From Wall Street to Hong Kong: Why Are Top Institutions Moving On-Chain Choosing Canton Network?
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From Wall Street to Hong Kong: Why Are Top Institutions Moving On-Chain Choosing Canton Network?
Canton Network offers advantages such as customizable privacy, network-wide interoperability, and infinite horizontal scalability, aiming to better connect traditional finance with crypto capital markets.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: TechFlow
Introduction
"The future of finance is on-chain" has become a consensus, further solidified as the U.S. SEC launches its "Crypto Initiative" to drive the full migration of U.S. financial markets onto blockchain.
So, how can the future of finance happen more effectively and rapidly on-chain?
We have identified a shared choice among traditional capital markets in both East and West: Canton Network.
In June 2025, Digital Asset, the developer behind Canton Network, completed a $135 million Series E round led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, with participants including BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation), and Goldman Sachs, bringing Digital Asset’s total funding to nearly $400 million.
In terms of actual adoption:
In the West, Goldman Sachs’ digital asset platform GS DAP, BNP Paribas’ Neobonds, and Broadridge’s DLR are all built on Canton technology;
In the East, HSBC’s Orion platform is developed using Canton technology, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has joined the Canton Foundation.
According to RedStone’s June 2025 report “On-Chain Finance Real World Assets Report,” assets tokenized on Canton exceed $4 trillion. Since 2022, over half of all digital bond issuances have been executed via Canton applications.
At the initial stage of an institution-led explosion in on-chain finance, Canton Network has clearly emerged as the core engine powering the digital transformation of traditional financial markets. This widespread adoption by top global institutions not only reflects high recognition of Canton’s technical architecture and business philosophy but also validates its exceptional capabilities in institutional-grade security, compliance, and interoperability.
As a public blockchain network developed by Digital Asset specifically for institutional applications, Canton Network offers customizable privacy, system-wide interoperability, and infinite horizontal scalability, aiming to better connect traditional finance with crypto capital markets.
With Canton Network completing major pilot projects in 2025—including tokenization of U.S. Treasuries, gold, and European bonds—and officially transitioning from the “experimental growth phase” into the “large-scale deployment phase,” it is living up to its official X platform tagline “where finance flows,” accelerating institutional onboarding and shaping a 7x24 hour, globally trusted, secure, and compliant future for institutional on-chain finance.
Born from Institutional Needs, Launched by a Global Consortium of Top Institutions
The idea of building Canton Network originated in 2023.
During the first wave of DeFi and RWA enthusiasm, numerous traditional financial institutions recognized the advantages of on-chain finance: 24/7 efficient capital flow, borderless low-friction and low-cost operations, permissionless global access, and the boundless financial innovation enabled by programmable smart contracts.
Meanwhile, traditional financial institutions possess vast user bases, deep capital reserves, mature risk control systems, and decades of accumulated trust—all of which will inevitably drive broader adoption within the blockchain ecosystem.
This should be a mutual win—but institutions face significant challenges when moving on-chain:
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Privacy and Compliance Pain Points: Public blockchains’ fully transparent ledgers contradict the strict privacy requirements of financial industries (such as KYC, AML, and GDPR). Disclosing sensitive data could lead to legal risks or competitive disadvantages. While private chains offer privacy, they lack openness and ecosystem connectivity.
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Interoperability and Liquidity Fragmentation: Financial systems are highly siloed and fragmented, resulting in inefficient cross-system collaboration. Meanwhile, existing blockchain cross-chain solutions suffer from high operational barriers, costs, and security vulnerabilities.
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Technical Integration and Development Complexity: The barrier and cost for traditional institutions to integrate with blockchain are high; any misstep could trigger major financial risks. Moreover, institutions must balance innovation with regulatory compliance, further complicating their onboarding process.
Private chains won’t work due to lack of openness; general-purpose public chains won’t work due to lack of privacy. Institutions were waiting for a solution that delivers both—high accessibility and high performance.
Digital Asset, whose core team members all come from major traditional financial institutions, quickly identified this challenge.
Investment is ultimately about people. Behind Digital Asset’s $400 million in funding lies a stellar team configuration frequently praised in the industry.
Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO, previously worked at quantitative trading giant DRW and market maker Citadel Securities, and served on the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee’s Digital Assets Markets Subcommittee.
Another co-founder, Don Wilson, founded DRW in 1992 and grew it into one of the world’s largest proprietary trading firms with over 2,000 employees.
The other three co-founders form Digital Asset’s technical backbone: Eric Saraniecki, Head of Network Strategy, previously built a trading platform focused on illiquid commodity markets at DRW Trading and co-founded Cumberland Mining; COO Shaul Kfir was CTO at two startups and has a cryptography research background; CTO Ratko Veprek is a key contributor to Daml, Digital Asset’s proprietary smart contract language.
