Digital Asset and the American Idea Foundation have tapped Canton Network to pilot a new way of delivering US social benefits — a move that could bring blockchain-style permissioned ledgers into welfare programs if federal regulators sign off. What’s happening - The two organizations will back three states to test the Resources for Independence, Stability, and Employment (RISE) program. The pilots are slated to start in Q1 2027, pending federal approval. The states, federal agencies involved, and the specific benefit programs were not disclosed. - Canton Network will supply the technology to distribute, track and audit benefits during the pilots. Why it matters - US benefit programs are often fragmented: different eligibility rules, reporting requirements, payment dates and income limits make coordination hard for both recipients and agencies. RISE aims to let states combine multiple program payments into one or two monthly disbursements while preserving each program’s rules. - The platform would let states allocate funds into categories (food, childcare, cash, etc.), enforce spending restrictions, verify identity and participation, and provide mobile access. It would also recalculate benefit levels as household income changes to reduce abrupt loss of support when recipients earn more. How the system would work - States could encode program rules and permissions into Canton’s distribution layer so the rules apply at the time of payment rather than being policed afterwards. - Authorized agencies would get role-based access to deposits, purchases, balances, declined transactions and category-level spending. Nonprofit case managers and independent researchers could view information appropriate to their roles. - Government dashboards would surface enrollment, pending approvals, completed tasks, payment eligibility and total distributed value, with access limited by each organization’s permissions to protect privacy. - Transaction records would create an audit trail agencies can use to monitor compliance and spot payments that violate program conditions. Quotes and goals - Paul Ryan, founder of the American Idea Foundation, framed the pilots as a test of “what a modern safety net should look like,” seeking to combine benefits, reduce work disincentives, and measure results rigorously. - Yuval Rooz, Digital Asset’s co-founder and CEO, said Canton enables approved participants to coordinate transactions and share rules while preserving institutional privacy and control. RISE would repurpose Canton’s permission system from capital-market settlement to public-benefit administration. Evaluation and next steps - The evaluation phase will monitor employment, earnings, benefit use, education and training, housing, and household stability. Governments and independent evaluators will receive transaction and compliance data during the program rather than only in later reviews. - Results from the first three states will inform subsequent pilots. The organizations said later versions could be adapted to different state rules, case-management systems and recipient groups but gave no timeline for further rollouts. Canton’s track record (relevant context) - Canton has focused on regulated financial transactions where participants share selected information without publishing everything on a public ledger. - Recent projects involving Digital Asset and Canton include: - A June proof-of-concept with Visa and Brale testing private stablecoin settlement (SBC) that keeps confidential transaction data limited to involved parties and regulators. - An August Japanese repo trial with four MUFG companies, Digital Asset and Progmat exploring automated processing and real-time settlement for government-bond–backed repos, including tokenized deposits or stablecoins for payments. - An April trial with Japan Securities Clearing Corporation, Mizuho and Nomura testing digital collateral movement for government bonds under existing law. - A cross-chain swap engine launched in August by Interstice Digital connecting Canton with Ethereum, Solana and Robinhood Chain (FalconX provides liquidity). - On the retail/institutional access side, 21Shares launched the Nasdaq-listed Canton ETF (ticker TCAN) in May, giving brokerage customers exposure to Canton Coin without holding the token. The ETF has a 0.50% gross expense ratio. 21Shares noted institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Deutsche Bank participated in network testing, validation or governance, but cautioned that such participation is not an endorsement of the token or ETF. Market snapshot - Canton Coin was trading near $0.107 on Aug. 21, with a market capitalization around $4.2 billion, ranked about 23rd among cryptocurrencies, and up roughly 9% over the prior seven days. Bottom line If approved, the RISE pilots would be one of the highest-profile attempts to apply permissioned distributed-ledger tech to public-benefit delivery — combining program consolidation, automated compliance, privacy controls and auditable transaction records. The coming federal review and the results from the three-state pilots will determine whether this approach scales more broadly. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news