Regulated financial institutions are increasingly interested in the benefits of using internet-native financial rails. However, for many institutional use cases, public blockchains fall short of providing the full scope of functionality needed to augment or replace legacy financial backends. Privacy with auditability, the ability to establish controls around who can transact with whom, KYC/AML checks, and more are all needed to facilitate many types of workflows that major financial institutions handle today. Despite all their unique benefits, existing public blockchains do not typically support these features.
Canton, a new layer one blockchain ecosystem developed by Digital Asset, aims to provide the solution to this problem, in doing so enabling the largest financial institutions in the world to move on-chain without disrupting their workflows. Canton is still a relatively new network, but is rapidly gaining traction with financial institutions around the world in use cases including (but not limited to) derivatives trading, treasury tokenization, and natural gas trading. Read on to learn more about the Canton network and how it’s unlocking the benefits of blockchain rails for some of the world’s largest institutions.
What is Canton?
Canton is a privacy-enabled blockchain network built from the ground up to serve as a global infrastructure layer for finance. It enables applications written in the Daml programming language to interoperate as part of a global, decentralized ecosystem. Collectively, Canton and Daml solve one of the most significant challenges financial institutions face when evaluating the use of most blockchains – retaining privacy and data control while still tapping into the efficiency and interoperability benefits of blockchains.
DAML: Canton’s Programming Language
At the core of the Canton Network is Daml (Digital Asset Modeling Language), an open-source smart contract language purpose-built for institutional finance. Unlike most general-purpose smart contract languages, Daml is optimized for regulated entities, allowing developers to codify financial agreements and business logic in a way that mirrors real-world legal contracts to streamline trading activities, collateral management, and regulatory reporting.
Daml enforces explicit, role-based access control at the language level, which means that contracts specify exactly which parties can view or modify data. This ensures that sensitive details remain visible only to stakeholders, even in multi-step workflows involving numerous organizations. Sub-transaction privacy guarantees ensure that participants see only their portion of a transaction, supporting strict regulatory requirements such as GDPR and HIPAA.
It also offers atomic composability, which ensures that multi-step transactions either succeed entirely or revert, eliminating risks associated with partial transaction execution. While these atomic settlement guarantees are native to a single sync domain (a concept which will be covered in more depth shortly), the Canton Network enables these guarantees to be extended across multiple domains. Daml applications can thus orchestrate workflows that span private institutional ledgers and public domains, settling transactions involving tokenized assets, cash, and data across jurisdictions all while retaining privacy and compliance functionality.
Canton: Daml’s Infrastructure Layer
Unlike most public blockchains, Canton is not a single monolithic network where all participants have connectivity and visibility into all network state and activity. Instead, Canton is structured much like the Swiss governance system for which it is named: it is a collection of Daml applications running on Canton ledgers, each of which can choose to connect with other applications or remain separate.
In this “network of networks”, there is no global ledger replicated across all parties. Instead, each user maintains a ledger containing only the data they are permissioned to see by the Daml application. Connections and data sharing occur solely at the discretion of application operators.
As a result, application operators and users have complete control over which parties they transact with, enabling robust adherence to KYC, AML, and data security requirements. By allowing participants to replicate existing institutional workflows on modernized financial rails, Canton delivers blockchain benefits for institutions while preserving the key features required for compliant enterprise use.
Canton Architecture
Canton’s network of networks architecture is composed of a number of network subcomponents and participant types:
Synchronization Domains: Canton’s coordination and sequencing layer
Sync Domains are a crucial sub-component of Canton, acting as trusted messaging and coordination layers within the larger network. Each sync domain is operated by a Canton Service Provider (CSP), responsible for sequencing transactions, ensuring atomic confirmation, and managing participant identities and permissions. CSPs can be centralized (run by a single organization) or decentralized as virtual CSPs (vCSPs). Virtual CSPs are secured by a consortium of validators using Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus to sequence transactions and enforce atomicity.
One particularly important sync domain is the Global Synchronizer. Operated by the Super Validator Collective (SVC) and secured through BFT consensus, the Global Synchronizer is permissionless to access and enables atomic, cross-domain transactions between otherwise separate sync domains.
Applications built on Canton have the flexibility to choose which sync domain(s) to use for a given transaction or workflow. Depending on privacy, regulatory, or performance requirements, an application might use a local sync domain for certain transactions and the Global Synchronizer for others. Applications can use multiple different sync domains within a single multi-leg transaction if they see fit.
Infrastructure Operators: Validators and Super Validators
Another unique aspect of Canton’s architecture is its layered approach to infrastructure operation, involving both Validators and Super Validators. Validators are nodes that participate in a virtual Canton Service Provider (vCSP), running Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus to sequence and validate transactions within their specific sync domain. Validators are not limited to a single vCSP; they may participate in multiple sync domains simultaneously to support a range of institutional workflows and jurisdictions.
Super Validators are a specialized class of validators with expanded responsibilities that extend beyond the boundaries of any single sync domain. In addition to performing all the functions of standard validators, Super Validators operate nodes for the Global Synchronizer, the public sync domain that enables atomic, cross-domain transactions across the Canton Network. Super Validators are entrusted with validating every Canton Coin transfer, ensuring the atomicity and integrity of cross-domain workflows, and maintaining critical network infrastructure such as the Canton Name Service. The Super Validator Collective also serves as the network’s primary governance body, responsible for voting on protocol upgrades, adjustments to the fee model, the designation of featured applications, and the admission of new Super Validators into the collective.
