Let the market itself go on the chain: Canton Network is quietly becoming the new underlying layer for institutional finance

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Author | jk

1. A Proposal Approved in Three Days

On March 20, 2026, the globally renowned payment service provider, also the company represented by the symbol found on most bank cards—Visa—submitted a governance proposal to Canton Network. According to The Block, just three days later, the proposal was approved, and Visa officially became a Super Validator on Canton with the highest weight level of 10 (Super Validator Weight 10). This was also Visa’s first-ever submission of a blockchain governance proposal.

In the crypto world, this might seem like another entry of traditional finance into the space. But if you understand the internal legal and compliance processes of institutions like Visa, you’ll realize that a three-day approval is quite unusual. Visa’s compliance team must have submitted this document with the caution and seriousness typical of traditional finance, and receiving the highest weight indicates that negotiations and due diligence had already been fully completed beforehand. The proposal seen by the public is likely the result of months of close cooperation between traditional finance and the crypto world.

Rubail Birwadker, Head of Global Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships at Visa, stated: “Many banks believe that the lack of privacy is the biggest obstacle to migrating substantial business onto the chain. By serving as a Super Validator on Canton Network, we bring Visa-level trust, governance, and operational standards into this privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure, allowing regulated financial institutions to move payment operations onto the chain without disrupting their existing workflows.”

It’s clear that Visa’s involvement is an acknowledgment of an already mature institutional network, not the starting point.

Since 2017, each market cycle has seen a batch of traditional financial institutions loudly declare “exploring blockchain,” but very few have managed to turn it into real business. This time, Visa has chosen to enter the governance layer of blockchain, holding voting rights and participating in infrastructure decision-making. Eric Saraniecki, Network Strategy Lead at Digital Asset, co-founder of Canton Network, said in a statement: “Visa’s participation confirms that this technology has moved from the experimental stage into production readiness.”

Curious about this collaboration, Odaily Planet Daily interviewed the Canton Network team. What exactly facilitated this partnership? And what made Canton, a long-sleeping project, be chosen?

2. Not More Assets on Chain, But the Market Itself on Chain

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

Ethereum and Solana address: how to get more people involved, how to bring more assets onto the chain. Canton addresses: how financial institutions can conduct normal business on the chain. The focus may seem different, but in specific design choices, their trade-offs are almost opposite.

Ethereum’s global transparency is an advantage for retail investors but a barrier for institutions. For example, a bank’s foreign exchange trading department, if every USD and EUR trade is visible in real-time, counterparties can adjust their quotes based on this information, significantly increasing trading costs. If market makers’ positions and hedging operations are fully public, competitors can mirror these strategies and squeeze profit margins. Repurchase agreements between institutions involve their capital positions and collateral scales; if these data leak, it poses liquidity management risks. These restrictions are not directly related to regulation but are dictated by basic business logic.

Even if addresses and real-name institutions are not linked, transparent on-chain transactions will alter the entire secondary market logic. No traditional financial institution wants its trades to be sniped, so designs like Ethereum and Hyperliquid are not optimal for large institutions.

Canton’s approach is to embed data visibility controls into the protocol layer.

This method integrates selective data disclosure as a native feature of the protocol, not as a patch applied by upper-layer applications. Specifically, only the direct participants in a transaction can see the details, and the network completes validation without exposing any sensitive data. Two banks can perform cross-border settlement on the same shared infrastructure, with the transaction completely invisible to all unrelated parties. Competitors can interact on the same network, with their positions and strategies remaining confidential.

We also asked about technical details. Canton explained: “Canton separates the coordination layer (shared across the entire network) from data visibility (restricted to participants), achieved through isolated execution environments and selective synchronization. This allows institutions to trade securely, interact with competitors, without revealing their positions or strategies. It’s a mechanism that enables genuine markets—rather than assets—to operate natively on-chain.”

Canton Network summarized this design philosophy: data visibility control is fundamental, not an add-on.

Hence, why does Canton’s validator list look like a gathering of old money: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, Citibank, Bank of America, DTCC, Nasdaq, Broadridge, Tradeweb… These institutions are coming in because this infrastructure allows them to replicate the success of traditional finance, attracting liquidity gradually.

