This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 13, 2026 - April 19, 2026

My Blockchain Infrastructure Sdn Bhd (MBISB) is on a mission to demonstrate to the Malaysian government that public blockchains — open, independently verifiable networks — can be deployed securely, rather than relying solely on the private, permissioned systems it has used to date.

Essentially, the push is about trust. MBISB is championing public blockchains for their ability to enable independent verification of government records, reducing the reliance on a single authority to validate what is true.

MBISB, a subsidiary of Mimos Holdings Sdn Bhd, which comes under Mimos Bhd, is responsible for implementing and operating the Malaysia Blockchain Infrastructure (MBI) initiative on behalf of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Mosti).

For instance, a taxpayer’s medical or education receipts can be recorded at the point of issuance by hospitals, schools or other providers, creating a verifiable trail. When a claim is submitted, a smart contract can automatically verify who issued it, to whom and for how much. The taxpayer can then see exactly what was submitted, what was accepted and what is missing, without having to wait for a manual review.

The same applies to subsidies. Eligibility, approvals and disbursements can be recorded on-chain, allowing recipients to see what they qualify for, what has been approved and what has been paid. For governments, this reduces leakages. For individuals and businesses, it allows them to verify what belongs to them.

However, this only works if governments are willing to use public blockchains, which will require portions of its data to be anchored on-chain.

“The government has to be willing to put certain attributes of its data on-chain, not all of it, but enough for the public to verify against. Whether it is enterprises or individuals, it doesn’t matter,” says MBISB CEO Azhar Abu Talib.

“Rather than the government being the only one who can say whether something is correct or not, you can use the chain. If you don’t believe what has been submitted is correct, you can check it there. That’s how you build trust in the ecosystem.”

With a lean team of about 15 people and a modest resource base drawn largely from its parent company, MBISB has embarked on building several pilot programmes that prove public blockchains can serve the government securely, without requiring all the data to sit on government-owned infrastructure.

This is still very much in the exploratory phase, however. None of its planned use cases have been fully deployed and most are still in early discussions.

Among the pilot programmes the company is pursuing are a cross-border trade documentation trial with Singapore and Sarawak, a blockchain-based durian traceability system in Penang and an early-stage exploration of anchoring carbon credits on-chain using wakaf land.

Despite years of blockchain adoption, the government’s use of the technology has largely remained on private, permissioned systems. For instance, the vaccine management system, developed by Mimos under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme, used blockchain to track and trace vaccine supply chains. The system was built on Hyperledger Fabric — a permissioned chain restricted to authorised parties.

Other applications, such as an ongoing initiative by the Royal Malaysian Customs Department to trace import and export documentation, have also been built on permissioned, government-controlled systems.

Government blockchain infrastructure has been developed through platforms such as MyGovBC — a blockchain-as-a-service offering for public sector agencies — but these deployments operate similarly within controlled, permissioned environments.

But government agencies remain wary of public blockchains largely due to concerns about data exposure and control. The prevailing mindset is that sensitive government data must remain within systems they own, making private infrastructure feel inherently safer, explains Azhar.

“The government always wishes to have their own data on their private ecosystem, which they own themselves. This is the current mentality, because they feel if they own it privately, then the chances of people breaking in is not that easy,” he says.

The misconception is that all data must be put on-chain, he observes. In reality, however, only certain proof attributes are to be stored, while the underlying data remains private and with the issuing entity.

“What we’re trying to show is that you can build on public networks and still maintain security. It can be as secure as building it yourself, without needing everything to sit on government infrastructure,” says Azhar.

Using a birth certificate as an example, he explains that private information, such as the hospital or blood type, is not placed on the chain. Instead, what gets stored is mathematical proof — or cryptographic proof — that the certificate is correct, as well as who issued it and who owns it.

The actual data remains with the individual and with the issuing government entity. When the data needs to be verified by a third party, the chain confirms the issuer and the owner’s identity without revealing the underlying private information.

Similarly, Malaysia’s digital identity initiative, MyDigital ID, is expected to incorporate blockchain as part of its longer-term road map. As a nationwide digital identity platform, users must be able to verify their own records.

In public blockchains, transactions are secured through cryptography and validated across multiple independent nodes. And unlike a centralised database — where a compromised system can expose records — a blockchain distributes data across many nodes. Altering a record would require overriding the majority of them simultaneously, making tampering more difficult.

“Technically, if I were a hacker and I wanted to access a government database today, I would only need to access one database. But in a chain ecosystem, you have many nodes, so you will have to change all those nodes, which makes it harder to tamper,” Azhar explains.

In addition, once data is recorded on-chain, it is time-stamped and immutable, meaning it cannot be easily altered or deleted without leaving a trace. This creates a strong audit trail, where every action can be tracked and verified, reducing ambiguity in disputes and limiting opportunities for manipulation.

“The parameters are clear. You submit everything, and it can be verified on the chain. If something is missing, you can refer to the chain and see exactly what is not there,” he points out.

This does not mean all government data needs to move into public blockchains, says Azhar. The government can decide what data to keep on private, permissioned systems. But public blockchains have an important role to play in cross-border use cases such as digital trade, ESG reporting and certification exchange.

To prove public blockchains can work, MBISB is focused on building real-world use cases with willing partners. “For MBI, we work only with parties who are interested. Whatever the hurdle is, we will work together to overcome it, rather than pushing a party that’s not so willing. Those are the entities we prefer to work with,” says Azhar.

One such effort is a trade-related use case involving cross-border documentation. MBISB is in discussions with its counterparts in Singapore and Sarawak on a potential bilateral pilot programme, leveraging Singapore’s blockchain-based TradeTrust framework for trade documentation, including bills of lading, invoicing and trade financing.