Participants: Parties and Applications
In Canton, end users (e.g., organizations or entities like banks, asset managers, or corporations) are represented as Parties. Parties can own assets, initiate transactions, and interact with smart contracts through validator nodes. Each party maintains a privacy-preserving view of the global ledger, ensuring that sensitive business information remains confidential, even as assets and workflows span multiple organizations and jurisdictions. Daml Applications on Canton define the business logic, workflows, and access controls for a given use case. Application permissions determine which parties can see, create, or act upon any given contract.
Together, parties, applications, sync domains, and infrastructure operators form a cohesive system to support institutional finance. Parties interact with one another through Daml applications, which define transaction rules. These applications programmatically route transactions through one or multiple sync domains, which sequence and finalize updates to the relevant participants’ privacy-preserving ledger views. Throughout this process, validators and/or Super Validators sequence transactions and ensure atomic commitment within the relevant sync domains.
The Canton Ecosystem
Despite being a relatively new network, Canton has already become a foundational piece of technology for some of the world’s largest financial institutions and market infrastructure providers.
Broadridge’s Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform currently processes over $50 billion in daily repo transactions through Canton, which translates to over $1.5 trillion each month. This makes it the largest blockchain-based repo platform globally, and it is already interoperable with JPMorgan’s JPM Coin, enabling atomic cash and collateral settlement for institutional clients.
Canton is also in use at scale to enable derivatives trading for both RWAs and blockchain-native assets. Tradeweb has adopted Canton’s Global Synchronizer to facilitate atomic cross-domain settlements in fixed income and derivatives trading, with an average daily volume reported at $2.7 trillion as of April 2025. QCP also uses Canton’s privacy features to enable compliant OTC crypto derivatives margining and collateral management.
Versana is currently using Canton to automate lifecycle management of trillions of dollars worth of syndicated loans. HSBC, Goldman Sachs, and BNP Paribas have each deployed Canton-powered solutions – specifically, HSBC’s Orion for bond and private asset tokenization, Goldman Sachs’ GS DAP for digital asset custody and settlement, and BNP Paribas’ tokenization of money market funds and corporate bonds. These institutions, in collaboration with Euroclear, have executed hundreds of cross-domain transactions in pilots that demonstrate real-time, 24/7 collateral mobility for tokenized gilts, Eurobonds, and gold.
Energy companies like Shell and BP are using Canton through Eleox’s Ox Pair platform to bring automation and real-time auditability to energy trade confirmations, while market infrastructure providers like DTCC and Euroclear as well as central banks like the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), are exploring Canton for modernized collateral management and central bank digital currency (CBDC) interoperability.
For a network still in its relatively early stages of ecosystem development, this unprecedented level of institutional adoption demonstrates the unique value proposition Canton brings to regulated institutions in enabling the modernization of their infrastructure.
Canton Coin Tokenomics
Canton’s tokenomics are designed to reward network usage and incentivize sustainable growth, anchored in a fair launch model where every token is earned through verifiable contributions to the network. These include operating infrastructure, building applications, and driving transaction activity. This approach ensures value accrues directly to those advancing the ecosystem. Over the first 10 years of network operation, a total of 100B Canton Coin will be minted. After the first decade, the network will allow minting of 2.5B Canton Coin annually, with a target of burning an equivalent amount to stabilize the total supply at approximately 100 Billion.
In the period immediately following Canton’s launch, Canton Coin minting rights are allocated predominantly towards infrastructure operators, with the heaviest allocation going towards Super Validators. This is intended to bootstrap the early set of critical infrastructure operators. Over time, minting rights shift towards applications (proportional to the transaction volume they facilitate) to incentivize network usage. The portion of rewards set aside for infrastructure providers also shifts towards validators over time, ensuring that every participant in the network is sustainably rewarded for their contributions. You can find a complete minting schedule, as well as visualizations of the weighting of rewards towards different participant types, below.
A mint-burn equilibrium aims to stabilize the value of Canton Coin within the system, with Canton Coin paid for transaction fees being burned. In another notable departure from most blockchain networks, fees are denominated in USD but paid in Canton Coin. They are assessed using a regressive schedule, meaning the percentage fee decreases as transaction size increases.
By tethering token supply to real-world usage and progressively shifting rewards toward applications, Canton aims to create a virtuous cycle of growth: infrastructure bootstraps adoption, which fuels application development, which in turn drives network effect growth. Combined with USD-denominated fees to mitigate volatility, this model positions Canton as a stable, scalable backbone for institutional adoption.
Figment’s Involvement
Figment has been approved as a Super Validator operator on Canton and will be live on the network soon. As a Super Validator, Figment is eligible to offer a limited number of hosted validators to our partners.
Our SOC 2 Type II-certified infrastructure, coupled with our experience supporting over 700 institutional clients across leading blockchain networks, makes Figment an ideal partner for organizations seeking reliable, compliant, and secure blockchain infrastructure services. Whether you are looking to operate a dedicated validator, build Daml-based applications, or explore tokenization and settlement opportunities on Canton, Figment’s team is ready to support your onboarding and operational needs. If you’re interested in your own Canton Validator, reach out to our team today to learn more.