Canton’s Super Validators List

3. Wall Street Roots, Slow and Steady

Canton was created by Digital Asset Holdings, founded in 2014 by Blythe Masters. Blythe Masters, a former star executive at JPMorgan Chase, was a pioneer in the CDS (credit default swap) field and has deep connections and industry backing on Wall Street. From day one, this company has not aimed at retail blockchain products; its target clients are financial institutions with real balance sheets, strict regulation, and operating within legal frameworks.

Regarding its background, we asked a pointed question: Canton was launched in 2023, so why did it only fully go live this year?

Canton’s answer is: slow and meticulous.

Wall Street’s background determines the project’s pace. In interviews, Canton admits that this chain took longer than other Layer 1s to reach today’s stage because it has been dealing with regulated financial systems, establishing institutional trust, and integrating into actual markets from the start.

This pace is completely opposite to the mainstream Web3 narrative. Most public chains pursue rapid deployment, ecosystem building, hype creation—launching Token Generation Events (TGE)—and then often the team admits, “We’re not even sure ourselves.” Canton’s approach is to negotiate step-by-step: first secure DTCC, then Goldman Sachs, then JPMorgan Chase, then Visa, leveraging their endorsements to bring in real business.

2026 marks a turning point—not because of marketing, nor because the current crypto bear market is reshuffling—but because, beyond the narrative, the infrastructure has finally met institutional demands: real balance sheet activities are running on it. That’s why now is the best time to focus on Canton Network.

“So, how much business has been introduced?” we continued to ask.

4. Canton’s On-Chain Activities

Canton’s current data is an outlier in the blockchain industry, and the nature of these figures is very different from most public chains. Currently, Canton Network’s monthly processed volume exceeds $9 trillion, with daily transactions in the hundreds of thousands, and ecosystem participants have grown by orders of magnitude over the past three years. These figures correspond to real financial activities: tokenized repos, government bond settlements, cross-institution collateral mobilization. These are not mere volume metrics but actual operations on institutional balance sheets.

We also asked about the main products on the chain. Currently, there are several flagship applications:

JPM Coin by JPMorgan Chase: In January 2026, JPMorgan’s Kinexys division announced the native deployment of JPM Coin on Canton Network. Unlike USDT or USDC, JPM Coin is a deposit token representing a direct claim on JPMorgan deposits, operating within existing banking regulation. For example, two institutions settling cross-border transactions with JPM Coin on Canton are no different in essence from traditional settlement, just much faster, no longer limited to business hours. Kinexys’ average daily transaction volume is between $90k and $3 billion, with a total exceeding $1.5 trillion since 2019, and this fund flow is now moving on Canton.

DTCC’s US Treasury Tokenization: In December 2025, DTCC announced a partnership with Digital Asset to tokenize some of its US Treasury holdings on Canton, aiming to launch a controlled production environment in the first half of 2026, then expand based on market demand. DTCC also co-chairs the Canton Foundation with Euroclear, directly participating in network governance.

DTCC handles over $20 trillion in securities transactions annually, acting as the core of the US capital market’s clearing and settlement system. In a straightforward analogy, DTCC’s role in traditional finance is similar to the People’s Bank of China; no one can deposit money there, but all stock and bond transactions must go through it. The traditional repo market operates only on business days, with transactions paused after Friday afternoon until Monday. On Canton, repo trading can run 24/7, using on-chain US Treasuries as collateral, enabling real-time, cross-institutional, cross-timezone liquidity even over weekends.

What will Visa do on Canton?

Canton describes one core goal as atomic settlement: buyer payment and seller asset delivery happen simultaneously in one operation, without two steps or reliance on intermediaries. For example, currently, when an institution buys a bond, the transfer of assets and cash settlement are often separate processes, with time gaps, counterparty risk, and manual reconciliation. Canton aims to make these happen simultaneously, instantaneously, with no time lag. To achieve this, both capital market infrastructure and payment infrastructure must be on-chain. Canton already has a solid foundation in capital markets, and Visa’s involvement provides a real institutional anchor in payments.

Beyond that, real-time cross-border capital flows, embedding programmable logic into financial transactions, and other blockchain strengths are also part of the plan.