Driven by extensive institutional experience, deep crypto research, and proven technical execution, the team rapidly developed a vision: an open public chain tailored for institutional use, balancing decentralized transparency with financial regulatory privacy needs.
Each institution runs its own independent sub-ledger, achieving atomic settlement across ledgers through a shared synchronization layer, enabling seamless inter-system collaboration and scalability while preserving privacy and autonomy.
This vision quickly resonated with top global institutions. Over 30 organizations—including BNP Paribas, Capgemini, CBOE, Deloitte, and Deutsche Börse—formed a consortium to support its implementation. In May 2023, the Canton Network mainnet officially launched.
So, how does this much-anticipated open public chain solve these problems?
Built for Institutional Onboarding: Canton’s Product Design Philosophy
In summary, Canton Network employs a unique two-layer consensus mechanism and leverages core components such as the Daml smart contract language, global synchronization layer, and Canton Coin to achieve infinite horizontal scalability and full-network interoperability, while ensuring privacy protection and efficient synchronization.
1. Sub-Ledgers and Synchronization Layer: Enabling Cross-System Collaboration
Canton Network aims to create a “network of networks”—a concept that may sound abstract at first but is actually straightforward.
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Sub-Ledgers:
Within Canton Network, each institution operates its own independent distributed ledger—for example, banks, exchanges, and funds—storing transaction data relevant to itself.
Validation nodes can be operated by the institution itself or outsourced to Canton service providers. Each sub-ledger’s validators are responsible only for validating related transactions, maintaining network security, executing consensus protocols, and interacting with the synchronization layer for cross-ledger transactions. Currently, Canton Network hosts over 350+ validator nodes.
You can think of each sub-ledger as a private mini-network dedicated to a specific institution.
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Global Synchronization Layer:
How do these mini-networks connect externally? Through the global synchronization layer.
As Canton’s core coordination mechanism, the global synchronization layer connects all sub-ledgers, enabling message transmission and transaction validation between different sub-ledgers while ensuring consistency and atomicity.
Importantly, it does not store full transaction details. Instead, it processes only metadata—such as transaction hashes and ZKP proofs—for verification purposes, further enhancing privacy and optimizing overall network performance.
The Super Validator Alliance ensures reliable connections between sub-ledgers and the synchronization layer. Currently, Canton has 30 super validators, including prominent institutions like Broadridge, LayerZero, Moody’s, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings, reinforcing decentralization and regulatory compliance.
This breaks down silos between different sub-ledgers—or different financial ecosystems—enabling full interoperability. Institutions retain control over their data and nodes while gaining the ability to collaborate efficiently with the global financial ecosystem. As each mini-network becomes interconnected, Canton Network truly becomes a “network of networks.”
2. Daml Smart Contracts: Enabling Customizable Privacy
Given diverse financial operations and compliance requirements, institutions’ privacy needs are complex. Daml, a smart contract language designed specifically for institutional finance, is key to customizable privacy management.
As a high-level smart contract language built for institutional finance, Daml features several standout characteristics:
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Permission Management: Daml contracts define rights and obligations of transaction parties, ensuring only authorized entities can access data.
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Programmable Workflows: Daml supports complex financial logic such as conditional payments, collateral transfers, and multi-party agreements.
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Formal Verification: Daml contract logic undergoes mathematical verification to minimize code vulnerabilities and ensure correctness.
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Low Barrier to Entry: Daml is easier to develop and audit, supports one-click cross-ecosystem portability without rewriting code, reducing migration costs.
Building on Daml smart contracts to define transaction logic and privacy rules, Canton integrates privacy-enhancing technologies such as ZKP and MPC. Throughout the process: ZKPs verify transaction validity, MPC enables distributed computation, Daml contracts define access permissions (e.g., embedding AML/KYC logic), transaction details are stored only in the relevant parties’ sub-ledgers, and the synchronization layer handles only metadata for consensus coordination—collectively achieving a “need-to-know” principle.
Thus, institutions can launch on-chain operations with minimal technical overhead and expand across ecosystems, configuring privacy rules according to regional regulations. Since transaction details remain isolated within respective sub-ledgers, Canton ensures compliance with the “data minimization” principle.
3. High-Performance Atomic Settlement: Secure and Efficient Fund Transfers
In terms of performance, Canton achieves “logical sharding” through its sub-ledger and synchronization layer design. Participants store only the ledgers relevant to them, enhancing both privacy and throughput—making it well-suited for high-frequency financial scenarios.
Additionally, the synchronization layer executes atomic operations, ensuring transactions either fully succeed or completely fail, minimizing execution risk and enabling secure, efficient fund transfers.
