Vietnam rolls out blockchain system to secure critical national data

Vietnam’s government has unveiled NDAChain, a national blockchain‑backed platform aimed at protecting and authenticating information across both government and private services.

This initiative is built by the National Data Association and run by the Data Innovation and Exploitation Center within the Ministry of Public Security’s National Data Center. It will capture and verify records in areas ranging from digital government and financial transactions to medical services, supply‑chain operations and education.

Officials describe it as the first country‑wide infrastructure to apply blockchain technology for cross‑ministry and industry‑wide data certification.

According to The Korean Herald, traditional, centralized data repositories in Vietnam have struggled with security breaches, capacity constraints and challenges when interfacing with overseas systems.

By distributing copies of each record across multiple nodes and embedding cryptographic tamper‑evidence, blockchain ensures every entry can be traced to its point of origin.

“Vietnam has chosen a hybrid data architecture that blends centralized and decentralized components,” said Nguyen Huy, Head of Technology at the National Data Association.

“NDAChain acts as a protective layer for the nation’s live data, critical to our digital society and economy.”

With more than 100 million inhabitants and a swiftly expanding digital marketplace, Vietnam’s daily data output is enormous.

The National Data Center’s goal is to store everything from census data to patient histories in a unified repository. However, protecting so much information means adding extra safeguards. Blockchain’s shared ledger makes it easy to check that data hasn’t been altered whenever it’s exchanged.

How does Vietnam’s NDAChain work?

NDAChain operates on a permissioned, layer‑1 network secured by a Proof‑of‑Authority consensus. Forty‑nine validator nodes, managed by government bodies and leading corporations such as the National Data Center, Ministry of Public Security, SunGroup, Zalo, Masan, MISA, Sovico and VNVC, each maintain a complete copy of the ledger.

Smart contracts automate routine procedures, identity checks tie in with the VNeID digital‑ID system, and zero‑knowledge proofs add an extra privacy safeguard. The network can process up to 3,600 transactions per second while keeping latency to a minimum.

There are two main services built on this platform.

NDA DID gives citizens a quick way to authenticate individuals for contracts or service access via the NDAKey app; counterparties can be verified in seconds, cutting down on fraud.

NDA Trace assigns every product a unique identifier that complies with global GS1 specifications, enabling exporters to plug into international supply chains and allowing end‑users to trace an item’s journey.

By the end of 2025, the plan is to fully integrate NDAChain into the National Data Center’s infrastructure.

In 2026, the rollout will extend to provincial authorities and universities, with dedicated training programs for blockchain specialists and collaboration agreements with overseas partners.

Future modules under consideration include digital notarization, anti‑counterfeiting measures and more. The open‑architecture design invites startups and established tech firms to build wallets, monitoring dashboards or other specialized apps on top of the blockchain.

Vietnam is now one of more than fifty countries building their own national blockchain network. These include China’s BSN, the EU’s EBSI and South Korea’s Klaytn.

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