Why Blockchain Is Being Discussed as National Infrastructure？
Blockchain has traditionally been discussed mainly as the technology behind cryptocurrencies. However, in recent years, its role has been re-evaluated as social infrastructure. This change is not driven by technological innovation itself, but by the need to address a national-level question: who should be trusted in digital transactions and records, and how that trust should be built.
For example, financial transactions, administrative procedures, and cross-border exchanges of contracts and documents have traditionally worked by trusting a specific administrator or a centralized system. However, as risks such as system failures, fraud, and dependence on foreign infrastructure become more visible, there is a growing need to reconsider the very foundation of trust.
In addition, when critical financial infrastructure is operated by a centralized administrator, it can allow such entities to set fees at their discretion and may create limited incentives to modernize payment processing (for example, improving speed) beyond what is required by regulation. Public blockchains, by contrast, are open platforms on which anyone can build and innovate.
Looking at other countries, we can see similar movements. In the United States, distributed ledger technology is being explored in securities settlement to make transaction records and clearing processes easier to verify. In the European Union, a jointly operated blockchain infrastructure called the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) has been developed to avoid the question of which country's system should be trusted in cross-border transactions. China has also positioned blockchain as a national strategic technology and has been developing infrastructure for government and industrial use.
What these efforts share is the idea of transparency through verifiability. Blockchain has a structure in which records can be checked later by external third parties. Instead of someone deciding that something is correct, it allows people to confirm whether it is correct. This characteristic is extremely important for infrastructure that supports the foundations of society, such as finance and governance.
In Japan as well, awareness of dependence on foreign infrastructure and the limits of closed, centralized systems is increasing. As a result, blockchain is being discussed not simply as a web3 trend, but as a possible next-generation standard for critical infrastructure. These discussions reflect a global shift in how digital sovereignty and governance should be designed.
