2026 - When AI and data become the "new pillars of development"
The government's strategic message
At the February 2026 regular Government session, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized the theme for 2026 as "Digital economy breakthrough — making the data economy and artificial intelligence the new, sustainable, and smarter pillars of development." This direction calls for completing breakthrough institutions for the data economy and AI, while accelerating the operationalization of the National Data Center, building specialized databases, and developing autonomous AI platforms.
These two pillars are inseparable. Under Decision No. 21/2026/QĐ-TTg dated July 1, 2026, blockchain and AI are both among the 10 national strategic technology groups. Politburo Resolution 57-NQ/TW on science and technology development, innovation, and digital transformation affirms blockchain as a strategic technology, while the National Strategy for Blockchain Development to 2030 (under Decision 1236/QĐ-TTg) sets the goal of positioning Vietnam as a regional leader in blockchain research and application.
The trust problem grows alongside the pace of AI
According to McKinsey's State of AI Trust in 2026 report, enterprises globally are entering the "agentic AI era", where AI agents do not merely answer questions, but can independently carry out multi-step tasks, make decisions, and interact with other systems without continuous human intervention. However, the same report shows that nearly two-thirds of enterprises view safety, verifiability, and risk governance as the biggest barriers to deploying agentic AI at scale.
The core issue is no longer how "intelligent" AI is, but whether humans can trust the data, actions, and identities of those AI agents. As AI begins to transact autonomously, sign contracts, access data, and coordinate across multiple systems, the need for a verification and traceability infrastructure layer becomes more urgent than ever. This is precisely the intersection of AI and the national blockchain: AI generates digital actions, while blockchain generates digital trust for those actions.
Why agentic AI needs an independent digital trust layer
AI agent identity - a new challenge for digital infrastructure
When AI is no longer merely assisting humans but begins performing tasks autonomously, booking tickets, processing transactions, signing contracts, or interacting with other systems, an important question arises: how will systems identify and trust that AI agent?
Traditional identity models were designed for humans and legal entities, and are not well-suited to an environment where millions of AI agents can operate autonomously. This is why the W3C Decentralized Identifier (DID) standard is being extended to machine agents, allowing AI agents to have their own identity, their own authorization, and the ability to authenticate independently.
Combined with Verifiable Credentials, each AI agent can prove:
Who authorized it
What actions it is permitted to perform
Whether its credential is still valid or has been revoked
🔑 Read more: What is W3C DID? Why does the Internet need a Decentralized Identifier Standard?
Provenance - The origin of AI data, decisions, and content
AI is only trustworthy when its training data is trustworthy. With 175 zettabytes of global data projected to be generated in 2025 (IDC), tracking the origin of datasets, model versions, and AI-generated outputs is becoming a mandatory requirement. Provenance, the history of how data was created, modified, and used not only serves to counter deepfakes and misinformation, but also constitutes legal evidence in disputes over copyright, product liability, or consumer claims.
Audit and accountability - No ledger, no accountability
When decisions are made by AI, a fundamental question arises: who is responsible when something goes wrong? Regulators need a tamper-proof audit trail that fully records the entire chain of operations from inputs and the model used to the final output. A permissioned distributed ledger, where every event is timestamped and cryptographically linked is precisely the right architecture for this requirement.
International models: Layer 1 blockchain is becoming the trust layer for AI
China: building trust infrastructure for agentic AI
In April 2026, Zetrix AI and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced a blockchain-based trust protocol for AI agents, with the goal of building infrastructure for a digital agent economy. In this model, each AI agent can hold Verifiable Credentials containing information about its identity, professional capabilities, and digital asset access rights, verified through blockchains such as Astron and Zetrix. This approach signals a new trend: AI agents are no longer seen as "anonymous software" but as digital entities capable of being identified, verified, and traced.
Europe and the United States: from EUDI Wallet to Agent Trust Token
In Europe, the European Digital Identity Wallet on EBSI infrastructure is expanding the concept of cross-border digital identity to cover not only citizens and organizations, but also digital agents under the eIDAS 2.0 standard.
In the United States, Experian introduced the Agent Trust Token as a real-time signal of an AI agent's identity, trustworthiness, and fraud risk in e-commerce. Major financial institutions such as JPMorgan have also begun treating blockchain as the enforcement and verification layer for agentic AI in digital finance.
These developments point to a global trend taking shape: the more AI automates, the more critical the need for identity, traceability, and digital trust infrastructure becomes.
