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1. What is Canton Network?
Canton Network is a public layer-1 blockchain built by New York software firm Digital Asset that lets banks, asset managers and clearinghouses issue, trade and settle tokenized assets while revealing each transaction only to the parties involved. As of November 2026 it counts the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Franklin Templeton and Visa among its builders and operators.
That combination of a shared public network and confidential data is the central selling point. On most blockchains, every transfer, balance and smart contract call can be inspected by anyone running a node or browsing a block explorer. Radical transparency works for open, permissionless finance, but it is a dealbreaker for regulated institutions. A bank cannot broadcast its positions, its clients' details or the flow of its collateral to competitors, and data protection rules in most jurisdictions require that kind of information to remain confidential.
Canton was designed around that constraint. Tokenized Treasuries, equities, fund shares and stablecoins can all live on one network, yet each participant sees only the slice of activity it is entitled to see. The project, which started out as a relatively niche effort inside Digital Asset, has grown into one of the more closely watched pieces of institutional blockchain infrastructure, helped in large part by DTCC's decision to run its tokenization service on it.
2. Where the network came from
Digital Asset was founded in 2014 and has spent more than a decade building distributed ledger software for financial firms. Canton itself went live in May 2023 with a pilot group that included Goldman Sachs, Deloitte and Microsoft. Two of its most important components arrived a little over a year later: the Global Synchronizer, which coordinates transactions across the network, and Canton Coin (CC), its native token, both launched in July 2024.
Rather than operating as a single monolithic chain, Canton is often described as a network of networks. Every participating institution runs its own validator node, and that node stores only the data relevant to the institution that operates it. The nodes link up through the Global Synchronizer, which makes atomic settlement possible across firms. In an atomic trade, both sides move at the same instant or neither moves at all, which removes the risk that one party delivers an asset and never receives payment in return.
Governance sits with the Global Synchronizer Foundation, an independent body hosted by the Linux Foundation. The synchronizer is operated by a group of so-called Super Validators, large institutions that take on responsibility for running the network's core coordination layer.
Investors have backed the effort heavily. In June 2026 Digital Asset raised $355 million in a funding round led by a16z crypto, with HSBC, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures and Broadridge also participating. That followed a $135 million raise in June 2025.
3. How does Canton keep transactions private?
Canton keeps transactions private through what it calls sub-transaction privacy: each node receives only the specific parts of a transaction in which its operator is directly involved. Smart contracts on the network are written in Daml, Digital Asset's open-source programming language, which spells out exactly who must sign a contract and who is allowed to observe it.
Consider a repurchase agreement between two banks that also involves a custodian. Each of the three parties sees its own leg of the deal and nothing more. The Global Synchronizer still orders and confirms the transaction, but it does so without being able to read what the transaction contains. The result is a shared record of what happened and in what sequence, without a shared view of the commercial details.
That is a sharp departure from how Ethereum and similar chains work. On those networks, every full node replicates every change to the global state, which is what makes them auditable by anyone. Canton trades that universal visibility for selective disclosure, letting institutions keep control of their own data while still avoiding much of the costly reconciliation that legacy systems require when separate firms keep separate books.
The privacy model is not theoretical. Data from the network explorer CantonScan showed that roughly 79% of updates recorded over a 24-hour period in November 2026 were private.
4. Why DTCC, Visa and LSEG are involved
The strongest evidence of Canton's institutional traction is the list of firms now running real activity on it. DTCC processed live production trades in July 2026 using DTC-tokenized US Treasuries and equities on the network. Its Tokenization Service then launched commercially on October 28, 2026, covering 25 securities drawn from Russell 1000 stocks, major exchange-traded funds and Treasuries. The service runs on both Canton and a private Besu network operated by DTCC.
Derivatives markets are experimenting too. In October 2026, trading firms DRW and Marex executed what was presented as the first over-the-counter derivative referencing a fully tokenized index: a total return swap tied to S&P Dow Jones Indices' iBoxx investment-grade benchmark. Market data firm Kaiko tokenized the benchmark on Canton, and the trade was executed on Derivnex, a derivatives platform built on the network.
