Canton Network appeared just over two years ago and has already been used on Wall Street to finance treasuries with digital dollars. That’s the kind of adoption every new technology dreams of. What’s the secret behind its success?
Canton Network was introduced in May 2023. Over 30 financial institutions, banks, and technology providers joined efforts to create a solution that would modernize post-trade processes, provide an easier interoperability between organizations, and preserve the privacy of sensitive financial data. Canton Network managed to meet those requirements and outperform the previous blockchain architectures in regulated finance. It provides a new opportunity for building interconnected and compliant financial applications.
PixelPlex is pioneering the domain of building solutions on the Canton Network. Our team has already developed a suite of ecosystem-defining solutions: Canton Loop, the first non-custodial wallet, a dedicated KYC verification platform, and the CantonView indexer. We constantly learn and get deeper into the peculiarities of dealing with Canton in close partnership with the architects of the Canton protocol.
Together with our Canton Network experts, we have prepared this guide about the benefits, possible solutions, and implementation costs of this blockchain network. It would be useful for CTOs, blockchain/DLT executives, strategy officers, and product leads in financial institutions and FinTech companies that are looking for professional Canton Network development services for their processes.
Solving foundational problems
Blockchain plays an important role in financial software development. Being a decentralized, immutable ledger system, it may potentially reduce operational costs, deal with security issues, accelerate transaction speed, and streamline compliance. Recent reports by authoritative organizations prove those facts. For example, the GFMA report mentions that DLT globally saves approximately $20 billion each year in settlement and clearing costs. Deloitte experts predict that blockchain will pursue its impact in the banking sector in 2030.
In spite of the advantages, there are still some drawbacks to previous blockchain architectures. For example, they lack data privacy and counterparty control, tend to demonstrate unpredictable performance, and possess complex, insecure interoperability. Canton Network was designed to address those issues and limitations, providing the foundation for a new class of institutional financial applications.
Synchronized privacy explained
In contrast to the inherent transparency of traditional blockchains, where data is often visible to all participants, Canton ensures privacy by default. The network is composed of sovereign subnetworks where each institution maintains control over its own data and operations. Similar to how HTTPS encrypted the open internet to enable e-commerce, Canton’s protocol allows parties to share only cryptographically proven, authorized facts with each other for a specific transaction, without exposing their entire ledger. This provides the necessary confidentiality for competitive financial operations.
Selective and atomic interoperability
Previous attempts to connect different blockchains resulted in complex, insecure bridges with significant risk. Canton makes atomic interoperability a native feature. Assets and data move smoothly across different subnetworks, enabling complex, multi-party workflows, such as the simultaneous exchange of a security for cash (Delivery vs. Payment). This eliminates counterparty settlement risk that exists in both traditional finance and fragmented crypto ecosystems.
Regulatory compliance by design
Canton’s architecture is built for the regulated world. It directly addresses institutional requirements for KYC/KYB and allows for maintaining full governance and visibility within its own subnetworks. Unlike public networks where control is ceded to an unknown set of validators, institutions in Canton never lose control of their assets or data. This ensures they can enforce existing regulatory boundaries, audit transactions, and maintain compliance not as an afterthought, but as a core function of the system.
Canton Network advantages
In the blog post Canton.Network Explained, we’ve described how the technology manages to be reliable and boasts excellent compliance with financial regulations, just like any financial institution itself. At the same time, it preserves the core blockchain advantage of composability, where different applications can interact.
- Privacy: DAML development services include developing smart contracts that automatically execute transactions between Bank A and Bank B. As a result, only the banks involved in transactions have access to this data.
- Control: Canton Network participants maintain complete authority over their digital assets and business logic. For example, an equity firm makes a digital fund accessible only to investors who have passed its specific KYC/AML checks.
- Scalability: Canton’s architecture scales horizontally. Unlike a single blockchain that can become congested, Canton is a “network of networks.” As more applications and participants join, they add their own independent processing power, increasing the total capacity of the entire system without degrading performance. For instance, a tokenized stock exchange can run on its own high-performance subnetwork without being slowed down by a separate, busy repo trading platform, yet both can interact when needed.
- Interoperability: Canton’s atomic interoperability allows for complex, multi-step operations to be executed across organizational boundaries as a single, indivisible transaction, eliminating settlement risk.
