Daven Tamayo

Boardroom Tea: Integrity Chain emerges amid disgust with corruption

Article (news)

Salve Ibaňez

ABS-CBN News

<p>The most powerful conversation in Philippine business history happened over a weekend—and it wasn&#x27;t in a boardroom.</p><p>When Dr. Donald Patrick Lim sent his first message on Saturday morning to corporate movers, he wasn&#x27;t entirely sure anyone would respond. After watching another brutal Senate hearing about ghost flood control projects, the DITO CME president and blockchain evangelist felt that familiar entrepreneurial itch: someone had to do something.</p><p>What happened next defied every rule of Filipino corporate decision-making.</p><p>Within 48 hours, fifty-four of the country&#x27;s most powerful business organizations had not only responded but secured board approvals for an unprecedented private sector initiative. No lawyers. No committees. No months of feasibility studies. Just pure Filipino decisiveness responding to a nationwide crisis of trust in government infrastructure projects.</p><p>&quot;I&#x27;ve never seen anything like it,&quot; confides Lim, still somewhat amazed by the weekend that changed everything. </p><p>&quot;These were boardroom discussions happening over text messaging and phone calls? CEOs calling emergency conversations. Everyone just got it immediately.&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1761142033565blockchain.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div><div><br/></div><p>What they &quot;got&quot; was the Integrity Chain—a blockchain-powered transparency platform that promises to make corruption &quot;technically impossible&quot; in government infrastructure projects. But the real revolution wasn&#x27;t the technology. It was the speed at which corporate Philippines said: ENOUGH.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE BOARDROOM EPIPHANY</strong></div><p>The genesis moment came during those particularly damaging flood control hearings when evidence of ghost projects worth billions began surfacing. Lim and governance expert Ida Tiongson found themselves in the uncomfortable position of watching a national crisis unfold while possessing the exact tools to prevent it from happening again.</p><p>&quot;We had the technology,&quot; Tiongson explains. &quot;But blockchain without buy-in is just expensive software. We needed the human chain first.&quot;</p><p>What they got was a masterclass in Filipino networking at its finest. Lim&#x27;s weekend blitz targeted the Management Association of the Philippines, the American Chamber of Commerce, the Cebu Chamber of Commerce, even the Animation Council and Game Development Council. Each ‘yes’ led to more. Each board approval triggered waves of calls.</p><p>&quot;When these organizations sign on as validators, they&#x27;re putting their reputations on the line,&quot; notes one participating chamber executive who requested anonymity.</p><p>&quot;That&#x27;s a bigger commitment than writing a check.&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE TECHNOLOGY DEMYSTIFIED</strong></div><p>For those bewildered by blockchain jargon, Paul Soliman, CEO of BayaniChain Ventures, offers refreshing clarity: &quot;To the outside world, it looks just like an app or a website. The blockchain component is in the back-end—it doesn&#x27;t change the user interface at all.&quot;</p><p>The magic happens invisibly. Information gets uploaded in blocks across multiple computers worldwide, with each block chained to the next. The result? Data can only be added, never removed or edited. Think of it as a permanent, tamper-proof filing system that nobody—not even the government—can manipulate.</p><p>&quot;People don&#x27;t need to understand the technology,&quot; Soliman explains during our Business Outlook interview. &quot;They just need to trust that what they see today will be exactly what they see tomorrow, and the day after that.&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>BLIND TRUST, SHARP EXECUTION</strong></div><p>The financing mechanism Lim devised reveals his deep understanding of Philippine corporate psychology. The Integrity Chain operates through a &quot;blind trust&quot;—contributors never know who else is funding the initiative, eliminating any possibility of quid pro quo arrangements.</p><p>&quot;Traditional CSR has become transactional,&quot; observes one multinational executive involved in the project. &quot;This feels different. It&#x27;s genuinely civic-minded because there&#x27;s no visible return except better governance.&quot;</p><p>The blind trust model also solved a classic Filipino dilemma: how to participate in reform without appearing to take sides politically. When contributors remain anonymous, participation becomes apolitical.</p><p>Current pledges remain undisclosed, though Lim confirms the initiative has sufficient funding for its inaugural year. Could international development partners be interested in supporting what could become a replicable model for emerging economies globally? I can’t see why not.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE SKEPTIC&#x27;S ARMY</strong></div><p>Not everyone shares the validators&#x27; enthusiasm. The criticism ranges from technical to philosophical, and it&#x27;s gaining momentum.</p><p>Constitutional law expert Atty. Florin Hilbay argues that blockchain is &quot;not a technology; it is a marketing term,&quot; suggesting that conventional databases with proper access controls could achieve similar transparency at lower cost and complexity.</p><p>&quot;We don&#x27;t need a blockchain-the-budget law,&quot; Hilbay contends. &quot;We need transparency by default and the political will to enforce it.&quot; His alternative? Simple, well-designed websites with NGO redundancy and full journalist access—no blockchain required, no millions needed. Another blockchain expert, Ann Cuisia, also says tokenizing documents like NFTs is futile.