Digital Asset and Paul Ryan’s American Idea Foundation Plan Canton Benefits Pilot

Digital Asset, the creator of the Canton Network, and former US House Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Idea Foundation plan to pilot a blockchain-based system for distributing state-administered benefits across three US states using Canton, as reported by Cointelegraph.

Inside the RISE program

The RISE program is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027 and would combine multiple benefits into monthly or twice-monthly payments, with spending rules applied to categories including food, child care, and cash. The monthly or twice-monthly structure is designed to consolidate what are often separate, siloed benefit payments into a single stream governed by program-specific spending rules. According to Friday’s announcement, the system would automatically adjust benefit levels as household income changes, and would let participating agencies track payments, balances, spending, and compliance data through Canton.

Privacy by design

Digital Asset said Canton would coordinate the rules, permissions, and transactions used to distribute benefits while limiting access to sensitive information. That permissioned design is central to the pitch: agencies could share a single ledger without exposing the full personal data of recipients to every party on the network. While the announcement did not detail the underlying technical safeguards, it made limiting exposure to sensitive information an explicit part of the design.

Ryan’s case for reform

Ryan framed the pilot as a way to fix what he describes as a fragmented safety net, pointing to penalties that can occur as benefit recipients’ incomes rise. “By combining fragmented benefits, reducing penalties as families earn more, and rigorously measuring results, these pilots can help show what a modern safety net should look like,” Ryan said.

Scope, approvals, and Canton’s track record

The companies did not name the participating states or specify which benefit programs would be included, and said the pilots remain subject to federal approval. The effort would add a public-benefits use case to Canton, whose recent growth has centered on institutional finance, including projects involving government securities. In April, Japan Securities Clearing Corporation, Mizuho, Nomura, and Digital Asset launched a proof of concept testing Japanese government bonds as digital collateral under Japan’s Financial Services Agency Payment Innovation Project. In July, Canton settled a tokenized US Treasury trade between Franklin Templeton and Virtu Financial, with Tradeweb handling execution and price discovery, against USDCx in real time — a settlement Tradeweb described as an industry first. Canton’s native Canton Coin has a market capitalization of about $4.1 billion, ranking 23rd among cryptocurrencies, and is up around 10% over the past week, according to CoinGecko.

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