A historic step: US official GDP data will be stored on 9 major public chains including Bitcoin and Ethereum

By Frank, PANews

On August 28, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it would publish real gross domestic product (GDP) data on a blockchain, starting with data from July 2025. The first six data types will include real GDP, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, and actual final sales to domestic private buyers.

This data on-chain migration involves nine public blockchains and two oracle networks. For the crypto industry, this signifies that the core data of the world's most important economies is moving from traditional centralized institutions to native on-chain availability. On the one hand, this government-led data on-chain migration provides new credibility for the crypto world. On the other hand, it represents another symbolic move by the Trump administration to promote its "Crypto Capital" initiative.

Two-tier architecture of "certificate storage" and "application"

First, from a technical perspective, PANews will sort out the process of uploading data to the chain.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce's official statement, the core operation involves embedding the cryptographic hash of the official GDP report PDF file, known as its unique "digital fingerprint," into transactions on nine blockchains. The first blockchain networks to be adopted are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Stellar, Avalanche, Arbitrum One, Polygon PoS, and Optimism.

Through this operation, anyone can verify whether the report has been tampered with by comparing the hash value on the chain with the hash value of the official report.

Furthermore, Chainlink and Python, two leading oracle platforms, were selected for this data on-chain integration. These platforms serve as middleware services between blockchain and the real world. Oracles' primary mission is to securely and reliably feed real-world external (off-chain) data to the blockchain network.

GDP data contract on Ethereum

Therefore, choosing Chainlink and Python can better distribute this on-chain data to the applications and ecosystems that need it. Chainlink's official website currently has a dashboard function for these six data points.

However, unlike the nine public chains announced by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Chainlink's information shows that it currently supports ten public chain networks, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Botanix, Ethereum, Linea, Mantle, Optimism, Sonic and ZKsync.

This may seem like a discrepancy, but it's not due to a synchronization error. Rather, the blockchains mentioned in the two lists play different roles in the process. Simply put, the nine public chains listed by the US Department of Commerce are original data verification networks used for evidence storage. The ten blockchain networks announced by Chainlink are the initial group of blockchains supported by its data feed service. These chains share a common characteristic: they are all active smart contract platforms (primarily Ethereum and its Layer 2 expansion network).

Political “showmanship”? But it benefits on-chain products

What are the actual pain points of this data chain? The real reasons behind it may come from two aspects.

From the perspective of the crypto industry, this data on-chain, especially the connection to leading oracles such as Chainlink and Pyth, can provide the crypto industry with a more direct and authoritative source of GDP and other core US economic data, which is conducive to the stability of products such as stablecoins, RWAs, and prediction markets that are linked to this official data.

From another perspective, the move to put data on the blockchain has a profound and complex relationship with President Trump and his administration's historical behavior of questioning the reliability of official data.

During his presidency, Trump has repeatedly publicly accused unfavorable economic data (such as GDP growth or employment data) of being "manipulated" or "biased." In August, he fired Erika McEntarfer, director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over a poor jobs report and accused her of releasing "fake" data.

From the perspective of the U.S. Department of Commerce, putting data like GDP on-chain seems to be a proactive response to Trump's skepticism about the data's authenticity. However, many in the U.S. media have argued that such manipulation cannot completely solve the problem of data falsification. After all, putting data on-chain only provides data evidence, but it cannot guarantee the objectivity and authenticity of the data's core source.

PYTH skyrocketed, while public chain tokens remained “indifferent”

Regardless of the ultimate goal and actual effect, this data chain initiative led by the US government can ultimately be summarized as a further recognition of blockchain.

However, judging by the list of public chains released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the governance tokens of these chains did not seem to experience a surge in value due to the news. Chainlink's LINK token, which is part of the partnership, did experience a rapid surge on the evening of the 28th, but subsequently fell again as the broader market weakened.

The only one that was significantly stimulated by this news was Pyth. The price of its token quickly rose from around $0.11 before the news was released to a high of $0.25, with a daily increase of up to 110%, and its market value increased by more than $600 million.

Judging from this divergence, the surge in PYTH tokens may be due to active capital support. The actual support for this news may not be strong.

However, this may just be the beginning. Commerce Secretary Lutnick made it clear during his announcement that the department plans to expand this blockchain-based data infrastructure to all federal agencies once it finalizes all the details. This means that in the future, all types of public data from the U.S. government may be published in a similar manner.

Overall, while the US data blockchain initiative may not have a strong short-term impact on the market, its long-term impact on the entire crypto industry may be greater. This marks the beginning of a new era for mainstream public blockchains as the core layer of data storage.