#USGDPDataOnChain Data Sensors: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

On August 28th, the Commerce Department came out with a press release touting the release of the 2nd Quarter GDP data from July 2025 simultaneously on 9 L1 blockchains. The press release even had a snippet of Solidity code. Probably the first appearance of Solidity code in a Commerce Department press release. This data is the output of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce said “We are making America’s economic truth immutable and globally accessible like never before, cementing our role as the blockchain capital of the world. And everybody has to admit that 3.3% GDP growth is impressive.” The actual data is not accessible on chain, the SHA256 hash of the data was published. This means that the published report cannot be changed.

A revised report can be produced, which will have a different SHA256 hash. This use of the blockchain says nothing about the veracity of the underlying data or the methods used to calculate the data nor about corrections to the report. It is possible to publish untruths to the blockchain. All you have to do is to come up with the transaction fees. A classic case of Blockchain in name only.

Surveys as Data Gathering Tools

Together with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on employment, and inflation, the GDP figures paint a macro economic picture of the country. The main data gathering mechanisms are surveys, which most enterprises are legally required to fill out. Most of this is based on statistical sampling of a subset of data collected by the crudest of means. How many of us willingly fill-in surveys, even when they are described as legally required? My own conversation with some small business owners revealed two truths; one, the surveys can take a lot of effort to fill out as they have extremely detailed questions; two, there are no legal consequences when these surveys are NOT filled out. They were not filling out the surveys from BLS nor from BEA.