National Blockchain Framework: which path did India choose?

The National Blockchain Framework (NBF) is the national blockchain framework led by India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), announced in September 2024 with a budget of about 64.76 crore rupees. The goal of the NBF is to place transparency and accountability at the center of national digital governance, not to issue cryptocurrency, but to serve as trust infrastructure for public services.

The core of India's approach is a permissioned model and a Blockchain-as-a-Service orientation. Rather than letting each agency build its own blockchain, the state provides a shared platform that agencies and applications connect into. This avoids fragmentation, saves resources, and creates a common standard across the system.

🔑 Read more: Permissioned vs Public Blockchain: why national blockchains choose the permissioned model

The four pillars of Vishvasya

• The NBF is realized through four main components, forming a complete system from core infrastructure to the service portal.

• Vishvasya Blockchain Stack is the heart of the system, a technology stack that delivers Blockchain-as-a-Service on geographically distributed infrastructure, deployed across the NIC data centers in Bhubaneswar, Pune, and Hyderabad. Distributing the infrastructure across multiple sites improves resilience and fault tolerance.

• NBFLite is a blockchain sandbox dedicated to startups and academia for rapid prototyping, research, and training. It is how India nurtures a developer ecosystem around the national infrastructure, with support for Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Sawtooth.

• Praamaanik is a solution that uses blockchain to verify the origin and authenticity of mobile applications. When a user checks an app, the system cross-references an on-chain record to confirm whether the app is legitimate.

• National Blockchain Portal is the centralized gateway connecting services and applications within the NBF, serving as a unified access point for the entire ecosystem.

🔑 Read more: What is a national blockchain? A full overview of NDAChain's architecture and ecosystem

Who built it, and at what scale of impact?

A notable aspect is how India mobilized domestic capabilities. These technologies were developed through the collaboration of leading research institutes and universities, including C-DAC, NIC, IDRBT Hyderabad, IIT Hyderabad, IIIT Hyderabad, and SETS Chennai, under the patronage of MeitY. This is a model of the state commissioning and institutes and universities executing, leveraging domestic expertise rather than depending on foreign vendors.

In terms of real impact, as of October 2025, more than 340 million documents had been verified on the platform, spanning certificate and diploma chains, property records, and judicial and logistics applications (National Blockchain Framework portal, MeitY, 2025). This figure shows that India's national blockchain has moved beyond pilots into large-scale operation.

Five lessons from India's model for Vietnam

From how India designed and operates the NBF, five lessons can be drawn that are directly relevant to Vietnam and to the development direction of NDAChain.

Lesson 1: A national blockchain is service infrastructure, not cryptocurrency

India clearly positions the NBF as a tool for governance and transparency, fully separate from speculative cryptocurrency. This is also the positioning Vietnam pursues: NDAChain is digital trust infrastructure serving identity, traceability, and public services, a Layer 1 blockchain with no token and no speculation.

🔑 Read more: Why is Vietnam building a national blockchain platform?

Lesson 2: The as-a-Service model avoids fragmentation

Rather than each ministry building its own chain, providing a shared blockchain enables standardization and saves resources. NDAChain follows the same logic by serving as a common infrastructure layer for many applications in the ecosystem, from decentralized identity, NDAKey, to the traceability platform NDATrace, rather than disparate solutions.

Lesson 3: Nurturing the developer ecosystem

NBFLite shows the importance of creating a sandbox for startups and academia. A national infrastructure only survives when there is a community building applications on it. This is a direction Vietnam's blockchain ecosystem needs to invest in alongside the core infrastructure.

Lesson 4: Geographically distributed infrastructure improves resilience

India's deployment of the stack across multiple data centers is a lesson in resilience. A national blockchain serving hundreds of millions of people must ensure continuous operation even when one point fails, in line with the fault-tolerant consensus mechanism and distributed validator network that NDAChain aims for.

Lesson 5: Leveraging domestic expertise

India's model of the state commissioning and institutes, universities, and enterprises executing resonates with the Make in Vietnam philosophy and the state-led, enterprise-participating direction that Vietnam is applying to NDAChain, with a public-private validator network coordinated by the National Data Association.

🔑 Read more: Vietnam's national blockchain: lessons from Estonia, the EU, China, Singapore, and India

NDAChain in relation to India: similarities and differences

Both India and Vietnam chose the permissioned model, separated from cryptocurrency, and positioned the national blockchain as public-service infrastructure. This shared ground reflects a trend: developing economies prioritize blockchain as a tool for transparency and administrative efficiency rather than as a speculative asset.

The difference lies in design. NDAChain emphasizes a decentralized identity layer following the W3C standard, with the did:nda method registered in the W3C Registry, aiming for international interoperability of digital identity and credentials, a distinct focus compared to India's more document-service-oriented approach.

🔑 Read more: Vietnam leads Southeast Asia in international DID interoperability under the W3C standard

NDAChain also runs on the PoA-qBFT consensus mechanism with a public-private validator network, achieving performance of roughly 1,200 to 3,600 transactions per second and having recorded more than 6 million verification transactions. Each country chooses the emphasis that fits its strategic priorities, while sharing the same foundation of permissioning and public service.

🔑 Read more: Comparing national Layer 1 blockchains: how NDAChain, EBSI, and BSN lead

From India's lessons to the direction of Vietnam's national blockchain

India's national blockchain model proves something important: a state-led blockchain can move into real operation at the scale of hundreds of millions of transactions, if positioned correctly as digital trust infrastructure rather than a speculative arena. With NDAChain, Vietnam is on a similar path but with its own emphasis on internationally standardized identity and data sovereignty. Learning from countries that moved earlier, including India, the EU, China, and Estonia, is how Vietnam can shorten its roadmap and avoid mistakes that have already been tested.

🔑 Read more: The national blockchain and the building of trust infrastructure in the data economy era

NDAChain is always ready to accompany agencies, organizations, and enterprises wishing to explore the national blockchain model and its applications in digital identity, data verification, traceability, and large-scale digital services. Visit ndachain.vn to connect with our expert team and assess the platform's suitability for your organization's digital transformation needs.