A historic step: U.S. official GDP data will be stored on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major blockchains.

Author: Frank, PANews

On August 28, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that starting from July 2025, actual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data will be published on the blockchain. The first types of data will include six types related to actual GDP (GDP), Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, and actual final sales to domestic private purchasers, among others.

This data on-chain involves 9 public chains and 2 oracle networks. For the crypto industry, this marks a transition of core data from the world's most important economies from traditional centralized institutions to being natively available on-chain. On one hand, this government-led data on-chain brings new endorsement to the crypto world. On the other hand, it is also another symbolic move by the Trump administration in advancing the "Crypto Capital."

Dual-layer architecture of "certificate" and "application"

First, from a technical perspective, PANews will organize the process of data on-chain.

According to the official statement from the U.S. Department of Commerce, its core operation is to embed the cryptographic hash value of the official GDP report PDF file, which is the unique "digital fingerprint" of this document, into the transactions of these nine chains. 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 on-chain hash value with the hash value reported by the official report.

In addition, this time the data on-chain also selected two leading oracle platforms, Chainlink and Pyth. As middleware services between blockchain and the real world, the main task of oracles is to securely and reliably "feed" external (off-chain) real data to the blockchain network.

GDP data contract on Ethereum

Therefore, choosing Chainlink and Pyth can better distribute the data that has already been on-chain to the applications and ecosystems that need to adopt the data. Chainlink's official website has now launched a dashboard feature for these six data points.

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

There seems to be some conflict here, but it is actually not due to information synchronization errors. Rather, the blockchain lists mentioned by the two parties serve different roles in this process. Simply put, the nine public chains announced by the U.S. Department of Commerce belong to the original data verification networks used for proof. In contrast, the ten blockchain networks announced by Chainlink are the first batch of supported blockchain networks for its data feed service. The common characteristic of these chains is that they are all active smart contract platforms (mainly Ethereum and its Layer 2 scaling networks).

Political "staging"? But beneficial for on-chain products

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

From the perspective of the cryptocurrency industry, the integration of this data on-chain, especially with the access 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 economic data from the United States, which is beneficial for the stability of products such as stablecoins, RWA, and prediction markets that are linked to this official data.

From another angle, the initiative of putting data on the blockchain has a deep and complex relationship with the historical actions of President Trump himself and his administration's questioning of the reliability of official data.

During his presidency, Trump publicly criticized unfavorable economic data (such as GDP growth or employment figures) multiple times as "manipulated" or "biased." In August, he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, due to an unsatisfactory jobs report, accusing her of releasing "false" data.

From the perspective of the U.S. Department of Commerce, writing data such as GDP on the blockchain seems to be a proactive response to the doubts regarding the authenticity of the data under Trump. However, many American media outlets believe that such manipulation does not fully resolve the issue of data fabrication. After all, the act of putting data on the blockchain only addresses the issue of data verification, but it does not ensure the objectivity and authenticity of the core data sources.

PYTH soars, while public chain tokens remain "unmoved".

Regardless of the ultimate goals and actual outcomes, this data on-chain initiative led by the U.S. government can ultimately be summarized as a further recognition of blockchain.

However, based on the list of public chains released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, it seems that the governance tokens of these public chains have not seen a rise stimulated by this news. The Chainlink token LINK, which is established for cooperation, did experience a quick surge on the evening of the 28th, but the price then fell again as the overall market weakened.

The only one that has clearly been stimulated by this news is Pyth, whose token price rapidly rose from around $0.11 before the announcement to a high of $0.25, with a maximum increase of 110% in one day, and a market capitalization growth of over $600 million.

From this divergence, the surge of the PYTH token may perhaps be driven by proactive capital support. The actual backing of this news may not be strong.

However, this may just be the beginning. Secretary of Commerce Rutenik clearly stated during the announcement that the plan is to promote this blockchain-based data infrastructure to all federal agencies after the Department of Commerce "finalizes all details." This means that in the future, various public data from the U.S. government may be published in a similar manner.

Overall, the recent on-chain activity of U.S. data, while not having a strong immediate stimulating effect on the market, may have a greater long-term impact on the entire crypto industry. This marks the opening of a new door for mainstream public chains to serve as the core layer for data storage in the future.