The US government puts GDP data on the blockchain: What's going on?

Written by: AIMan@Golden Finance

The US government has made another on-chain move.

On August 28, 2025, the US Department of Commerce announced that it would publish real gross domestic product (GDP) data on nine blockchains starting in July 2025.

At the same time, Chainlink also announced a partnership with the US Department of Commerce to upload six key US economic data sets to 10 blockchains.

What's going on? Why are there different numbers of blockchains? How are they all uploaded? This article briefly analyzes them.

Hash: The US Department of Commerce uploads the hash value of GDP files to the blockchain

On August 28, 2025, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that it would revise the annual growth rate of real GDP in the second quarter of 2025 to 3.3%.

In addition to real GDP data, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis also released nominal GDP, real final sales by private domestic buyers, real gross domestic income GDI, the average of real GDP and real GDI, domestic purchases price index, personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, and core PCE price index. The U.S. Department of Commerce subsequently announced that it had published the official hashes of its 2025 quarterly GDP data files (and in some cases, the total GDP) to the following nine blockchains: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Stellar, Avalanche, Arbitrum One, Polygon PoS, and Optimism.

That is, the U.S. Department of Commerce downloaded the above PDF file and performed a SHA256 hash operation on it, obtaining the hash result:

c70972a12908b73c2407d9cc6842ba2a02203a690f3090cd29f30c45f0cfd93d

This hash value was then published on nine blockchains, either as a memorandum or as data embedded in a smart contract, along with the total data (depending on the situation of each blockchain).

The transaction hash or smart contract address for each blockchain is as follows:

• Bitcoin transaction hash: fcf172401ca9d89013f13f5bbf0fc7577cb8a3588bf5cbc3b458ff36635fec00

• Ethereum smart contract address: 0x36ccdF11044f60F196e981970d592a7DE567ed7b

• Solana Transaction hash: 43dJVBK4hiXy1rpC5BifT8LU2NDNHKmdWyqyYDaTfyEeX8y3LMtUtajW3Q22rCSbmneny56CBtkictQRQJXV1ybp

• TRON transaction hash: 3f05633fb894aa6d6610c980975cca732a051edbbf5d8667799782cf2ae04040

• Stellar transaction hash: 89e4d300d237db6b67c 510f71c8cd2f690868806a6b40a40a5a9755f4954144a

• Avalanche smart contract address: 0x36ccdF11044f60F196e981970d592a7DE567ed7b

• Arbitrum One smart contract address: 0x36ccdF11044f60F196e981970d592a7DE567ed7b

• Polygon PoS smart contract address: 0x36ccdF11044f60F196e981970d592a7DE567ed7b

• Optimism Smart contract address: 0x36ccdF11044f60F196e981970d592a7DE567ed7b

Let’s open the Ethereum smart contract address and take a look:

As shown above, the hash value of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis GDP PDF file is indeed written into the Ethereum smart contract.

So what about Chainlink? Feed: Chainlink delivers six data feeds to the blockchain. Unlike the US Department of Commerce, which simply uploads PDF file hashes to the blockchain, Chainlink delivers six key US economic data feeds to 10 blockchains. These six data feeds are: real GDP, real GDP annualized growth rate, PCE price index, PCE price index annualized growth rate, actual final sales to private domestic purchasers, and actual final sales to private domestic purchasers annualized growth rate. Chainlink initially supports 10 blockchains: Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Botanix, Ethereum, Linea, Mantle, Optimism, Sonic, and ZKsync. Chainlink also stated that it will update monthly or quarterly, depending on the situation, and will gradually support more blockchain networks in the future based on user demand. Taking Ethereum as an example, its feed address is as follows: This means that as long as you integrate Chainlink, Chainlink will push these six economic indicators of the US real economy to you on-chain. Conclusion Unlike the US Department of Commerce, which simply uploads file hashes, Chainlink's significance may be greater. Because oracles feed government macroeconomic data, they can unlock innovative use cases for the crypto market, such as serving as a data source for prediction market results, issuing crypto assets tied to official data, and developing inflation-linked crypto products. The US Department of Commerce and Chainlink's move to put some official US data on-chain is undoubtedly a sign of further government acceptance of blockchain. However, it's also important to note that many in the crypto industry have long understood that blockchain only guarantees the immutability of on-chain data, but the reliability of the uploaded data itself is questionable. Furthermore, some US government data has long been questioned by the market, including by Trump himself.

Just as the GDP data released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis this time is its second estimate (Second Estimate).

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases multiple revisions to quarterly GDP data to more accurately reflect economic conditions. The initial estimate (Advance Estimate) is the first release, usually about a month after the end of the period. The second estimate (Second Estimate) is released about a month after the first estimate and is revised based on more data to provide a more accurate economic picture. The third estimate (Final Estimate) will be released later, which is the final estimate based on more comprehensive data.