How Canton Network Powers the AllFi Ecosystem

The financial world has long forced institutions into an uncomfortable choice: accept the controls of traditional finance or embrace the speed and transparency of decentralized networks. Canton is rewriting this narrative by proving these worlds don’t have to be mutually exclusive. By combining institutional-grade privacy with the composability and innovation of blockchain, Canton creates a third path—one where traditional finance and crypto-native markets operate on the same infrastructure without compromise.

Why Canton Attracts Institutional and Crypto Capital

The transformation has been striking. By 2025, Canton had already proven its market potential, reaching approximately 600 active validators and processing over 15 million transactions using Canton Coin. But the real indicator of success lies in who’s building on the network: Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Broadridge, and Circle are among the industry leaders now collaborating on Canton to reshape global finance.

The numbers tell the story. Applications deployed on Canton currently manage over $6 trillion in on-chain assets and process more than $280 billion in daily U.S. Treasury repurchase transactions. These aren’t hypothetical use cases—they’re live deployments handling real institutional capital at blockchain speed. For the first time, institutions can access the efficiency gains of decentralized networks without sacrificing the privacy and control their operations demand.

Positioned as an AllFi blockchain, Canton serves as a bridge for both institutional players looking to modernize and crypto-native developers seeking regulatory compliance and institutional adoption at scale.

The Canton Ecosystem: A Comprehensive Breakdown

Canton’s power comes not from any single component but from how its ecosystem pieces fit together. Every layer—from asset tokenization to custody to payments—was designed to work seamlessly within a privacy-preserving environment.

Tokenized Assets: Real-World Finance on Chain

The foundation of Canton begins with asset tokenization. Once real-world assets—bonds, repurchase agreements, money market funds, mortgages, insurance, and private equity—exist on Canton’s L1 network, they become verifiable, enforceable instruments with cryptographic certainty.

This distinction matters. Assets on Canton represent direct ownership through protocol-enforced rights and obligations, not just a digital marker of something held elsewhere. Rights can be enforced, claims settled, and regulatory requirements met at the protocol level itself.

What makes this approach institutional-grade is that privacy remains intact throughout. The transfer of these assets is protected by granular privacy controls—meaning regulators can verify activity, but sensitive financial data doesn’t broadcast globally on a public blockchain. Increasingly, even crypto-native assets like CBTC (tokenized Bitcoin) are finding their home on Canton, seeking the institutional adoption and liquidity that privacy-enabled environments provide.

Stablecoins: The Backbone of Canton Transactions

Stablecoins represent the most immediate avenue for institutional capital to enter blockchain infrastructure. Yet their adoption has been limited by a fundamental friction: privacy. Institutions moving millions in stablecoins need confidentiality—a requirement most public blockchains can’t fulfill.

Canton solves this by providing a privacy-preserving layer specifically designed for regulated stablecoins like USDC, Brale, and M1. These stablecoins on Canton are collateralized by U.S. Treasury bonds and benefit from composability with institutional-grade real-world assets. Fund managers can use them for cash management, cross-border payments, margining crypto derivatives, and 24/7 market operations—all without exposing transaction details to the entire network.

The stablecoin ecosystem on Canton isn’t isolated. It integrates with leading forensic compliance providers, trading platforms, and custodians, creating a trusted venue for institutional-scale stablecoin traffic.

Custody and Wallet Infrastructure

For institutions and sophisticated users to truly own and control digital assets on Canton, custody and wallet solutions must meet institutional standards. Canton’s ecosystem supports a diverse range, from self-custodial wallets like Ledger to custodial solutions designed for enterprises and high-net-worth individuals.

Canton’s token standard, CIP-56, ensures seamless composability between wallets and assets—a technical detail with significant practical impact. Emerging solutions like Five North’s Loop offer frictionless onboarding for retail users, while platforms like Bron cater to sophisticated investors and small-to-medium enterprises. Developers can accelerate custom wallet creation using Digital Asset’s Wallet SDK, lowering the barrier to entry for new service providers.

