US Department of Commerce starts posting GDP data on public blockchains

The US Department of Commerce has begun posting macroeconomic data on public blockchains – the administration’s latest move in putting its money, or in this case national economic data, where its mouth is as regards embracing the use of innovative technology.

Best-known for powering cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and increasingly used in fields such as supply-chain management, blockchain is a distributed-ledger technology (DLT) that securely records transactions in ‘blocks’ linked together using cryptographic hashes to form a tamper-proof ‘chain’. It allows multiple participants to verify, store and share data without need for a central authority. 

The Department of Commerce announced this week (28 August) that it will begin posting real gross domestic product (GDP) data on blockchain, starting with July 2025 data.

‘This is the first time a federal agency has published economic statistical data like this on the blockchain, and the latest way the Department is utilising innovative technology to protect federal data and promote public use,’ the Department of Commerce stated in its announcement.  

‘Through this landmark effort, the Department hopes to demonstrate the wide utility of blockchain technology. It also aims to demonstrate a proof-of-concept for all of government, and to build on the Trump Administration’s historic efforts to make the United States of America the blockchain capital of the world,’ the announcement added.

Nine blockchains involved

The accuracy and integrity of US economic data has become an increasingly high profile topic since Trump returned to the White House in January. Earlier this month (August) he fired Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a monthly jobs report infuriated him, posting on his social media platform Truth Social: ‘In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad… But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!’.

“It’s only fitting that the Commerce Department and President Donald Trump, the Crypto-President, publicly release economic statistical data on the blockchain,” said US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick in this week’s announcement. “We are making America’s economic truth immutable and globally accessible like never before, cementing our role as the blockchain capital of the world.”

The department published what it describes as an ‘official hash’ of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)’s quarterly GDP data release for 2025’s second quarter – and, in some cases, the topline GDP figure for 2025’s second quarter – to nine blockchains in total. Data was also further disseminated through coordination with two ‘oracles’ (oracles are entities that connect blockchains to external systems) while three exchanges ‘helped facilitate the Department’s publishing’, the announcement detailed.

The nine blockchains are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Stellar, Avalanche, Arbitrum One, Polygon PoS and Optimism. The oracles are Pyth (Pyth Network) and Chainlink. The exchanges – used by the department to buy cryptocurrency needed to pay for posting transactions on the blockchains, according to a report by news agency Bloomberg – are Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken. 

‘The Department will continue to innovate and broaden the scope of publishing future datasets like GDP to include the use of other blockchains, oracles and exchanges,’ according to the announcement.

Howard Lutnick: the commerce secretary posted a 55 second video on X (formerly Twitter) promoting the quarterly GDP data release and use of blockchain

Hashes and oracles

The Department of Commerce provides technical details in its press announcement of the data release (available as a pdf).

This hash was published to the nine blockchains ‘either as a memo or as data embedded in a smart contract, along with the topline figure, as each chain permitted,’ the department explains (it provides the transaction hash or smart contract address for each blockchain). It also highlights that data from the BEA – a bureau within the Department of Commerce – can be found through the BEA’s Application Programming Interface (API).

In a blogpost published on the same day (28 August), Chainlink stated that ‘new Chainlink Data Feeds [are now] securely deliver[ing] critical information around key US economic data onchain, including Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, and Real Final Sales to Private Domestic Purchasers.’ 

‘By bringing macroeconomic data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis onchain, Chainlink is showcasing how trusted oracle networks can serve as critical infrastructure connecting public institutions with blockchain markets, unlocking new innovations while supporting compliance and regulatory progress in the United States,’ Chainlink stated.

‘Without question, this marks a critical step forward in the public sector’s embrace of decentralised infrastructure,’ Pyth stated in its own blogpost (28 August).

‘The integrity of economic data is essential to global markets, and bringing this data onchain opens up new frontiers for transparency, accessibility, and composability across DeFi [decentralised finance], enterprise use cases and public accountability,’ Pyth added, stating that ‘this new initiative reflects a deliberate effort by the US government to harness cryptographic tools to increase confidence in public information systems.’