4. Canton Coin: Core Mechanism for Governance and Incentives
As the native token, Canton Coin serves multiple purposes within the Canton ecosystem:
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Transaction Fees: Institutions pay Canton Coin as fees to cover computation and storage costs. Fees dynamically adjust based on network load.
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Node Incentives: Validators earn Canton Coin rewards for running consensus and maintaining sub-ledgers.
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Governance Participation: Canton Coin holders can vote in governance decisions of the Canton Network Foundation (GSF), influencing network upgrades and rule changes.
Meanwhile, Canton Coin employs a “burn-and-mint equilibrium” mechanism to align token supply with actual network demand and maintain stable value. The token has passed comprehensive audits by leading firm Quantstamp.
Under its distribution model, 50% of tokens are allocated to incentivize application builders—clearly demonstrating Canton’s commitment to attracting developers and growing its ecosystem.
The diagram below further illustrates how Canton Network—a public blockchain built specifically for institutional applications—differs from private chains and general-purpose public chains:
From Pilots to Deployment: Catalyzing the Full Onset of On-Chain Finance
Canton Network is an open Layer 1 built for institutional use—in other words, every institutional financial operation can be moved on-chain via Canton.
When discussing institutional onboarding, many immediately think of RWA. But the true scope of institutional onboarding extends beyond RWA: while RWA refers to real-world assets mapped on-chain, institutional onboarding encompasses not only tokenization of various real-world assets but also native on-chain assets—assets designed, issued, and traded entirely on-chain—including but not limited to:
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Asset Tokenization: Converting traditional assets (e.g., treasuries, bonds, real estate, gold) into digital tokens on-chain to enhance liquidity, reduce transaction costs, and enable 24/7 global trading.
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Collateral Liquidity Management: Managing collateral (e.g., bonds, cash) on-chain for instant cross-system and cross-chain exchange, optimizing liquidity and reducing exposure.
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Cross-Border Payments and Settlement: Enabling instant, transparent, low-cost inter-institutional cross-border payments and settlements, replacing inefficient, cumbersome, and expensive legacy systems.
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Institutional-Grade DeFi: Allowing institutions to participate in decentralized finance—such as on-chain lending, derivatives trading, and liquidity pools—with built-in privacy and compliance to meet regulatory standards.
In reality, as a core engine for traditional finance digitization, Canton Network has already achieved broad support and tangible breakthroughs across multiple institutional onboarding scenarios.
In 2024, Canton Network successfully completed three major pilot programs:
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March 2024: Most Comprehensive RWA Tokenization Pilot
This pilot aimed to validate Canton’s privacy protection and interoperability in capital markets. It involved 22 dApps across five fund registries, five cash registries, three bond registries, three trading apps, four margin apps, and two financing apps—covering asset tokenization, fund registration, digital cash, repo agreements, securities lending, and margin management.
A total of 155 participants from 45 major global organizations actively took part, including Mellon Bank, Broadridge, DRW, EquiLend, Goldman Sachs, Oliver Wyman, Paxos, Baymarkets, BNP Paribas, BOK Financial, CBOE, Commerzbank, DTCC, Generali Investments, Harvest Fund Management, Visa, and Microsoft.
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September 2024: On-Chain U.S. Treasury Collateral Pilot
This pilot tested Canton’s ability to optimize collateral liquidity, settlement efficiency, cost, and latency. It focused on on-chain U.S. Treasury financing and collateral trading via Canton, supporting 7x24 operations, reducing exposure, and complying with SEC regulations.
Major global institutions showed strong interest: led by Digital Asset and DTCC, participants included BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, and Paxos.
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October 2024: Multi-Asset Tokenization Pilot
This pilot validated Canton’s privacy and interoperability across multiple asset classes, covering UK gilts, eurobonds, and gold tokenization.
Twenty-seven top global institutions participated and chose Canton for issuing tokenized assets, including Euroclear, World Gold Council, Clifford Chance, BNP Paribas, and Microsoft.
These three pilots comprehensively demonstrated Canton Network’s powerful capabilities in advancing institutional onboarding and provided rich experience for transitioning from “pilot” to “practice.”
In 2025, multiple major ecosystem initiatives highlight Canton’s momentum in helping institutions go on-chain and driving the broad development of on-chain finance:
February 2025: Canton and Euroclear launched Phase One of the Global Collateral Network (GCN).
June 2025: Nasdaq Calypso integrated Canton’s blockchain technology to automate 24/7 margin and collateral management.
July 2025: Goldman Sachs and Mellon Bank announced the tokenization of their $7.1 trillion money market fund, choosing to run it on Canton.
July 2025: Leading digital asset liquidity providers B2C2, Cumberland DRW, FalconX, and GSR joined Canton’s on-chain collateral program, set to launch in Q3 for all derivatives traders.