The framework is open source and built on globally accepted standards, connecting governments and businesses to a public blockchain to enable trusted interoperability of electronic trade documents across platforms.

It would still need to be customised to local processes, says Azhar. Discussions are ongoing, with the possibility of a trial within the year.

“The idea for trade is that our counterpart in Singapore has already established a blockchain-based framework for trade purposes such as bills of lading, invoicing, trade financing, and those kinds of things. We are talking to our counterparts in Sarawak to see if there is interest to participate in the ecosystem, starting with a bilateral set-up between Sarawak and Singapore,” he says.

“It is an open-source ecosystem, not something built only for Singapore or its government, but it would need to be customised to our own processes. That is currently ongoing, and so far, the response has been positive. If that continues, we could see a trial sometime this year.”

The collaboration is intended to serve as a proof point. By working with a system already operating on a public blockchain, MBISB aims to demonstrate that such infrastructure can support real-world trade processes securely.

“The reason we want to work with Singapore is because it is using a public ecosystem — there’s nothing private about it. If that works, we can show that these systems are already running for trade purposes on a public chain,” says Azhar.

“We are trying to promote to the government to use the public chain that we already have as an adapter. Hopefully, the government’s mind will change to, say, ‘Okay, you know what, it’s safe to move using a public ecosystem. We’ve seen it somewhere and it works.’”

In Penang, MBISB is working with partners to explore a blockchain-based traceability system for durians, which will allow it to anchor the origin, handling and certification data on-chain to combat fraud and verify geographical authenticity.

Another use case under exploration is the potential to anchor carbon credits on-chain using wakaf land. A large portion of such land across Malaysia remains underutilised — some forested, others left idle — and could be repurposed for carbon capture.

The company is working with a carbon auditor to assess suitability and explore certification under an international standard that allows small, scattered parcels to be aggregated for carbon credit purposes. The project remains at an early stage, with the aggregation model still to be tested and the relevant parties to decide whether to proceed.

MBISB’s mandate covers non-financial use cases such as traceability, documentation, verification and government services. Financial applications such as stablecoins and cryptocurrency fall under the jurisdiction of Bank Negara Malaysia and the Securities Commission Malaysia, which have their own sandbox programmes.

MBISB is building a gallery — a curated directory of applications built on its partner chains — in which developers can list their Web3 solutions. The idea is to give government agencies a starting point, a way to see what already exists in the Web3 ecosystem, says Azhar.

“The idea is simple. Once you build an app, you list it in our gallery. We then promote it to government clients, so they can see what’s already available in the Web3 ecosystem. The government doesn’t need to spend money building it from scratch. If they like a particular app, they can just subscribe to it,” he explains.

“The real aim is to grow the ecosystem through the government, because penetrating the public sector, especially for Web3, is not easy,” he says, adding that the gallery is targeted for launch by the third quarter of this year.

The gallery will serve as a showcase of real-world use cases, giving government agencies something tangible to evaluate and shifting the conversation from abstract technology to practical applications.

Once the gallery is in place, MBISB plans to introduce an audit mechanism within the ecosystem to verify the integrity of applications built on its platform. This includes independent checks on smart contracts and system behaviour, ensuring they function as intended and do not introduce vulnerabilities. The company also intends to establish standard criteria that all partners must meet before their apps are published in the gallery, says Azhar.

“There will be a team that checks whether the software you submit misbehaves within the ecosystem. If it does, it will be rejected and you’ll have to redo it,” he adds.

Underlying this is MBISB’s role as an orchestration layer. It does not run its own blockchain or compete with networks such as Ethereum, Polygon, Solana or Zetrix. Its role is to provide interoperability, which is a single interface that allows developers to connect to any of these chains without having to build separately for each one.

Among its early participants are six universities, including Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, as well as industry partners such as Digital Penang and FOMEMA IT.

App providers such as RightCliQ Solutions Sdn Bhd — which provides blockchain-based digital certificates for universities, allowing academic credentials to be issued and verified on-chain to prevent falsification — and Zanko Sdn Bhd are also building on the platform.

Developers build their apps once through MBI’s interface, and the platform routes each request to whichever blockchain they choose. If they want to move to a different chain later, they will not need to rebuild their apps.

“If you use our ecosystem the way our partners are trialling it, all you need to do is choose an adapter. We have an application programme interface, and you select an adapter — say, you want to use a Zetrix adapter, then you run on Zetrix. You don’t need to build a customised development just for Zetrix. And later on, if you want to move to something else, you don’t have to redo the development for that,” says Azhar.

Its current partners include Zetrix AI Bhd and Bayani Chain, a Philippines-based network running on Polygon. Zetrix, a layer-1 public blockchain provider, was the first chain integrated into the MBI platform.

In January, MBISB endorsed a blockchain-based age verification solution built on the Zetrix platform, designed to help social media platforms comply with Malaysia’s new minimum age requirement of 16 while minimising the handling of personal data.

With this solution, users verify their identity through official sources such as MyDigital ID, and receive a secure digital proof that can be presented to platforms without exposing underlying personal information.

Meanwhile, Philippines-based BYC Ventures, which is behind Bayani Chain, formalised its entry into Malaysia through a partnership with MBISB, providing blockchain-as-a-service capabilities for document verification, audit trails and cross-agency data integrity.

The government’s MyGovBC platform is another adapter target. “As more and more layer-1 ecosystems come and join us, then we will build more and more adapters towards that. Obviously, we wish that we can build adapters to all of them. But currently, with resource constraints, we have to start in stages according to what our client has,” says Azhar.

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