Digital Asset, the company behind the Canton Network, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan's American Idea Foundation announced a partnership to pilot a blockchain-based system for distributing state government benefits. The program, called RISE, is set to launch in the first quarter of 2027 across three unnamed US states, pending federal approval.
The pilot targets a longstanding structural problem in the US safety net: families receiving assistance often have to navigate multiple programs, each with its own eligibility rules, payment schedule, reporting requirements and benefit phase-out formula. RISE aims to combine fragmented benefits — covering categories like food, child care and cash assistance — into a single monthly or twice-monthly payment routed through Canton's ledger.
How the Pilot Would Work
According to the official announcement, the system would automatically adjust benefit levels as a household's income changes, reducing the sharp cliffs that can currently discourage recipients from taking on more work for fear of losing assistance entirely. Canton would track payments, balances, spending and compliance data, while its permissioning architecture is designed to coordinate rules and transactions across agencies without exposing sensitive personal data more broadly than necessary.
Paul Ryan framed the initiative as a chance to rethink benefit design from the ground up. "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," he said.
Canton's Growing Government and Institutional Footprint
The RISE pilot extends Canton's use case beyond the capital-markets infrastructure it has mostly been associated with to date. The network has previously supported large-scale institutional trials — including a multi-day pilot involving 15 asset managers, 13 banks, four custodians and three exchanges testing 22 applications for tokenized securities, money market funds and deposits — and has been used by DTCC for tokenized Treasury security tests. Government benefit distribution is a materially different application, trading trading-desk settlement speed for the privacy and auditability demands of administering public assistance programs.
What Still Has to Happen
The announcement leaves significant details open: neither the three participating states nor the specific benefit programs involved have been disclosed, and the entire pilot remains contingent on federal approval before its planned first-quarter-2027 start. That approval process, running through relevant federal benefits agencies, is likely to be the real test of whether a blockchain-based ledger can satisfy the compliance and privacy standards that govern programs like SNAP or TANF at scale. If it clears that bar, RISE would be among the more consequential real-world tests yet of blockchain infrastructure inside core government administration, well beyond the tokenized-securities pilots that have dominated Canton's track record so far.
Related: Franklin Templeton Wins SEC Clearance to Put Tokenized BENJI Into Its Funds
For Digital Asset, landing a government benefits use case would mark a notable expansion of Canton's institutional credibility, adding a public-sector proof point to a network that has so far built its reputation primarily among banks and asset managers.
