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.

Canton is a privacy-enabled network that connects the independent blockchains operated by institutions, allowing them to transact together while keeping sensitive data confidential — a design aimed at regulated industries where data sharing is restricted.

The RISE program is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027. It would combine multiple benefits into monthly or twice-monthly payments, with spending rules applied to categories including food, child care and cash. Today, such category rules are typically enforced through Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, the payment rails used for programs like SNAP food assistance.

According to Friday's announcement, the system would automatically adjust benefit levels as household income changes and allow participating agencies to track payments, balances, spending and compliance data through Canton. Digital Asset said the network would coordinate the rules, permissions and transactions used to distribute benefits while limiting access to sensitive information.

Ryan, a Republican who served as speaker from 2015 to 2019 and founded the American Idea Foundation after leaving Congress to advance anti-poverty policy, said the pilot is intended to reduce the 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.

The penalties Ryan describes are known in policy debates as the "benefits cliff," where a modest increase in earnings can trigger a loss of benefits worth more than the added income, a widely studied feature of programs with fixed eligibility cutoffs.

The organizations did not name the participating states or specify which benefit programs would be included, and said the pilots remain subject to federal approval.

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Canton expands government-linked use cases

The RISE program could add a public-benefits use case to Canton, whose recent growth has largely 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 using Canton to test Japanese government bonds as digital collateral, including for real-time, cross-border transactions. The project was selected for support under Japan's Financial Services Agency Payment Innovation Project.

Canton was also used in July to settle a tokenized US Treasury trade between Franklin Templeton and Virtu Financial, with Tradeweb handling execution and price discovery. The Treasury changed hands against USDCx in real time, which Tradeweb described as an industry first.

Canton's native Canton Coin (CC), used to pay fees for transactions through the network's Global Synchronizer, has a market capitalization of about $4.1 billion and ranks 23rd among cryptocurrencies, according to CoinGecko data. CC is up around 10% over the past week.

Source: CoinGecko