In this table, we compared Canton Network to Ethereum and some previously developed permissioned ledgers.
| Feature | Traditional monolithic blockchains (e.g., Ethereum) | Previous permissioned ledgers (Hyperledger Fabric, Corda, Quorum) | Canton Network |
| Data privacy | Transparent by default, complex workarounds needed | Siloed within the ledger, hard to share | Private by default, selective, provable disclosure |
| Interoperability | High within the chain, low across chains | Very low, creates new silos | Atomic interoperability across sovereign subnetworks |
| Scalability | Global bottleneck, all nodes process all transactions | Limited to the consortium | Horizontal scalability, performance is per-application |
| Regulatory compliance | Challenging due to transparency and lack of control | Easier, but creates closed ecosystems | Designed for compliance, entities control their node/data |
| Asset settlement | On-ledger, but often without real-world enforceability | Restricted to the ledger’s participants | Atomic settlement across institutional boundaries |
Solutions built on Canton Network
Digital assets
This category involves creating digital representations of traditional financial instruments on a blockchain, making them more efficient, transparent, and programmable.
- Tokenized funds & bonds: Converting shares of a mutual fund or a corporate bond into a digital token on Canton. This allows for instant settlement of trades, 24/7 trading availability, and automated coupon or dividend payments. For example, a money market fund could offer shares as tokens, enabling investors to redeem them nearly instantly, much like a digital cash equivalent.
- Real-world assets (RWA): Bringing off-chain assets like real estate, commodities, or invoices onto the blockchain. Canton’s privacy ensures the details of a private equity deal or a commercial real estate holding remain confidential among the involved parties, while its interoperability allows these tokens to be used as collateral in other DeFi applications.
- Non-custodial wallets: Providing users with direct, sovereign control over their digital assets. Unlike an exchange account, a non-custodial wallet allows an institution to hold its own private keys, meaning it has full control over its tokenized bonds and RWAs. Canton network wallet development services allow for creating apps that interact securely with DeFi protocols or trading platforms, without relinquishing custody of the assets.
Examine the details of the first of the kind Canton Network’s non-custodial wallet that has already delivered a direct financial result of $3 million in revenue for our client.
Trading & settlement
These solutions focus on creating new, more efficient markets and ensuring the secure, final transfer of assets.
- Institutional DeFi & dark pools: Building decentralized finance protocols that meet the privacy and counterparty requirements of institutions. A bank can operate a “dark pool” (a private trading venue) on its own Canton subnetwork. It can allow pre-vetted participants to trade large blocks of securities anonymously, with the transaction details hidden from the public and competitors, before settling the trade atomically on the network.
- Atomic repo & FX settlement: Executing complex financial transactions as a single, indivisible action. In a repurchase agreement (repo), a bank can provide U.S. Treasuries as collateral and receive a cash loan. With Canton, the transfer of Treasuries and cash happens simultaneously and instantly, eliminating the risk that one party fulfills its obligation and the other does not. This same principle applies to foreign exchange trades, ensuring both currencies are swapped at the exact same moment.
Compliance & infrastructure
Canton enables the creation of shared utilities that reduce operational overhead and ensure regulatory adherence across the ecosystem.
- Reusable KYC/identity: Allowing a user to complete a know-your-customer (KYC) verification once with a trusted entity (like a major bank) and receive a verifiable, digital credential. This credential can then be presented to other applications on the network (e.g., a new trading platform) to instantly open an account without submitting documents again. The user’s underlying personal data is never exposed to the new platform without their consent.
- Automated regulatory reporting: Programmatically sending required transaction reports to regulators in real-time. Every trade or settlement event on the network can be designed to automatically generate a cryptographically proven report sent directly to the relevant regulatory body, creating a perfect, tamper-proof audit trail and drastically reducing manual compliance costs.
Corporate finance
These applications streamline complex, multi-party corporate financial activities.
- Syndicated lending: Managing a loan involving multiple lender banks efficiently. The entire lifecycle can be automated in Canton. All parties share a single, synchronized view of the loan’s status, reducing administrative errors and disputes.
- Programmable treasury management: Empowering a corporate treasury department to automate its cash and asset management. A company can set rules for its digital cash holdings, for example, automatically investing any surplus over $5 million into a tokenized money market fund or scheduling supplier payments to optimize for yield. This turns a static treasury into a dynamic, revenue-generating center.
Here are some of the most typical examples of solutions that can be developed on Canton Network:
| Category | Examples of solutions |
| Digital assets & tokenization | Tokenized funds & bonds, RWA, non-custodial wallets |
| Trading & settlement | Institutional DeFi platforms, dark pools, atomic repo & FX settlement, digital exchanges |
| Compliance & infrastructure | Reusable KYC/identity platforms, automated regulatory reporting systems, data oracles & indexers |
| Corporate finance | Syndicated lending platforms, programmable treasury management systems |
Early adoption by financial leaders
The Canton Network was introduced by a founding consortium comprising more than 30 leading entities, such as investment banks, exchange operators, and tech giants.
According to a Bloomberg report from March 2024, several financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, and CBOE, had successfully finished their initial testing phase on the network. Subsequently, in October 2024, a group of 27 organizations (such as Euroclear, the World Gold Council, and the law firm Clifford Chance) finalized a pilot project that successfully tokenized gilts, eurobonds, and gold using Canton.
