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Canton Network: ALLFi Infrastructure & RWA Amidst Financial Transformation

4 min read

Canton Network: Pioneering ALLFi Infrastructure Amidst Financial Transformation

  • Strategic Focus: Exploring Canton Network, an institution-focused public chain powering ALLFi, aiming to merge traditional and decentralized finance.
  • Significant Funding: Highlighting Tharimmune's $540 million investment in Canton Coin財庫, signaling institutional confidence in the network.
  • Privacy and Compliance: Understanding how Canton Network addresses the privacy and compliance challenges faced by financial institutions in the blockchain space.
  • Real World Assets (RWA): Examining Canton Network's focus on efficiently trading Real World Assets, such as tokenized US Treasuries.
  • Institutional Adoption: Analyzing the involvement of major financial institutions in the development and adoption of Canton Network.

Following a disappointing 'Uptober' and a challenging 'Red November,' investors are keenly observing emerging projects in the blockchain space. While previous narratives have waned, Canton Network has emerged as a notable contender. Tharimmune, a Nasdaq-listed company, announced the establishment of a Canton Coin財庫 and secured $540 million in private funding, led by DRW and Liberty City Ventures, with participation from ARK Invest and other institutions.

This investment aims to capitalize on the tokenized asset market exceeding $6 trillion, with Canton Network seeking to create the first public chain for ALLFi. The transformation of core infrastructure in traditional capital markets is centered around leading institutions quietly working to integrate blockchain technology. Canton Network, developed by Digital Asset, acts as a major blockchain for financial institutions, fostering a thriving ecosystem connecting banks, custodians, exchanges, and market makers to facilitate large-scale tokenization of traditional financial assets.

Addressing Institutional Privacy and Compliance Challenges

Canton Network stands out as the only public chain in the financial industry providing on-chain privacy functionalities. Canton Network addresses the challenges posed by enterprise distributed ledger technologies (DLT) by providing privacy and compliance, which is crucial for the flow of traditional capital on decentralized networks.

Traditional public blockchains typically employ a 'global replication' model, where all users can view all on-chain transaction records. While this model forms the foundation of transparency and security for retail and permissionless DeFi markets, it poses significant compliance and commercial hurdles for highly regulated and competitive traditional capital markets. Key pain points impacting large financial institutions include:

  • Leakage of Trade Secrets: Sensitive business information (e.g., customer data and proprietary trading strategies) may be captured by competitors through on-chain analysis, reverse engineering, and malicious attacks.
  • Jurisdictional Risks: Jurisdictions like GDPR grant users the right to data deletion. The immutable nature of blockchains conflicts with these legal requirements.
  • Reputational and Compliance Risks: Public transaction records can be subject to scrutiny, increasing the risk of scandals or regulatory penalties for institutions.

To overcome these hurdles, Canton Network utilizes three core components: Daml smart contracts, a PoSH (Proof-of-Stake-with-Holdings) consensus mechanism, and a synchronized domain protocol. Daml smart contracts, designed for multi-party participation, ensure privacy and data consistency by enabling participants to view only relevant information. The PoSH consensus mechanism uses a privacy-aware model, where only stakeholders in a particular transaction validate it. The synchronized domain architecture provides horizontal scalability, end-to-end data encryption, and ledger integrity across nodes.

Real World Assets, 24/7 Funding, and Funding Ability

Canton Network's practical effectiveness and market adoption have been embodied through high-value institutional use cases. The Canton Network ecosystem encompasses a variety of roles, including banks, infrastructure, and liquidity providers. A pilot, in collaboration with 45 top-tier financial institutions, asset management firms, and service providers, demonstrated the potential for connecting and synchronizing institutions' previously independent financial systems while maintaining privacy control. Focusing on efficiently trading Real World Assets, specifically highly liquid assets such as tokenized US Treasuries. Group-led transactions indicate the potential for 24/7 asset funding, overcoming traditional market limitations. Canton Network is on track to becoming a critical liquidity infrastructure in traditional financial markets, with daily US Treasury repo volumes exceeding $280 billion. This volume suggests Canton Network's potential for incorporating tokenized assets and privacy-protected payments and settlements into enterprise-grade workflows.

Conclusion

Canton Network is poised to become a hub for 'Wall Street on-chain,' but its ability to bridge the final gap between traditional finance and crypto markets depends on regulatory adaptability. Despite Canton Network's robust privacy features, regulatory uncertainties persist, such as the SEC's scrutiny of tokenized assets or the EU's stance on blockchain GDPR compliance. While the PoSH mechanism is privacy-friendly, it might reduce overall transparency and increase money laundering risks. Canton Coin (CC)'s burn mechanism relies on real activity, and if adoption slows, it could impact deflationary effects.


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