Author|jk
I. A Proposal Approved in Three Days
On March 20, 2026, Visa, a globally renowned payment service provider and the company whose logo is on most bank cards, submitted a governance proposal to the Canton Network. According to The Block, merely three days later, the proposal was approved, and Visa officially became a Canton super validator with the highest weight of Level 10 (Super Validator Weight 10). This was also the first time Visa had ever submitted a blockchain governance proposal.
Within the crypto space, this event might seem like another traditional financial institution entering the fray. But if you are sufficiently familiar with the legal and compliance processes within traditional institutions like Visa, you'll find that approval in just three days is rather unusual. Visa's compliance team submitted this document with the caution and seriousness inherent in the traditional financial world. Moreover, receiving the highest weight indicates that negotiations and due diligence had already been fully concluded beforehand. The proposal seen by the public was likely the result of months of collaboration between traditional finance and the crypto world.
Rubail Birwadker, Global Head of Growth Products & Strategic Partnerships at Visa, said in a statement: "Many banks view the lack of privacy as the biggest obstacle to moving substantial business on-chain. By becoming a super validator for the Canton Network, we are bringing Visa-level trust, governance, and operational standards to this privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure, enabling regulated financial institutions to move payments on-chain without disrupting existing operating models."
It can be seen that Visa's entry is an endorsement of an already operational institutional network, not a starting point.
Since 2017, each market cycle has seen a batch of traditional financial institutions loudly announce their "exploration of blockchain," but very few ultimately translate into real business. This time, Visa chose to enter the governance layer of the blockchain, holding voting rights and participating in infrastructure decisions. Eric Saraniecki, Network Strategy Lead at Digital Asset, a co-founding entity of Canton Network, said in a statement: "Visa's involvement underscores that this technology has moved from the experimental phase to being production-ready."
Driven by curiosity about this collaboration, Odaily Planet Daily interviewed the Canton Network team. What exactly facilitated this partnership? And what made Canton, this long-quiet project, the chosen one?
II. Not More Assets On-Chain, But Putting Markets Themselves On-Chain
To understand why Canton attracted Visa, we need to first look at the core differences between Canton and other chains.
Ethereum and Solana solve the problem of: how to get more people involved, how to get more assets on-chain. Canton solves the problem of: how financial institutions can conduct normal business on-chain. While the focus seems different, when it comes to specific design, the trade-offs between the two become almost diametrically opposed.
Ethereum's global transparency is an advantage for retail users but an obstacle for institutions. Take a concrete example: if every buy and sell operation of dollars and euros by a bank's foreign exchange trading desk were visible in real-time, counterparties could immediately adjust their quotes based on this information, significantly increasing the bank's trading costs. If a market maker's positions and hedging operations were entirely public, competitors could simply trade against them, squeezing out profit margins. Repo agreements between institutions involve the funding positions and collateral sizes of both parties; once this data leaks, it becomes a risk for the entire institution's liquidity management. These limitations aren't directly about regulation; they're dictated by basic business logic.
Even if addresses aren't linked to real-name institutions, transparent on-chain trading would alter the entire logic of secondary markets. No traditional financial institution wants its trades to be sniped, so designs like Ethereum and Hyperliquid are not the optimal choice for large institutions.
Canton's approach is to build data visibility control into its design.
This method embeds selective disclosure of data natively at the protocol layer, as part of the L1's original design, rather than relying on upper-layer applications to patch it. Specifically, only the direct participants of a transaction can see its 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 without leaking their respective positions and strategies.
We also inquired about the relevant technical details. Canton's exact words were: "Canton separates the coordination layer (shared across the entire network) from data visibility (limited to participants), achieved through isolated execution environments and selective synchronization. This allows institutions to transact securely, and competitors to interact, without exposing their respective holdings or strategies. This is the mechanism that enables a real market, not just assets, to natively operate on-chain."
Canton Network told us that the summary of this design logic is: data visibility control is foundational, not an add-on feature.
Therefore, it's no surprise that Canton's validator list reads like an old-money gathering: Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, BNP Paribas, Citi, Bank of America, DTCC, Nasdaq, Broadridge, Tradeweb... These institutions are joining because this infrastructure allows them to replicate their traditional financial success on-chain, which is why liquidity will gradually flow in.
Canton's Super Validator List
III. Wall Street Pedigree, Slow and Steady Work
Canton's creator is Digital Asset Holdings, founded in 2014 by Blythe Masters. Blythe Masters was a star executive at J.P. Morgan, one of the key pioneers in the CDS field, with deep connections and industry credibility on Wall Street. From day one, this company wasn't making blockchain products for retail users; its target customers were those financial institutions with real balance sheets, under strict regulation, and needing to operate within legal frameworks.
