Canton Network: RWA Tokenization, Institutional Adoption, and Avoiding Others' Mistakes

Article Highlights

• Overview of Canton Network as a next-generation layer one blockchain targeting financial institutions.
• The network's decade-long development story and its avoidance of initial coin offerings (ICOs).
• The network's focus on privacy, interoperability, and security in real-world asset transactions.
• Significant partnerships and funding from major financial institutions.
• Canton Network's measured approach to launching the network and assessing user needs.
• The co-founder's perspective on the importance of privacy in blockchain transactions.

Canton Network: A Bet on Institutional Adoption

The blockchain ecosystem is highly competitive, especially with the emergence of successful smart contract protocols. Canton Network stands out as a next-generation layer one, aiming to attract users and capital from incumbents like Ethereum and Solana. Alongside SUI and Aptos, Canton's rise challenges the common assumption that we have too many blockchains.

The rise of Canton Network may seem rapid, but it's the result of a decade of diligent work and learning from the mistakes of others, as Robert Baggs noted in a Twitter post in November 2025.

Focusing on Institutions and Privacy

In an exclusive interview on Cointelegraph's Chain Reaction daily show, Yuval Rooz, co-founder of Digital Asset, shared the story behind Canton Network, which opted out of an initial coin offering during its decade-long development. "Our thesis was focused on serving large-scale institutions. We’ve been very patient. We refused to do an ICO. We refuse to do a token pre-mine. We’ve really thought about the tokenomics," Rooz explained.

He added, "Every time we thought we were ready, someone else made a mistake. We were like, what would happen if we were to make this mistake? That wouldn't be good.""

Canton Network Architecture

Canton Network is designed for financial institutions, facilitating secure, interoperable, and privacy-preserving transactions. Digital Asset, the company behind Canton Network, describes the protocol's architecture as a 'network of networks' aimed at real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, trading, and settlement.

The protocol and its native token garnered significant attention in 2025. Digital Asset secured $135 million in funding in June to further develop the Canton ecosystem and spearhead RWA tokenization on the protocol.

Major Investment in Canton Coin

Subsequently, biotech firm Tharimmune secured $540 million in private funding to establish a Canton Coin (CC) digital asset treasury. DAT intends to utilize the proceeds to acquire and stake CC tokens as a super validator of the network.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

As Rooz explained, Digital Asset took a deliberate approach to developing and launching Canton Network. A permissioned chain was launched in 2020 to evaluate network performance and user needs.

"It took about four years to build maybe the first version of the ledger and then it took another two to three years to get to a point where we were kind of comfortable to launch it in a permissionless manner," Rooz stated.

Learning from Others' Experiences

Rooz emphasized that the developers learned valuable lessons from the launches of other layer-1 protocols and the teething problems of established platforms like Ethereum.

He further noted, "Here’s the challenge I think that people underappreciate. Once you launch a public network and there are a lot of builders that run in production, it’s extremely hard to change it later. I think it will be extremely hard for public permissionless chains to bolt on privacy in a way that works as an afterthought without really creating a massive amount of pain to their community."

Privacy on a Need-to-Know Basis

Privacy has been a central theme in the cryptocurrency space, with protocols like Zcash gaining significant attention. Rooz expressed satisfaction in seeing industry leaders finally championing the need for privacy in communications and transactions. However, he acknowledged that many have not prioritized this aspect of blockchain functionality in recent years.

Rooz stated, "I can tell you that every time we talked to crypto native folks over the last decade, and we said that privacy is a must-have, they told us, 'you don’t understand crypto.' The whole idea of crypto is not to have privacy."

The Digital Asset CEO further clarified that privacy ultimately comes in 'different shapes and forms.' Zero-knowledge proof cryptography, which powers both Zcash and Canton, is more about anonymity than privacy.

Rooz elaborated, "ZK is coming from a world where people are saying, you really want to have onchain user experience of like hard cash, a bearer instrument, meaning nobody gets to know what assets you have. I think that is an interesting angle. It’s very different than Bitcoin."

Regulatory Compliance

From a regulatory standpoint, financial institutions and authorities must monitor activity to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) standards.

He explained, "I guess what Canton does that is different than Zcash is that the privacy model of Canton is the ability to share information on a need-to-know basis. Meaning, if you are a regulator, you would be able to go to an issuer of a stablecoin and say, 'hey, I want to see all of Yuval’s activity,' which is different than anonymity."

Strong Financial Backing

Digital Asset has received support from major players across the global financial landscape. BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), and Goldman Sachs were among the prominent investors in its 2025 fundraising round.

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