The validator roster has filled out quickly over 2026. Visa became a Super Validator in March, Franklin Templeton joined in August and LSEG was appointed in September. That same month, Shinhan Asset Management became the first Korean financial institution approved as a Super Validator. Digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks has also added Canton support.
Usage is showing up in fees. Canton recorded more than $155 million in network fees in the third quarter of 2026, the highest total among the blockchains included in a comparison by security firm CertiK. Because those fees are paid by burning CC, the figure measures what users spent on the network rather than income flowing to token holders.
5. Who is building on the network
Several production applications already run on Canton. Broadridge's Distributed Ledger Repo platform uses it to settle intraday repo trades, a market where speed and certainty of settlement matter enormously. DTCC's Tokenization Service lets securities held at the Depository Trust Company be represented as tokens and moved around the clock, seven days a week.
Franklin Templeton's Benji platform, which handles tokenized fund shares, expanded to Canton in late 2025. Stablecoins are arriving as well: JPMorgan's Kinexys unit plans to issue its JPMD deposit token natively on Canton in phases through 2026, and World Liberty Financial launched its USD1 stablecoin on the network in August 2026.
Trading venues round out the picture. Ekiden, which Canton describes as its first order-book-based derivatives exchange, went live on mainnet in August 2026, while Cantex serves as the network's native decentralized exchange.
6. What is Canton Coin used for?
Canton Coin (CC) is used to pay transaction fees on the Global Synchronizer, and it is the reward paid to the operators and developers who keep the network running. Users burn CC whenever they pay fees, while fresh CC is minted as rewards for validators, Super Validators and approved featured application builders. The design is known as a burn-mint equilibrium.
The token's distribution differs from most crypto projects. There was no pre-mine and no allocation to venture capital investors. Every CC in existence has been earned through minting rewards, which are split among Super Validators, application builders and validators.
Whether the supply grows or shrinks depends on the balance between those two forces. As of November 2026, CantonScan data showed the network burning roughly 80% as much CC each day as it minted. Supply only contracts when burns match or exceed issuance on a one-to-one basis or better, so for now circulating supply is still rising. It stood at just over 40 billion CC.
Regulatory clarity has improved during the year. In November 2026, staff at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) granted no-action relief that treated CC as a digital commodity and said they would not recommend enforcement action over its minting. Earlier, in May 2026, 21Shares launched the first US exchange-traded fund offering direct exposure to CC.
Support from custody and wallet providers is widening as well. Hardware wallet maker Ledger has added CC to its wallet software, and Ripple Custody integrated with Canton in October 2026.
7. Where Canton Coin trades
CC is listed on centralized exchanges including Kraken, Bybit and OKX, and perpetual futures on the token are offered on Binance Futures. Payments provider Alchemy Pay supports card purchases, and on-chain swaps are available through Cantex.
Because CC is a native coin of the Canton Network rather than an ERC-20 token, any asset labeled CC on an Ethereum decentralized exchange is not the real token. Look-alike tokens of this kind are a common trap for buyers. Exchange availability also varies by country and region, and nothing here should be taken as investment advice.
8. What's next for Canton Network
The network is moving from pilot programs into production use, and the next phase is about deepening what institutions can do on it. DTCC's roadmap for its service adds on-chain settlement, collateral management and digital cash. Derivnex and its partners are planning cash settlement and collateral management for derivatives.
Expansion in Asia is also under way, with Shinhan Financial Group, Hanwha Investment & Securities, LG CNS and Meritz Securities among the firms involved.
Canton will not have the institutional market to itself. DTCC plans to connect its tokenization service to Stellar, Circle's Arc and Solana in 2027, which means the world's largest securities settlement organization intends to work across several chains rather than committing to one.
For holders of Canton Coin, the most important variable is straightforward. The token's long-term supply depends on whether institutional activity grows fast enough for burns to overtake new issuance. The bank and market infrastructure names on the network suggest real demand for private, shared settlement rails. Whether that demand translates into enough fee volume to tip the burn-mint balance is the question the next year of adoption will answer.