As the Philippines embarks on a path to digital transformation, government agencies and various organizations are looking in to blockchain technology as a tool to help the country achieve its goal.
Shortly after Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos Jr. was inaugurated as the 17th president of the Philippines last year, his administration announced its desire to streamline government services with the use of new technologies.
In response to the government’s call, the province of Bataan hosted its first blockchain conference on October of last year. The event was attended by local and international blockchain leaders, as well government officials from the Department of Information and Communications Technology— the agency tasked by the President to implement digitalization in the country.
With the aim of putting forward blockchain services to government and businesses, nChain, a global tech company that offers blockchain solutions and products, participated at the event. As Stefan Mathews, nChain co-founder and executive chairman tells Claire Celdran in this episode of CoinGeek Conversations, what followed after the event was a series of talks between nChain and the local government of Bataan that resulted to a memorandum of understanding between the two parties to establish a digital platform for the province to streamline current systems and procedures of government services.
“During the event and several meetings afterwards, I had some fairly deep conversations with Governor Garcia and Congressman Garcia and their vision for this technology and the application of it in government is second to none. I mean, they are very, very progressive thinkers.”
Bataan is poised to become the country’s blockchain hub due to its special economic zone status. Nonetheless, Stefan notes that Bataan’s freeport status is irrelevant to nChain’s objective.
“The reason we're there is the technology and the opportunity to do things with the technology that benefits the province but also benefits the country.”
Coincidentally, Stefan has been residing in Bataan for nine years. He believes Bataan is a natural fit for blockchain activity.
With the aim of forming partnerships and strengthening relations, nChain recently embarked on a series of meetings with government officials, financial institutions and a top university in the country. As a result of these initiatives, nChain has formed a partnership with Ateneo University in delivering blockchain education to its students.
“We will be working with faculty staff to train them on the delivery of blockchain courses, blockchain material.. we will be sponsoring or providing grants or funding projects for three PhD students at the university to extend their research in blockchain here in the Philippines, which also includes making available the entire intellectual property portfolio of nChain for students.. and finally, there is the internship issue, we want to provide internships both in our companies and in terms of what we're doing in Bataan for university students to be able to complete their education.”
On top of the work nChain is doing with Ateneo University, Stefan also announced the company’s plan to launch a Blockchain Dojo incubator in Bataan. Stefan says the initiative goes hand in hand with their aim to “foster Filipino innovation in the building of solutions on the blockchain that will be deployed domestically, but also potentially, internationally, it also allows us to contribute to possibly uncovering a Filipino unicorn.”
Perhaps one of the most memorable part of nChain’s recent activities was Stefan’s meeting with Philippine President “Bong Bong” Marcos. As Stefan says, the casual conversation which took place over lunch at the presidential palace covered a number of topics pertaining to the delivery of blockchain services in Bataa