Most recently, in November 2024, Hydra X, a digital asset custodian regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, became the first Asia-Pacific-based custodian to offer custody services for the network’s native token, Canton Coin.
Here are some of the Canton Network ecosystem participants:
| Participant type | Examples |
| Global investment banks | Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Citi |
| Asset managers | Charles Schwab, WisdomTree |
| Exchange & infrastructure | Deutsche Börse, ASX, SIX Digital Exchange |
| Technology & service providers | Deloitte, Microsoft, Capgemini |
The world’s leading companies demonstrate their reliable attitude to the network of networks, which means this technology is really worth the buzz it’s producing.
Implementation costs
For any financial institution or FinTech considering a move onto the Canton Network, budgeting requires a nuanced understanding of what drives development costs. Unlike off-the-shelf software, the total investment is highly variable and depends on several core factors that extend beyond pure coding.
- Application complexity: More complicated projects require intricate smart contract design, rigorous testing, and complex deployment architecture. Each additional stakeholder and conditional logic rule adds layers of development and validation effort.
- Legacy system integration: This phase involves not only technical processes but also ensuring data consistency and managing the orchestration of workflows between the new blockchain-based layer and traditional systems, a process that requires deep expertise in both domains.
- Regulatory scoping and compliance: The costs associated with ensuring your application meets jurisdictional requirements form a critical part of the budget. This includes engaging legal counsel to navigate the regulatory landscape, potentially securing licenses, and designing the application for specific rules like data privacy (GDPR) and financial market directives.
Here are generalized costs for some Canton solutions.
| Project complexity | Example solutions | Approximate cost range |
| Simple | Asset tokenization (single issuer), basic non-custodial wallet, internal settlement prototype | $80,000 – $150,000 |
| Medium | Multi-party KYC utility, atomic repo platform, digital bond issuance with investors | $150,000 – $400,000 |
| Complex | Institutional DeFi platform, cross-border payment network, full-scale digital securities exchange | $400,000 – $1,000,000+ |
Top-tier development companies for Canton Network
1. PixelPlex
PixelPlex is a seasoned blockchain developer с deep competence in the Canton Network. Our team pioneers foundational tools for the Canton ecosystem, including the first non-custodial wallet (Canton Loop), a KYC platform, and the CantonView indexer. We collaborate directly with the protocol’s creators and use the secure Daml language to build robust, compliant systems for financial institutions, ensuring protection of sensitive data and assets. We deliver durable Canton solutions that excel in security and usability.
2. Digital Asset
Digital Asset is the creator and primary driving force behind the Canton Network and the Daml smart contract language. Digital Asset provides the foundational platform that enables institutions to synchronize their operations seamlessly and securely. Their flagship products include the Daml SDK for application development and the Canton Network protocol itself, which allows previously siloed systems in finance to interoperate. As the protocol architect, they collaborate directly with a global ecosystem of partners to ensure the network meets high standards for scalability and privacy.
3. IntellectEU
IntellectEU is a leading technology integrator and a Premier Daml Partner, specializing in connecting the Canton Network to legacy enterprise systems and capital markets infrastructure. They are known for their Catalyst platform, which simplifies the integration of Daml applications with existing systems like SWIFT, and for developing custom Daml-based solutions for payments, insurance, and capital markets.
4. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
Tata Consultancy Services is a global IT services and consulting giant that brings enterprise-scale implementation power to the Canton Network. Leveraging its vast experience with Fortune 500 companies and its dedicated Blockchain practice, TCS helps large financial institutions design, build, and integrate Canton-based solutions. Their specialization lies in creating enterprise-grade applications for areas like cross-asset tokenization, trade finance, and settlement.
5. Temple Digital Group
Temple Digital Group is a specialized digital assets advisory and development firm focused on guiding financial institutions through the complexities of blockchain adoption, with a deep focus on the Canton Network and Daml. They act as strategic partners, helping clients define their digital asset roadmap and delivering the technical execution to bring it to life. Their expertise spans tokenization strategies, CBDC design, and the development of custom Daml applications tailored to specific business workflows.
Final notes: The future of Canton Network in FinTech
The Canton Network is ready for a transition from proof-of-concept pilots to mission-critical production systems. It will act as the basis for a fully interconnected and programmable global financial system. This evolution will expand into domains like insurance, trade finance, and complex derivatives, where its ability to synchronize private data will show new levels of automation and efficiency.
As the Canton Network evolves, its success will depend on secure, production-ready solutions. PixelPlex is ready to actively participate in this shift. With our pioneering ecosystem tools and deep technical collaboration with the protocol’s creators, we provide the reliable infrastructure necessary for institutions to confidently expand into new domains. Contact us, and together we will build on the network that is setting a new benchmark for global finance.