</p><p>Technology critics raise additional concerns about the security model itself. As Luis Buenaventura noted during online discussions, the Polygon network securing the data is worth less than ₱10 billion, while the national budget it&#x27;s meant to protect exceeds ₱10 trillion. That&#x27;s like hiring a ₱10,000-a-month security guard to protect ₱10 million in cash.</p><p>Government insiders express different worries. &quot;What happens when the vendor contract ends?&quot; asks one DPWH official who requested anonymity. &quot;What happens when political administrations change? Are we building another expensive digital monument?&quot;</p><p>Even some participating organizations harbor private doubts. &quot;The technology works,&quot; admits one chamber board member. &quot;But we&#x27;re essentially asking busy executives to become unpaid government auditors. Will they still show up to validation meetings six months from now when this isn&#x27;t front-page news anymore?&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE HUMAN BLOCKCHAIN</strong></div><p>Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Integrity Chain isn&#x27;t technological but sociological. Lim&#x27;s concept of a &quot;human blockchain&quot; creates a multi-sectoral validation network that functions like a distributed consensus mechanism for governance.</p><p>&quot;Kailangan mo i-convince lahat ng organisasyon,&quot; Lim explains in his characteristic mix of English and Filipino. &quot;You need to convince all the organizations whether to approve or disapprove. So there&#x27;s a technical blockchain, but we also created a human blockchain.&quot;</p><p>Each participating organization provides representatives who join technical working groups, review project documentation, and validate milestones before they&#x27;re recorded permanently on the blockchain. Think of it as peer review for public spending.</p><p>The psychological impact on potential bad actors shouldn&#x27;t be underestimated. When fifty-plus organizations are literally watching every peso, the traditional comfort zone for irregularities evaporates.</p><p>&quot;Mahirap magkaroon ng connivance kasi lahat nakatingin eh,&quot; Lim notes with characteristic directness. &quot;It&#x27;s very hard to cheat when many are watching.&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE SUSTAINABILITY QUESTION</strong></div><p>Critics raise valid questions about long-term viability. Who maintains the system when political administrations change? What happens when vendor contracts expire? How do you ensure this doesn&#x27;t become another expensive digital white elephant?</p><p>The cost question looms particularly large. While BayaniChain is providing free service for year one, the long-term pricing remains undisclosed. For a government already struggling with budget constraints, an expensive blockchain maintenance contract could prove prohibitive.</p><p>&quot;These are exactly the questions we should be asking,&quot; acknowledges one board member from a participating organization. &quot;But we can&#x27;t let perfect be the enemy of good. The status quo isn&#x27;t working.&quot;</p><p>Industry observers also note the inherent limitation: blockchain can&#x27;t prevent garbage data from being entered—it only ensures that once recorded, information cannot be tampered with. The integrity of the input remains a human responsibility.</p><p>&quot;Blockchain is like a tamper-proof vault,&quot; notes one tech expert, &quot;but if thieves have the keys or the vault manager is corrupt, the vault&#x27;s integrity doesn&#x27;t save you.&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE RIPPLE EFFECT</strong></div><p>Beyond its immediate transparency goals, the Integrity Chain has already generated unexpected secondary benefits. The initiative has strengthened relationships between previously disconnected chambers of commerce, created new networks for civic engagement, and demonstrated that Philippine business can move decisively when genuinely motivated.</p><p>&quot;The speed of this mobilization should terrify politicians who think business will always move slowly,&quot; observes one veteran chamber executive. &quot;When you threaten the fundamentals of our operating environment, you get our attention quickly.&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE WEDNESDAY VERDICT</strong></div><p>As Boardroom Tea gets published, those sixty-day countdown clocks are ticking toward their December deadline. The first batch of validated foreign-assisted projects should be live on the platform, with real-time tracking of budgets, milestones, and procurement processes.</p><p>Success will be measured not just in technical functionality but in whether the human blockchain maintains engagement once the novelty wears off. Will chamber executives still attend monthly validation meetings six months from now? Will the anonymous funding continue flowing when headlines move to other crises? And critically, will the government be willing to pay for the service once the free year expires?</p><p>&quot;The test isn&#x27;t whether we can build this,&quot; reflects Lim during our conversation. &quot;The test is whether we can sustain it. Technology is easy. Discipline is hard.&quot;</p><p>The skeptics may be right that this is expensive theater disguised as innovation. The supporters may be right that this represents a genuine breakthrough in governance technology. What&#x27;s undeniable is that fifty-four business organizations moved faster than the government ever has to address a crisis of trust. In sixty days, we&#x27;ll know whether their remarkable weekend of corporate decisiveness has produced lasting change or simply provided another lesson in the gap between good intentions and sustainable reform.</p><p>The blockchain will remember everything. </p><div><em>Boardroom Tea comes out every Wednesday.</em></div>

<p>What they "got" was the Integrity Chain—a blockchain-powered transparency platform that promises to make corruption "technically impossible." </p>

What they "got" was the Integrity Chain—a blockchain-powered transparency platform that promises to make corruption "technically impossible."