PASAY CITY, June 19, 2026 — Philippine Blockchain Week (PBW) 2026 opened Friday at the SMX Convention Center under the theme “Decoded: Deployed,” trading the industry’s old talk of Web3 potential for working systems already in citizens’ hands.

Across the day’s keynotes and panels — spanning government, sovereign wealth, telecommunications and real estate — a single thread held: technology is only as valuable as the trust it earns.

NET25 is covering Philippine Blockchain Week 2026 through its business program Open For Business with Caesar Vallejos.

Government bets on blockchain to ‘shoulder the complexity’

Setting the tone was a keynote from Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary for E-Government David L. Almirol Jr., who walked the audience through 3.5 years of the government’s digitalization push.

The program now supports 677 national government agencies and 1,634 local government units through 28 “foundational” platforms designed to be long-lived rather than one-off pilots.

The numbers Almirol cited were striking: more than 1 billion transactions processed through the government data exchange, 56 million users on the eGov super app, and 91 million digital national IDs issued.

At the center of his pitch was Integrity Chain (eGov Chain), the blockchain layer running since 2024 that powers privacy-preserving identity checks and eKYC flows with banks and fintech partners.

“Government should handle the complexity so citizens experience convenience,” was the principle Almirol returned to, framing interoperability as a way for siloed agencies to talk to one another without exposing raw citizen data.

He has also been emphatic that the effort belongs to no one company — stressing in recent remarks that there should be “no single vendor,” and calling for open collaboration across the ecosystem.

The Philippines is on track to become the first country to put its national budget fully on-chain, beginning with the 2026 General Appropriations Act.

Almirol shared the stage discussion with Dr. Donald Patrick Lim, PBW founding chairman and a driving force behind the Go Digital Philippines movement, under a panel banner of “secure and citizen-centric digital governance through capacity building, responsible innovation and multi-stakeholder collaboration.”

Organizers issued an open call for legitimate local and foreign blockchain firms to join the conversation.

Maharlika frames itself as a ‘catalytic’ investor

In a wide-ranging session titled “The Future of Trust,” officials of the Maharlika Investment Corporation (MIC) reflected on the sovereign wealth fund’s first two-plus years since its enabling law was signed on July 18, 2023.

Unlike commodity-funded peers, Maharlika was seeded with roughly ₱75 billion (about $1.15 billion) from state banks Land Bank and DBP — a constraint that, officials said, pushes it toward a “catalytic, multiplier-first” strategy.

Rather than build power plants or pick national champions, the fund is financing energy transmission and distribution lines, particularly in off-grid areas, to crowd in private investment and ease the Universal Charge for Missionary Electrification — a subsidy that ran about ₱24.5 billion last year and could climb toward ₱44 billion.

The fund reported returning ₱1.8 billion and a further ₱1.5 billion in FY2024 dividends, with roughly ₱10 billion deployed across logistics, food security and energy.

A common-user fuel storage terminal, supported by the Department of Energy, is targeted for a first phase by 2028.

AI panel: amplify talent, but mind the data

A fireside chat moderated by Anton Mauricio of Innovation PH turned to artificial intelligence, with Globe Telecom’s head of AI and privacy governance arguing that AI should amplify Filipino talent rather than replace it.

He offered a three-question test for responsible AI:

Can the system be explained?
Are its data sources verifiable?
Is there a human to call when it misbehaves?

Globe also detailed anti-scam work, including blocking scam URLs and donating IMSI-catcher detection gear to law enforcement.

A real-estate panel featuring Jose Mari Cuervo of Cuervo Appraisers and Vincent Leo of WPH Digital drove home the day’s data-quality warning.

Because registry sale prices are often undervalued for tax reasons, AI valuation models trained on public deeds risk “garbage in, garbage out.”

The fix, they said, is vetted datasets, guardrails, human-in-the-loop review and clear accountability — echoing the trust theme heard all day.

What to expect for the rest of the week

PBW 2026 runs through June 21 at the SMX Convention Center, drawing an expected 15,000-plus attendees, 250-plus speakers and 200-plus sponsors.

With “Decoded: Deployed” as its banner, the program signals a deliberate shift from Web3 theory to real-world deployment across finance, government and enterprise.

Days 2 and 3 are slated to broaden the lens beyond infrastructure and policy into creator culture, fandoms and live entertainment — a nod to consumer-facing use cases — alongside deeper dives on digital assets, tokenization and cross-border collaboration.

Expect more signings and statements of support around Integrity Chain, additional enterprise case studies, and continued matchmaking between Philippine agencies and global blockchain players.

If Day 1 set the thesis — that trust is the foundation of the digital Filipino economy — the days ahead are pitched as the proof.