U.S. Government Puts Economic Data on Public Blockchains — But Skips XRP

This year has seen a lot of changes to the Cryptocurrency sector especially in the United States. More so is the latest change by the U.S Government that saw it implement changes to upload economic data on public blockchains.

This move by the U.S Government is to ensure data becomes more freely available and accessible in a democratic society. There was high hopes that XRP would have been selected as the blockchain that would have been used but, recent announcements have shown and surprised many that the U.S decided to skip it.

Today we're going to have a look at some of the published content to see why the decision was made as XRP has been quite popular and supported globally.

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So who did get selected?

The U.S Government decided to go with Chainlink and has already commenced publishing data on their blockchain. It is one of the first roll outs of a major government, despite many other smaller nations rolling out crypto initiatives. The U.S's position makes a larger statement globally.

The first release was quite significant as it is official economic data directly onto public blockchains. This is also a major leap for transparency, accountability and the practical use of blockchain technology in government operations.

The release hosted cryptographic hashes of GDP reports and other economic indicators, published across a range of networks including Ethereum, Avalanche, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Stellar, TRON, Bitcoin, and Base. Developers and protocols can now access trusted government statistics onchain, enabling new applications in Decentralized Finance (De-Fi) prediction markets and risk analysis tools.

Chainlink respected and trusted

Chainlink is considered the industry standard for decentralized oracles and is likely to serve as the key infrastructure provider for distributing this data. The collaboration builds on its growing relationship with regulators and institutions, which has included discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets, and partnerships with SWIFT, UBS and Fidelity.

Why The XRP Snub

The decision to not select XRP raised a lot of eyebrows recently considering the projects speed, low cost and sustainability while also being known to be reliable. However, this article states that the exclusion had less to do with bias and more to do with availability through data distributors. The DOC partnered with Chainlink and Pyth to handle distribution of the data feeds and neither currently supports XRPL. This meant the ledger was simply not in scope for the initial rollout.

So it is an interesting time to be involved in the decentralised world and having the U.S Move into the blockchain sector means we will see a lot more companies come on board. But what does that mean for existing projects and tokens?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

image sources provided supplemented by Canva Pro subscription. This is not financial advice and readers are advised to undertake their own research or seek professional financial services

Posted Using INLEO