From startup to state partner: How BayaniChain built blockchain systems for the government

MANILA, Philippines — Rather than beginning with code, BayaniChain began with conviction.

Long before public institutions used its systems, before enterprise partnerships validated its architecture, and before the phrase “infrastructure” became attached to its name, BayaniChain was simply an idea shared among young Filipino builders who believed technology could strengthen trust itself.

Today, BayaniChain stands as an emerging infrastructure company working with major enterprises and public institutions. But at its core, the story is not about blockchain. It is about vision, partnership and persistence.

The spark

For Paul Soliman, BayaniChain’s co-founder and CEO, the seeds were planted years before the company formally existed.

Around 2016, he was experimenting with private Ethereum networks while building enterprise resource planning systems. His background in ERP exposed long-standing issues in reconciliation, auditability and data integrity.

Later, his work as a Microsoft MVP and regional director deepened his understanding of large-scale institutional system design and zero-trust security models.

The breakthrough insight came when he realized blockchain should not merely power digital assets. It could secure records, truth and accountability. That shift reframed everything.

Meanwhile, for Gelo Wong, co-founder and chief growth officer of BayaniChain, the entry point was different. During the pandemic, he discovered cryptocurrency out of curiosity. But as he studied further, he began to see blockchain not as speculation, but as infrastructure.

“I realized it could apply across sectors—finance, government records, public transparency,” he shares. “What fascinated me was the idea of trust being built into systems rather than relying solely on institutions.”

At 18, he launched Likha, a blockchain-based platform for creators and brands. It was designed to make digital collectibles and ownership seamless and verifiable. At the time, national infrastructure was not yet the goal. It was simply about solving a real problem for artists and communities.

Those early experiments taught the team how to build quickly, iterate responsibly and deploy in real-world environments.

Raph Sevilla, who would later serve as co-founder and COO, helped transform that energy into operational discipline. From the beginning, he understood that vision alone would not be enough.

“Most people with a strong vision underinvest in operational discipline,” he says. “Vision without a rigid execution framework is just a hallucination.”

Risk and breakthrough

BayaniChain made a deliberate decision early on: to build enterprise-grade integrity infrastructure while much of the blockchain market focused on speculative models.

That meant investing in audit trails, document anchoring and verifiable systems without guaranteed demand. It meant engineering for compliance and stability rather than hype.

Operating as a lean team, they could not afford brute force solutions. According to Sevilla, they built a risk-first operational foundation, mapping internal capabilities carefully and allocating resources strictly toward structural stability.

Every deployment required stress-tested delivery mechanisms. In high-stakes institutional environments, there was no margin for error.

The inflection point came when GCash became their first major enterprise partner.

For a startup, collaborating with a platform serving millions was more than a business win. It validated the architecture. It demonstrated that their systems could meet stringent security and compliance requirements.

For Wong, this was the moment the vision expanded. “The technology wasn’t niche. It could operate at scale.”

Soon after, conversations with the Department of Budget and Management broadened their perspective even further. The idea shifted from building applications to building infrastructure.

That transition from startup product to institutional backbone defined the next chapter of BayaniChain.

Over the past few years, BayaniChain has helped design and deploy several first-of-their-kind implementations.

With the congress and the Department of Information and Communications Technology, they worked on the General Appropriations Act blockchain portal, now live at blockchain.open.gov.ph, enabling public verification of national budget documents.

With the Department of Budget and Management, they helped implement what is widely considered the world’s first operational national budget blockchain system, live at blockchain.dbm.gov.ph, securing and verifying SARO and NCA records tied to public funds.

In collaboration with the Blockchain Council of the Philippines, they supported the launch of a blockchain system for the Department of Public Works and Highways focused on data integrity and infrastructure transparency.

At the local level, they piloted an LGU blockchain system with Baguio City under Mayor Benjie Magalong, now live at goodgovchain.ph, serving as a reference model for local government digital trust systems.

What began as experimentation in NFTs had matured into infrastructure supporting public accountability.

Walking into rooms filled with seasoned executives and senior officials as young founders was not without skepticism. Wong acknowledges that being underestimated was part of the journey. But rather than responding defensively, the team chose to let execution speak.

“Systems went live. Integrations worked. Deliverables were met,” he says. “Over time, credibility compounds.”

Behind the scenes, the company matured from generalist hustle into structured operational systems. Sevilla’s mandate as COO was to channel early agility into long-term stability, aligning high-velocity execution with enterprise-grade processes.

The goal was permanence, not noise.

Engineering a structural legacy

For Soliman, the legacy BayaniChain hopes to leave is structural.