让市场本身上链：Canton Network正悄然成为机构金融的新底层

Original｜Odaily 星球日报 (@OdailyChina)

Author｜jk

1. A Proposal Approved in Just Three Days

On March 20, 2026, Visa, the globally renowned payment service provider whose logo is emblazoned on most bank cards, submitted a governance proposal to the Canton Network. According to a report from The Block, the proposal was approved just three days later, making Visa a Super Validator on Canton with the highest weight level, Super Validator Weight 10. This marks the first time Visa has ever submitted a blockchain governance proposal.

In the crypto space, this might appear to be yet another instance of traditional finance (TradFi) entering the fray. But if you’re familiar with the legal and compliance processes inside traditional institutions like Visa, you’ll find the three-day approval timeline quite unusual. Visa’s compliance team would have prepared this document with the caution and seriousness typical of traditional finance, and securing the highest weight level indicates that negotiations and due diligence were fully completed beforehand. The proposal we see publicly is likely the culmination of months of collaboration between traditional finance and the crypto world.

“Many banks see the lack of privacy as the biggest obstacle to moving meaningful business on-chain. By becoming a Super Validator on the Canton Network, we are bringing Visa-grade trust, governance, and operational standards to this privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure. This allows regulated financial institutions to move payment operations on-chain without disrupting their existing ways of working,” said Rubail Birwadker, Head of Global Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships at Visa, in a statement.

Clearly, Visa’s entry is an endorsement of a mature institutional network, not a starting point.

Since 2017, each market cycle has seen a wave of traditional financial institutions loudly announcing their “exploration of blockchain,” yet very few have translated that into real business. This time, Visa has chosen to enter the governance layer of a blockchain, holding voting rights and participating in infrastructure decisions. “Visa’s addition confirms that this technology has moved from the experimental stage to being production-ready,” said Eric Saraniecki, Head of Network Strategy at Digital Asset, the founding company of the Canton Network, in a statement.

Curious about this collaboration, Odaily 星球日报 interviewed the Canton Network team. What exactly led to this partnership? And why was Canton, a long-gestating project, chosen?

2. It’s Not About Bringing More Assets On-Chain, But Bringing the Market Itself On-Chain

To understand why Canton could attract Visa, we first need to look at the core differences between Canton and other blockchains.

Ethereum and Solana solve the problem of how to get more people involved, how to bring more assets on-chain. Canton solves the problem of how financial institutions can conduct business normally on-chain. The focus might sound different, but in terms of specific design, their trade-offs are almost entirely opposite.

Ethereum’s global transparency is an advantage for retail investors but an obstacle for institutions. For a concrete example, take a bank’s foreign exchange trading desk. If every buy or sell order for USD or EUR were visible in real-time, counterparties could immediately adjust their quotes based on that information, significantly increasing the bank’s trading costs. If a market maker’s positions and hedging operations were all public, competitors could simply trade in the opposite direction, squeezing out profit margins. Repurchase agreements (repos) between institutions involve details of both parties’ fund positions and collateral sizes—leaking this data would pose a risk to the entire institution’s liquidity management. These limitations aren't directly related to regulation; they are dictated by basic business logic.

Even without a link between addresses and real-name institutions, transparent on-chain transactions would alter the logic of the entire secondary market. No traditional financial institution wants its trades to be front-run. So designs like Ethereum and Hyperliquid are not optimal for large institutions.

Canton’s approach integrates data visibility control into its design.

It handles this by embedding selective data disclosure into the protocol layer as a native L1 feature, rather than relying on upper-layer application patches. Specifically, only the direct participants of a transaction can see its details; the network validates the transaction without exposing any sensitive data. Two banks can settle cross-border payments on the same shared infrastructure, yet the transaction is completely invisible to all unrelated parties. Competitors can interact on the same network without exposing their positions or strategies.

We also inquired about the related technical details. Canton’s explanation was: “Canton separates the coordination layer (shared across the network) from data visibility (limited to participants) by isolating execution environments and enabling selective synchronization. This allows institutions to trade securely, and competitors to interact without revealing their positions or strategies. This is the mechanism that allows a real market, not just assets, to operate natively on-chain.”

The Canton Network told us the summary of this design logic is: Data visibility control is a foundation, not an add-on feature.

So, it’s no wonder Canton’s validator list looks like a gathering of old money: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, Citi, Bank of America, DTCC, Nasdaq, Broadridge, Tradeweb... These institutions join because this infrastructure allows them to replicate the success of traditional finance, and thus, liquidity will gradually flow in.