🔑 Read more: What is EBSI? The role of EBSI in Europe's digital infrastructure
It is clear that no country or corporation is deploying agentic AI at scale without a blockchain layer underneath. This is not a passing trend, it is a mandatory architectural requirement as AI begins to act on behalf of humans.
NDAChain - National blockchain infrastructure supporting Vietnam's AI strategy
NDAChain is designed to serve as the data verification layer for Vietnam's digital infrastructure, supporting identity, traceability, and data verification needs at national scale. The network currently operates under a public–private model with 49 validator nodes, involving the National Data Association alongside technology, finance, and healthcare enterprises including Zalo, MISA, Masan, Sovico, VNVC, and SunGroup. The platform has recorded over 5 million verification transactions with a processing capacity of approximately 1,200 transactions per second, laying the foundation for data applications, digital identity, and AI in Vietnam's new digital economy development phase.
AI agent identity: did:nda extended from humans to digital agents
In 2025, did:nda became Vietnam's first DID method registered in the W3C DID Method Registry, placing Vietnam among Asia's pioneering nations in decentralized identity. Originally designed for human and organizational identity, this model can be extended to AI agents, allowing AI agents to have their own identity, their own credentials, and the ability to authenticate independently when interacting with other systems.
Using the same mechanism applied in cross-border on-chain verification transactions between Vietnam and Indonesia at the GOE Alliance OFN event in April 2026, did:nda creates the groundwork for enterprises, government agencies, and public service platforms to deploy AI agents with the ability to identify, trace, and verify actions in a digital environment.
🔑 Read more: Vietnam Leads Southeast Asia in Global W3C-Compliant DID Interoperability
A trusted ledger for AI data and decisions
Under the 2024 Data Law and the 2025 Personal Data Protection Law, data processing systems must ensure traceability, integrity, and transparency in their operations. These are also the core requirements as AI begins to participate in financial, administrative, and public service decisions.
NDAChain meets these requirements through a mechanism that anchors cryptographic proofs of datasets, model versions, and AI outputs onto the blockchain, while the original data remains stored off-chain to preserve data sovereignty and privacy. This approach mirrors the model of Estonia's KSI Blockchain and Europe's EBSI: blockchain does not store sensitive data directly, but stores verification proofs for independent auditing when needed.
PoA-qBFT - A mechanism suited for AI that demands clear accountability
Unlike public blockchains that operate anonymously, NDAChain uses Proof-of-Authority combined with qBFT consensus, where each validator node is an authorized and clearly accountable legal entity. When an AI agent produces a disputed decision, the on-chain audit trail combined with the validator identity mechanism makes the accountability verification process more transparent, reducing the "grey zones" in large-scale AI systems.
🔑 Read more: Why is Vietnam building a national blockchain platform?
Application scenarios where national blockchain underpins AI
When NDAChain serves as the trust layer for Vietnam's AI ecosystem, several scenarios can be deployed within the next 12–24 months.
Public service AI assistants: AI agents support licensing, record lookup, and one-stop administrative processing. Every action is signed with did:nda and traced on NDAChain to ensure accountability.
Banking and financial AI agents: AI automatically processes small transactions and cross-checks eKYC against Verifiable Credentials issued on the national blockchain, reducing verification costs and accelerating onboarding.
AI-generated content verification: Media outlets, social platforms, and regulators can trace images, videos, and text back to the model and legal entity that created them, helping to curb deepfakes and misinformation.
Intelligent supply chain traceability: AI analyzes IoT data on NDATrace, while the analysis results are anchored on NDAChain, helping enterprises comply with EUDR, CBAM, and Digital Product Passport requirements.
Citizen-controlled health records: Medical AI agents can only access Verifiable Credentials with patient consent. Every action is traced on blockchain so hospitals and supervisory authorities can audit.
Trust infrastructure for the agentic AI era
2026 marks a turning point where AI and blockchain are no longer two technologies developing in parallel, but have become two complementary pillars of Vietnam's digital infrastructure. If AI delivers the capacity for analysis, automation, and decision-making, the national blockchain provides the verification, traceability, and accountability layer for the entire digital ecosystem.
As agentic AI becomes increasingly prevalent, the need for digital identity, data provenance, and transparent audit mechanisms will become a mandatory infrastructure requirement. NDAChain is positioned to serve as the trust layer for that process, a place where data, humans, and AI agents can interact in an environment capable of independent verification.
Enterprises, agencies, and AI product development teams in Vietnam can get ahead of this shift starting now.
👉 Learn more and register for a free NDAChain demo to explore how the national blockchain platform integrates with your organization's AI and data systems: https://ndachain.vn/en