August 2025: CBTC launched on Canton, boosting institutional Bitcoin adoption.
August 2025: Canton Network collaborated with Bank of America, Citadel, DTCC, Société Générale, Circle, and others to complete the first real-time on-chain U.S. Treasury financing trade, using USDC stablecoin and tokenized U.S. Treasuries to enable weekend settlement—bypassing traditional weekday-only settlement constraints.
Meanwhile, renowned institutions including 21Shares and 7Ridge have announced plans to build next-generation financial applications on Canton Network, bringing the total number of ecosystem partners to over 181.
From DeFi to TradFi, from crypto-native to traditional institutions, Canton Network is becoming the core driving force behind on-chain financial infrastructure, enabling real-world deployment and ecosystem prosperity.
Global Institutional Recognition: Asia as the Next Growth Frontier
Canton was born for institutional onboarding—institutional support is crucial. Yet gaining broad recognition from global institutions remains rare, whether in Web2 or Web3.
From North America and Europe to Asia, the roster of elite institutions backing Canton creates a competitive advantage difficult for other public chains to replicate, positioning Canton as the leader in the niche of “institutional-grade on-chain infrastructure.”
North America is home to Digital Asset’s headquarters. Leveraging the team’s deep institutional background, Canton’s North American supporter list includes heavyweights like Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Mellon Bank, Bank of America, Moody’s, and Paxos. With the U.S. SEC pushing to migrate U.S. financial markets fully on-chain via its “Crypto Initiative,” Canton is collaborating with supporters to advance the on-chain transition of key financial infrastructure such as dollar stablecoins and tokenized U.S. Treasuries, injecting new efficiency into traditional finance.
Europe is another stronghold: Institutions including BNP Paribas, Deutsche Börse Group, Capgemini, Deloitte, Commerzbank, and Kaiko have joined Canton to advance innovation in eurozone asset tokenization, bond onboarding, and cross-border settlement.
In Asia—the Eastern front—Canton’s strategic expansion is equally rapid and deep: In Hong Kong, HSBC has successfully issued multiple bonds via Canton, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has joined the Canton governance foundation; in Japan, financial giant SBI Digital Asset Holdings is an early supporter and core participant; in Singapore, Canton collaborates with QCP Capital to build on-chain bilateral derivatives collateral and margin management solutions, while Hydra X becomes the first APAC-authorized custodian of Canton Coin; in the Middle East, First Abu Dhabi Bank announced it will issue the region’s first digital bond via HSBC’s Orion platform, listing it on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.
Notably, as Asia rises rapidly within the global fintech landscape, Canton has significantly increased its strategic investment and resource allocation in the region, signaling strong confidence and focused ambitions for the Asian market.
On September 25, 2025, during Korea Blockchain Week, Canton will deeply engage as a sponsor at the “Asia Stablecoin Conference (ASC)” in Seoul, co-hosting discussions on stablecoin innovation in regulation, cross-border payments, and asset pegging, further expanding its presence in Korea and greater Asia.
During the upcoming TOKEN2049 Singapore summit—one of Asia’s premier industry events—Canton plans to host side events, deliver keynote speeches, and join panel discussions to deepen partnerships with top Asian capital firms, exchanges, custodians, and regulators, continuously strengthening its influence across the Asia-Pacific region.
Many readers seeking deeper understanding of Canton may notice an interesting coincidence when translating materials:
“Canton” is the historical Western name for Guangzhou, China—a city located in the Greater Bay Area, a key financial hub linking East Asia to the world.
From West to East, Canton Network is earning the trust of the global financial world through genuine institutional-grade strength, and Asia is emerging as a pivotal move in its next phase of growth.
Conclusion
From coin stocks and RWA to U.S. equities on-chain, this cycle is being led by institution-driven on-chain finance.
As a public blockchain network purpose-built for institutional applications, Canton Network has not only become a critical bridge for institutions entering the on-chain era—thanks to its superior privacy architecture, compliance capabilities, and full interoperability—but also evolved into essential decentralized infrastructure for traditional finance digitization, backed by a coalition of top global institutions.
As Canton Network declares: “Where finance flows.” Where institutional finance goes, Canton Network follows.
Currently, Canton Network is in a crucial transitional phase—from large-scale pilots to multi-scenario deployment—accelerating its role as a vital nexus where tradition meets innovation, East meets West, and present meets future.
With new products launching and strategic initiatives deepening, from North America and Europe to Asia, from efficient on-chain settlement to cross-border stablecoin payments, from RWA tokenization to institution-powered DeFi innovation, the next wave of on-chain finance—led by institutions—is unfolding in new forms on Canton Network.
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