Canton's list of Super Validators

3. Born on Wall Street, Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Canton was created by Digital Asset Holdings, founded in 2014 by Blythe Masters. A former star executive at JPMorgan Chase and one of the key pioneers in the CDS (Credit Default Swap) field, Blythe Masters possesses deep connections and industry credibility on Wall Street. From day one, this company wasn’t designed to build blockchain products for retail investors; its target clients were strictly regulated financial institutions with real balance sheets that need to operate within a legal framework.

Regarding its origins, we asked a pointed question: We saw Canton debut in 2023, so why has it only fully launched now in 2026?

Canton’s response was slow and steady wins the race.

Its Wall Street heritage dictates the project’s pace. Canton admitted in the interview that this chain has taken longer than other L1s to reach its current stage because it has been dealing with regulated financial systems, building institutional trust, and figuring out how to genuinely connect with markets conducting real business from the very beginning.

This rhythm is completely opposite to the dominant Web3 narrative. Most public chains pursue rapid launch, rapid ecosystem expansion, and rapid hype generation. They launch a TGE (Token Generation Event), and then “the team is actually unclear about the next steps.” Canton’s path is one of step-by-step negotiation: first securing DTCC, then Goldman Sachs, then JPMorgan Chase, then Visa, leveraging their endorsements to attract real business.

2026 is a turning point, not because of project marketing itself, nor because this bear market cycle is reshuffling the crypto world, but because, for the first time, the infrastructure truly meets institutional requirements above the narrative: real balance sheet activities are running on it. This is why now is the best time to pay attention to the Canton Network.

“So how much business has been brought in?” We continued probing.

4. On-Chain Activity on Canton

Canton’s current data is an outlier in the broader blockchain industry, and the nature of these numbers is very different from most public chains. Currently, the Canton Network processes over $9 trillion monthly, executes hundreds of thousands of transactions daily, and has seen its number of ecosystem participants grow by orders of magnitude over the past three years. These numbers correspond to traditional financial activities: tokenized repos, treasury settlements, and cross-institutional collateral movements. This isn’t wash trading; these are real operations happening on institutional balance sheets.

We also asked which products are currently dominant on the network. Currently, there are several flagship products:

JPMorgan Chase’s JPM Coin: In January 2026, JPMorgan Chase’s Kinexys division announced the native deployment of JPM Coin on the Canton Network. JPM Coin is different from USDT or USDC. It is a deposit token, representing a direct claim on a deposit at JPMorgan Chase, operating within the existing banking regulatory framework. For example, if two institutions settle a cross-border transaction on Canton using JPM Coin, it’s fundamentally no different from what they do in the traditional system, except the settlement speed is much faster, and operations aren't limited to business days. Kinexys currently sees average daily transaction volumes between $2 billion and $3 billion, with a cumulative total exceeding $1.5 trillion since 2019. This flow of funds will soon be operating on Canton.

DTCC’s Tokenized US Treasuries: In December 2025, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced a partnership with Digital Asset to tokenize a portion of its custodied US Treasuries on Canton. The goal was to launch the first version in a controlled production environment by the first half of 2026, with expansion based on market demand. DTCC also co-chairs the Canton Foundation alongside Euroclear, directly participating in network governance.

DTCC processes securities transactions worth over $2 quadrillion annually, serving as the core clearing and settlement infrastructure for the entire US capital market. For a simple analogy, DTCC’s position in traditional finance is somewhat like the People's Bank of China; no one deposits money there, but all stock and bond transactions must pass through its backend systems. The traditional repo market only operates on business days; after Friday afternoon, you have to wait until Monday. But on Canton, repo transactions can operate 24/7, using on-chain US Treasuries as collateral, enabling cross-institution, cross-timezone, weekend-inclusive real-time fund transfers.

So, what will Visa do on Canton?

A core objective described by Canton in the interview is atomic settlement: the buyer’s payment and the seller’s delivery of assets happen simultaneously in a single operation, without needing two steps or relying on an intermediary to bridge them. For example, currently, when an institution buys a batch of bonds, the asset transfer and cash settlement are often two separate processes with a time gap, counterparty risk, and the cost of manual reconciliation. Canton aims to make these two events happen concurrently, locking in place instantly with no time gap. To achieve this, both capital market infrastructure and payment infrastructure must be on-chain simultaneously. Canton already has a solid foundation on the capital market side. Visa’s entry provides a genuine institutional anchor on the payment side.

Beyond this, it includes things blockchain excels at, like real-time cross-border capital flows and embedding programmable logic into financial transactions.

Canton believes 2026 is the first cycle where infrastructure truly meets institutional requirements, which is why institutions like Visa are choosing to engage with blockchain infrastructure now.