Liquidity: Making Assets Tradeable

Tokenized assets only realize their value when they can be traded efficiently. A growing roster of market makers—QCP, DRW, GSR, FalconX, Flowdesk, and B2C2—have joined Canton to provide depth and composability across asset classes.

These players don’t just provide traditional crypto liquidity. By operating within Canton’s privacy-enabled environment, they’re unlocking new use cases: automated margin management, 24/7 funding using assets that previously couldn’t be traded continuously, and cross-asset swaps at institutional scale.

Payment Infrastructure and Cross-Border Solutions

Canton’s architecture is purpose-built for payment-to-payment (PvP) workflows—instant, atomic settlement of payments with corresponding asset transfers. This makes it ideal for B2B payments, payroll, remittances, and cross-border transactions.

Unlike other public L1 blockchains, Canton allows institutions to execute these workflows without broadcasting sensitive payment data worldwide. A growing ecosystem of payment verticals reinforces this capacity: Bitwave specializes in B2B cross-border payments, while traditional payment giants like Paysafe and Worldpay are integrating Canton to enhance their settlement layers.

Building on Canton: Developer Tools and Infrastructure

Accelerating time-to-market is essential for ecosystem growth. Canton provides developers with multiple pathways to success.

The Canton Core Academy, recently launched by AngelHack, offers structured courses in building institutional-grade financial applications on Canton. Developers learn Canton’s architecture, master Daml (Canton’s programming language), and gain hands-on experience building inter-institutional asset transfer applications through “Learn and Earn” tasks.

For those building quickly, Digital Asset’s Canton Network Utilities provide ready-made building blocks—frameworks, SDKs, and libraries that compress development timelines. The Quickstart template alone gives developers a foundation for building full-stack applications without starting from scratch.

Node-as-a-Service: Operating at Enterprise Scale

Running Canton nodes has become streamlined. Enterprise-grade Node-as-a-Service providers handle licensing, connectivity, deployment, and validator management, freeing institutions to focus on business logic rather than infrastructure operations.

Observability: Analytics, Compliance, and Trust

Institutional adoption requires transparency and auditability. Canton’s ecosystem includes comprehensive tools for observing network activity while preserving privacy—a sophisticated balance.

The Tie’s public dashboard provides real-time visibility into overall network health, token economics, and application adoption rates. Coin Metrics’ Canton Intelligence App tracks validator rewards, fee streams, application incentives, and sub-account movements. Node Fortress’s governance browser monitors voting activities and proposals, while Proof Group’s CantonScan enables users to explore blockchains by participant and track individual token activity—laying the foundation for institutional-grade compliance.

For real-world asset tracking, RWA.xyz (integrated with data provider Kaiko) offers dedicated dashboards, and 5N Lighthouse delivers real-time data from Canton’s validator set.

Compliance and Forensic Solutions

Canton combines privacy with regulatory oversight through integrated compliance tools. Elliptic provides AML monitoring solutions trusted by regulatory agencies, while TRM Labs offers blockchain analytics for detecting financial crimes.

The sophistication lies in selective disclosure: individual operators can define their own compliance parameters aligned with their regulatory requirements and risk management policies. Sensitive data is protected, but auditors and regulators can still verify transactions when needed.

Looking Forward: Cross-Chain Interoperability

Canton’s vision extends beyond its own network. The ecosystem plans to support interoperability services from leading solutions like Chainlink, LayerZero, and Wormhole—connecting Canton to other blockchains and broader crypto infrastructure.

This interoperability strategy acknowledges a key reality: financial infrastructure won’t consolidate on a single blockchain. Instead, Canton positions itself as a backbone—a secure, compliant, privacy-preserving network that connects fragmented systems in global finance through trusted infrastructure.

The convergence of institutional capital, crypto-native innovation, and privacy-first infrastructure represents a fundamental shift in how markets operate. Canton demonstrates that the choice between TradFi and DeFi was never necessary—it was just the limitations of earlier technology forcing a false dichotomy. Now, markets can operate at crypto speed while maintaining the controls, privacy, and composability that institutions require.