Regarding its origins, we asked a pointed question: We saw Canton unveiled in 2023, so why did it only fully launch this year?
Canton's answer was, slow and steady work.
Its Wall Street pedigree dictates the project's entire pace. Canton candidly admitted in the interview that this chain took longer than other L1s to reach this point because from the beginning, it has been dealing with regulated financial systems, building institutional trust, and figuring out how to truly connect to markets with real business.
This pace is completely opposite to the mainstream Web3 narrative. Most public chains pursue rapid launch, rapid ecosystem expansion, and rapid hype generation, followed by TGE and then "the team isn't really sure either." Canton's path is step-by-step negotiation: first secure DTCC, then Goldman Sachs, then J.P. Morgan, then Visa, using their endorsements to bring in actual business.
2026 is a turning point, not because of project hype itself, nor because this crypto bear market is shaking out, but because, beyond the narrative, the infrastructure has, for the first time, truly met institutional requirements: there is real balance sheet activity operating on it. This is also why now is the best time to pay attention to Canton Network.
"So how much business has been brought on?" we pressed on.
IV. Canton's On-Chain Activity
Canton's current data is an outlier within the entire blockchain industry, and the nature behind these numbers is very different from most public chains. Currently, Canton Network's monthly processing volume exceeds $9 trillion, with daily transactions reaching hundreds of thousands. The number of ecosystem participants has grown by orders of magnitude over the past three years. These numbers correspond to traditional financial business: tokenized repos, treasury settlement, cross-institution collateral mobilization. These are not wash trading but real operations happening on institutional balance sheets.
We also asked which products are currently mainstream on the chain. At present, there seem to be several flagship products:
J.P. Morgan's JPM Coin: In January 2026, J.P. Morgan's Kinexys division announced the native deployment of JPM Coin to the Canton Network. JPM Coin differs in nature from USDT and USDC; it is a deposit token, representing a direct claim on J.P. Morgan deposits, operating within the existing banking regulatory framework. For example, when two institutions settle a cross-border transaction using JPM Coin on Canton, it's not fundamentally different from what they do in the traditional system, except settlement is much faster and operational hours are no longer confined to weekdays. Kinexys currently handles daily volumes between $2-3 billion, with a cumulative total exceeding $1.5 trillion since 2019. This flow of funds is now set to operate on Canton.
DTCC's U.S. Treasury Tokenization: In December 2025, the U.S. securities depository DTCC announced a partnership with Digital Asset to tokenize a portion of the U.S. Treasuries it custodies on Canton, aiming to launch the first version in a controlled production environment in the first half of 2026, then expand based on market demand. DTCC also serves as co-chair of the Canton Foundation alongside Euroclear, directly participating in network governance.
DTCC processes securities transactions worth over $2 quadrillion annually, the core of the entire U.S. capital market clearing and settlement system. A more intuitive analogy: DTCC's position in traditional finance is somewhat akin to the People's Bank of China; no one deposits money there, but everyone's stock and bond trades must pass through its backend. Traditional repo markets can only operate on weekdays, ceasing after Friday afternoon until Monday. However, on Canton, repo transactions can run 24/7, using on-chain U.S. Treasuries as collateral, achieving real-time, cross-institution, cross-timezone, weekend-covering funding.
So what will Visa do on Canton?
A core goal described by Canton in the interview is atomic settlement: the buyer's payment and the seller's delivery of the asset occur simultaneously in a single operation, without needing two separate steps or relying on intermediaries to bridge them. For example, currently, when an institution buys a batch of bonds, the transfer of the asset and the settlement of cash are often two separate processes, with a time gap, counterparty risk, and manual reconciliation costs. What Canton aims to achieve is for both things to happen simultaneously, locked and done with no time gap. To achieve this, both capital market infrastructure and payment infrastructure must be on-chain simultaneously. Canton has a solid foundation on the capital markets side; Visa's addition provides a true institutional anchor point on the payments side.
Beyond this, it includes real-time cross-border capital flows, embedding programmable logic into financial transactions, and other blockchain strengths.
Canton believes that 2026 is the cycle where infrastructure has truly met institutional requirements for the first time, which is why institutions like Visa are choosing to engage with blockchain infrastructure now.