Other Use Cases Already Running

Tokenized Repos are the most mature use case. Repurchase agreements (repos) are the most common short-term financing tool between financial institutions. Simply put, Institution A sells bonds to Institution B for cash, with an agreement to buy the bonds back in a few days. Traditionally, this process can only be completed during business hours on working days, and fund settlement has delays. Tokenized repos on Canton are already available 24/7 with instant settlement. Several top-tier institutions have already conducted real cross-institution, weekend-spanning repo transactions on Canton.

Collateral Mobility is another use case with real demand. Large financial institutions often need to move collateral from one account or institution to another, for example, moving bonds held at Institution A to Institution B to meet margin requirements for a derivatives trade. Traditionally, this process takes days, during which the assets are locked and unavailable for other uses. Canton’s settlement model allows this process to be completed almost in real-time.

Digital Bond Issuance is another area where Canton holds an advantage. Canton mentioned in the interview that it currently holds over half of the global market share for digital bond issuance. The reason is that Canton can provide complete Delivery versus Payment (DvP), full lifecycle bond management, and multi-party coordination. The entire process, from issuance to settlement, can be closed on-chain, without needing to just tokenize the asset and then rely on off-chain processes to finish.

Stablecoin Settlement is an area accelerating now that Visa has joined. The goal is to allow stablecoin payments between institutions to be processed on the same compliant infrastructure with data visibility control, rather than routing through public chains.

Simply put, the term “RWA” (Real World Assets) isn't used explicitly, but every point addresses the needs of RWAs.

Canton also provided a general outlook for its roadmap in the interview: In the medium term, corporate bonds, private credit, and trade finance will follow; longer term, equities are also on this path. From the existing use cases to this roadmap, the logic is consistent: asset classes with higher liquidity and more mature regulatory frameworks will move first.

5. What Does the CC Token Represent?

For the broader market participants, what exactly the CC token is remains an unavoidable question.

Canton’s characterization in the interview was quite direct: CC is a “network utility asset,” whose value is pegged to the volume of real financial activity occurring on the network.

This means demand comes from actual usage. The more transaction volume institutions generate on Canton, the more CC the network consumes. The long-term drivers for the token include institutional transaction flow, stablecoin settlement volume, total on-chain assets, and the depth of interoperability between Canton and other networks.

CC has a token allocation setup that is quite rare in the Web3 space: zero pre-mine, zero team allocation, zero VC share. All tokens enter the market through fair distribution. For institutional participants, this setup reduces concerns that “someone holds ultra-low-cost tokens and can cash out on the secondary market anytime.” The rules are transparent and equal for all participants.

For average market participants, Canton exists more as backend infrastructure. Ordinary people are more likely to interact with it through exchanges, wallets, or financial platforms rather than directly with the protocol. The improvements it brings, such as faster settlement speeds, tighter bid-ask spreads, and financial products offered under better conditions due to lower operational costs, will gradually trickle down to end-users through the product layer, rather than being presented in a way users can directly perceive.

6. Next Steps

The 3-to-5 year goal Canton outlined in the interview is not measured by on-chain TVL or token price. Judging from several specific goals Canton listed: stablecoins becoming the standard means of inter-institutional settlement, just as SWIFT wire transfers are the standard today; major financial institutions operating loans, deposits, bond issuance, and product packaging directly on-chain; cross-border capital moving at near-real-time speeds instead of the days-long settlement cycles in the traditional system; multiple asset classes being natively issued and settled on Canton, rather than first issued off-chain and then having information manually synchronized to the chain.

Canton used the word “invisible” to describe its state at that point: By then, Canton would be just one of the underlying protocols silently driving the global financial engine, much like TCP/IP is for the internet or SWIFT is for cross-border remittances today. Users wouldn’t be aware of its existence, but nothing would work without it.

Of course, the road ahead is still long. Regulation is highly fragmented across jurisdictions; what’s compliant in Europe is completely different in Asia. Integrating with existing legacy systems is extremely difficult; banks have used their core systems for decades and can’t migrate them overnight. Interoperability between different blockchain networks remains an unresolved technical challenge. Coordinating institutions on the same infrastructure involves complex interest group dynamics. The Canton team didn’t shy away from these obstacles in the interview, telling us: The technical bottleneck is no longer the biggest problem; how to truly achieve global adoption is the real challenge.

As we can see, changes in financial infrastructure never happen overnight. SWIFT was established in 1973 and took nearly two decades to become the true standard for cross-border settlement. People use it today without thinking about how it came to be. Where Canton is now is probably that stage where “no one has realized what it will become.” But for something that truly aims to be infrastructure, being forgotten might be what success looks like.