The blockchain ecosystem is home to several highly successful smart contract protocols, which makes the arrival of newcomers highly competitive.
Canton Network is one of the newest ‘next generation layer one’ to vie for users and capital from incumbents like Ethereum and Solana. Alongside SUI and Aptos, Canton’s rise challenges the assumption that we have too many blockchains.
The rise of @CantonNetwork may seem fast, but it's been a decade in the making. A decade of learning from the mistakes of others... @gazza_jenks and I chat with the co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, @YuvalRooz, to hear the origin story of Canton. https://t.co/6koyyOsnht
Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction daily show, Yuval Rooz, co-founder of Digital Asset, recounted the backstory behind the Canton Network, which opted out of an initial coin offering (ICO) during its decade-long development journey to where it is today.
"Our thesis was focused on serving large-scale institutions. We’ve been very patient. We refused to do an ICO. We refuse to do a token pre-mine. We’ve really thought about the tokenomics," Rooz told Cointelegraph.
Every time we thought we were ready, someone else made a mistake. We were like, what would happen if we were to make this mistake? That wouldn't be good.
The Canton Network is designed for financial institution utility, enabling secure, interoperable, and privacy-preserving transactions. Digital Asset, the company that created Canton Network, describes the protocol’s architecture as a ‘network of networks’ aimed at real-world asset tokenization, trading and settlement.
The protocol and its native token grabbed major headlines in 2025. Digital Asset closed a $135 million funding round in June to continue developing the Canton ecosystem and spearhead RWA tokenization on the protocol.
Then came biotech company Tharimmune, which raised $540 million in private funding to build a Canton Coin (CC) digital asset treasury. The DAT plans to use the proceeds to acquire and stake CC tokens as a super validator of the network.
Related: Tharimmune makes $540M bet on Canton Coin in crypto treasury push
A Measured Approach to Development
As Rooz explained, Digital Asset took a measured approach to developing and rolling out Canton Network. A permissioned chain was launched in 2020 to gauge how the network performed and what users wanted and needed in terms of functionality:
It took about four years to build maybe the first version of the ledger and then it took another two to three years to get to a point where we were kind of comfortable to launch it in a permissionless manner.
Rooz said that the developers had taken a lot of learnings from the launches of other layer-1 protocols as well as the teething problems of established players like Ethereum.
"Here’s the challenge I think that people underappreciate. Once you launch a public network and there are a lot of builders that run in production, it’s extremely hard to change it later. I think it will be extremely hard for public permissionless chains to bolt on privacy in a way that works as an afterthought without really creating a massive amount of pain to their community," Rooz said.
Privacy on a ‘Need-to-Know’ Basis
Privacy has been a big narrative across the cryptocurrency space, with protocols like Zcash garnering a significant amount of mindshare and attention.
Rooz said it was a positive development to see industry figures finally championing the need for privacy in communications and transactions. Still, the reality is that many were not overly concerned with this aspect of blockchain functionality in recent years.
"I can tell you that every time we talked to crypto native folks over the last decade, and we said that privacy is a must-have, they told us, ‘you don’t understand crypto.’ The whole idea of crypto is not to have privacy," Rooz said.
The Digital Asset CEO added that privacy ultimately comes in ‘different shapes and forms’. Zero-knowledge proof cryptography, which powers both Zcash and Canton, is more about anonymity than privacy.
"ZK is coming from a world where people are saying, you really want to have onchain user experience of like hard cash, a bearer instrument, meaning nobody gets to know what assets you have. I think that is an interesting angle. It’s very different than Bitcoin," Rooz said.
From a regulatory perspective, financial institutions and authorities must monitor activity to comply with Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering standards.
"I guess what Canton does that is different than Zcash is that the privacy model of Canton is the ability to share information on a need-to-know basis. Meaning, if you are a regulator, you would be able to go to an issuer of a stablecoin and say, ‘hey, I want to see all of Yuval’s activity,’ which is different than anonymity."
Digital Asset has received backing from major players across the global financial space. BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and Goldman Sachs were among the most significant investors in its 2025 fundraising round.
Magazine: 2026 is the year of pragmatic privacy in crypto: Canton, Zcash and more