Other Use Cases Already Running
Tokenized Repo is currently the most mature scenario. Repurchase agreements (Repo) are the most common short-term funding tool between financial institutions. Simply put, Institution A sells bonds to Institution B for cash, agreeing to buy them back in a few days. Traditionally, this process could only be completed during weekday operating hours, with delays in fund settlement. Tokenized repos on Canton have already achieved 24/7 availability and instant settlement, with several top institutions having completed real, cross-institution, weekend-covering repo transactions on Canton.
Collateral Mobilization is another scenario with real demand. Large financial institutions often need to move collateral from one account or institution to another, such as transferring bonds held at A to B to meet margin requirements for a derivatives trade. Traditionally, this process takes days, during which the assets are locked and unusable for other purposes. Canton's settlement model allows this to be done nearly in real-time.
Digital Bond Issuance is another area where Canton holds an advantage. Canton mentioned in the interview that it currently holds over half the market share in global digital bond issuance. The reason lies in Canton's ability to provide complete Delivery vs. Payment (DvP), full bond lifecycle management, and multi-party coordination. Bonds can form a closed loop on-chain from issuance to settlement, not just tokenizing the asset while still relying on off-chain processes to finalize.
Stablecoin Settlement is a direction accelerating after Visa's joining, aiming to enable stablecoin payments between institutions to be completed on the same compliant infrastructure with data visibility control, rather than routing through public chains.
In short, it's not mentioning RWA, but every sentence speaks to RWA needs.
Canton also gave a general outlook on the roadmap in the interview: in the medium term, corporate bonds, private credit, and trade finance will follow; longer term, equities are also on this path. From existing use cases to this roadmap, the logic is consistent: asset classes with stronger liquidity and more mature regulatory frameworks move earlier.
V. What Does the CC Token Represent?
For broader market participants, what the CC token actually is remains an unavoidable question.
Canton's characterization in the interview was relatively direct: CC is a "network utility asset," its value anchored to the volume of real financial activity occurring on the network.
Meaning, demand comes from actual usage; the greater the transaction volume institutions conduct on Canton, the more CC the network consumes. Long-term drivers for the token include institutional transaction flow, stablecoin settlement scale, total assets on-chain, and the depth of interoperability between Canton and other networks.
CC has a rather rare setting in its token distribution within the Web3 circle: zero pre-mine, zero team allocation, zero VC allocation. All tokens enter the market through a fair launch. For institutional participants, this setting reduces concerns about "someone holding ultra-low-cost chips, ready to cash out and flee the secondary market at any time." The rules are transparent and equal for all participants.
For general market participants, Canton exists more as backend infrastructure. Ordinary people are more likely to encounter it through exchanges, wallets, or financial platforms, rather than interacting directly with the protocol. The improvements it brings—such as faster settlement speeds, tighter bid-ask spreads, and better financial product terms due to lower operational costs—will gradually be transmitted to end-users through the product layer, rather than being presented in a directly perceptible way to users.
VI. The Next Steps
The 3 to 5-year goals given by Canton in the interview are not measured by on-chain TVL or token price. Looking at the specific goals Canton listed: stablecoins becoming the standard means for inter-institutional settlement, just as SWIFT wire transfers are today; major financial institutions, such as banks, operating loans, deposits, bond issuance, and product packaging directly on-chain; cross-border capital no longer needing to endure the traditional system's settlement cycles of several days, moving at near real-time speeds; multiple asset classes completing native issuance and settlement on Canton, rather than being issued off-chain first and then manually syncing information on-chain.
Canton uses "invisible" to describe itself in this state: by then, Canton would be just one of the underlying protocols silently powering global finance, like TCP/IP for the internet today, or SWIFT for cross-border remittances. Users wouldn't perceive its existence, but nothing would work without it.
Of course, this road is still long. Regulation is highly fragmented across jurisdictions; compliance in Europe is completely different from Asia; integrating with existing legacy systems is immensely difficult; banks' core systems used for decades cannot be migrated overnight; interoperability between different blockchain networks remains an unresolved technical issue; coordinating institutions on the same infrastructure involves complex interest games. The Canton team didn't avoid these issues in the interview, telling us: technical bottlenecks are no longer the biggest problem; how to truly roll it out globally is.
It can be seen that the transformation of financial infrastructure never happens suddenly on a single day. SWIFT was established in 1973 and took nearly two decades to become the de facto standard for cross-border settlement. People using it today don't think about how it came to be. Canton's current position is probably at that stage of "no one realizing what it will become yet." But for something that truly wants to become infrastructure, being forgotten might just be what success should look like.