Canton believes 2026 will be the first period when infrastructure truly meets institutional demands, which is why institutions like Visa are choosing to engage now.

Existing Use Cases

Tokenized repos are the most mature scenario. Repos are short-term financing tools between financial institutions—Institution A sells bonds to Institution B for cash, with an agreement to buy back later. Traditionally, this process is limited to business hours, with settlement delays. Tokenized repos on Canton are already real-time, 24/7, with several leading institutions completing cross-institutional, weekend-covering repos.

Collateral mobilization is another practical scenario. Large institutions often need to transfer collateral from one account or entity to another, e.g., moving bonds from A to B to meet margin requirements for derivatives. Traditionally, this takes days, assets are locked, and cannot be used elsewhere. Canton’s settlement model makes this process nearly instantaneous.

Digital bond issuance is another area where Canton has an advantage. Canton states that it currently holds over half of the global digital bond issuance market. The reason is Canton’s ability to provide complete delivery-versus-payment (DvP), full lifecycle management, and multi-party coordination, enabling bonds to be issued and settled fully on-chain, not just tokenized assets with off-chain processes.

Stablecoin settlement is a direction accelerated after Visa’s involvement, aiming for institutional stablecoin payments to be completed on a compliant infrastructure with data visibility controls, rather than routing through public chains.

In simple terms, while no RWA (Real-World Asset) tokens are explicitly mentioned, every statement emphasizes the demand for RWAs.

Canton’s roadmap also indicates: in the medium term, corporate bonds, private credit, and trade finance will follow; in the longer term, equities are also on the path. The logic from current use cases to this roadmap is consistent: assets with higher liquidity and more mature regulatory frameworks will move first.

5. What Does the CC Token Represent?

For broader market participants, the nature of the CC token is a crucial question.

Canton’s straightforward explanation in the interview: “CC is a ‘network utility asset,’ its value anchored to the volume of real financial activity occurring on the network.”

This means demand comes from actual usage—higher transaction volume on Canton means more CC consumed. Long-term drivers include institutional trading volume, stablecoin settlement scale, total on-chain assets, and the depth of interoperability with other networks.

CC’s token distribution is quite rare in Web3: no pre-mining, no team allocation, no VC shares—all tokens are fairly distributed through open markets. For institutional participants, this reduces concerns about “someone holding ultra-low-cost chips and cashing out on the secondary market at any time.” The rules are transparent and equitable for all.

For ordinary market participants, Canton functions more as a backend infrastructure. The typical way to interact with it is via exchanges, wallets, or financial platforms, not directly with the protocol. The improvements—faster settlement, tighter bid-ask spreads, better financial products due to lower operational costs—will gradually reach end users through product layers, not as direct user experiences.

6. Next Steps

Canton’s stated 3-5 year goals are not measured by on-chain TVL or token price. Based on the specific objectives listed, they include: stablecoins becoming the standard for interbank settlement, similar to SWIFT wire transfers; major financial institutions’ loans, deposits, bond issuance, and product packaging operating directly on-chain; cross-border capital flows happening nearly in real-time; multiple asset classes being issued and settled natively on Canton, rather than off-chain issuance with manual on-chain synchronization.

Canton describes this future state as “invisible”: it will be just one of the underlying protocols quietly powering global finance, like TCP/IP for the internet or SWIFT for cross-border payments—users won’t notice its existence, but without it, nothing can operate.

Of course, the journey is long. Regulatory fragmentation across jurisdictions is high; European compliance standards differ vastly from Asia; legacy systems are difficult to integrate—banks’ core systems have been in use for decades and cannot be migrated overnight; interoperability between different blockchains remains an unresolved technical challenge; coordination among institutions on a shared infrastructure involves complex interests. The Canton team openly acknowledges these challenges: “Technical bottlenecks are no longer the biggest issue; how to truly scale globally is the real question.”

It’s clear that financial infrastructure transformation is never a sudden event. SWIFT was established in 1973 and took nearly two decades to become the standard for cross-border settlement. Today, we use it without thinking about its origins. Canton’s current position is probably at that “no one yet realizes what it will become” stage. But for something aiming to be foundational infrastructure, being forgotten might just be a sign of success.