China Launches Blockchain Chip While Keeping Its Crypto Ban Firm

TL;DR

• China’s new 96-core blockchain chip delivers 50x faster performance than general-purpose processors.
• The integrated system enables secure data sharing across 16 ministries and 27 state-owned enterprises.
• Over 300,000 companies now use this infrastructure for cross-border trade and supply chain finance.

On March 5, 2026, Dong Jin — director of the Beijing Blockchain and Edge Computing Research Institute and delegate to the National People’s Congress — announced the development of China’s first high-speed blockchain chip. The device packs 96 specialized cores and runs alongside a proprietary operating system built on three million lines of open-source code, engineered from the kernel level to extract maximum output from the hardware beneath it.

The performance leap the chip delivers is hard to overlook. Where conventional general-purpose processors currently power most blockchain networks, the new Chinese chip handles the fundamental cryptographic operations — signature verifications and hash calculations — through parallel hardware pipelines.

The outcome: network throughput 50 times greater than solutions built on standard x86 or ARM architectures. In raw capacity terms, the system processes hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, a threshold that surpasses the processing power of global payment networks like Visa or Mastercard.

From the Lab to 16 Ministries and 300,000 Companies

The technology sits well past the experimental stage. At the time of the announcement, the system already runs inside 16 central government ministries and commissions and across 27 state-owned enterprises, with the stated aim of breaking down data silos between public institutions and enabling secure information exchange without exposing sensitive records.

Commercial deployment extends into the private sector as well. More than 300,000 companies already use the infrastructure for foreign trade operations, with transaction volumes surpassing one trillion yuan. Alongside that, the system processes tens of billions of invoices per year, recording each document in an unalterable format from the moment of issuance.

That eliminates documentary fraud and allows banks to offer near-instant financing to small supplier companies, converting accounts receivable into fractional digital certificates that circulate across the chain.

Beyond operational efficiency, the project carries the name “China Chip” and pursues an explicit goal of technological self-reliance. By designing and producing the hardware domestically, China builds a digital infrastructure that depends on no foreign supply chain and carries no exposure to sanction risks or hardware-level backdoors. In a climate of escalating global tech tensions, that argument carries as much weight as any performance benchmark.