Paul Ryan, Digital Asset to Pilot Canton for State Benefits

Digital Asset and Paul Ryan’s American Idea Foundation will run a pilot using the Canton Network to distribute state-administered benefits across three U.S. states under a program called RISE, scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027. The partners have not identified the states or specified which benefit programs will be included. The pilots remain subject to federal approval.

Under RISE, multiple benefits would be combined into single monthly or twice-monthly payments. The system will apply spending rules by category, such as food, child care and cash, and automatically adjust benefit levels when household income changes. Participating state agencies will be able to monitor payments, balances, spending and compliance data in near real time.

Digital Asset intends for Canton to coordinate the rules, permissions and transactions needed to run the program while limiting access to sensitive personal information. The platform’s architecture is designed to enforce category-specific spending limits at the transaction level so recipients receive consolidated disbursements without exposing full personal data to all parties involved.

Paul Ryan framed the pilot as a way to simplify benefits and reduce penalties recipients face as income rises, adding: “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.”

The RISE pilot would extend Canton’s applications beyond the institutional finance work that has driven recent deployments. Earlier projects using Canton included a proof of concept with the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation, Mizuho and Nomura to test Japanese government bonds as digital collateral, and a July settlement of a tokenized U.S. Treasury trade between Franklin Templeton and Virtu, with Tradeweb providing execution.

Canton’s native token, Canton Coin (CC), is used to pay fees for transactions on the network’s Global Synchronizer. Market data put CC’s market capitalization at about $4.1 billion and ranked it among the larger cryptocurrencies, with recent price movement noted.

State agencies, federal regulators and advocacy groups are expected to review the pilot design for compliance with existing benefit rules and privacy standards before any wider rollout. Digital Asset and the American Idea Foundation have described RISE as an experiment to test whether a blockchain-based coordination layer can streamline benefit delivery while maintaining program integrity.