store data off-chain and rely on metadata links.

“We don’t play with metadata—we put the data on the block itself,” he said. “We want permanence on the data itself.”

By writing the data directly on-chain, the system avoids a common weakness of many NFT projects, where the token exists but the actual content can disappear or be altered elsewhere.

The goal, Soliman said, is censorship resistance and long-term verifiability, not resale, not trading, and not speculation.

Standards as Guardrails, Not Just Tech

Beyond security, Soliman said using a formal token standard also serves as a governance constraint.

“You need a smart contract standard for the government to follow, and not just put any data that they want,” he said. “That’s one of the goals of a standard.”

In practice, this means the technology does not just record documents—it limits how they can be issued, structured, and changed, reducing room for arbitrary or opaque alterations.

A Boring Use Case By Design

For the public, the shift can be understood simply: the government is using blockchain as a digital notary. The NFT is not a collectible, not an investment, and not for sale. It is a digital seal that proves a document is authentic and unchanged.

In an era of deepfakes, document leaks, and data manipulation, Soliman argues that this is exactly where the technology makes sense.

The system, he said, is not about making the government “crypto-native,” but about making records harder to fake, easier to audit, and simpler to verify.