May Ecosystem Update 👀 ◽ CIP-0116: Featured App Locking. A new governance framework requiring Featured Apps to lock 5M CC (or 25M CC for higher reward tiers), with a 30-day compliance window and 60-day unlock period. ◽ 166 new validator operators approved, continuing to expand the decentralized infrastructure powering @CantonNetwork. ◽ Unified developer documentation launched. Role-based learning paths, consolidated SDKs and tooling references, and a built-in AI assistant to help builders navigate the full development stack. ◽ @OneSwapCC approved as a Featured App, joining the growing set of applications building on Canton. ◽ The Canton Foundation team attended @SEABWOfficial in Bangkok, connecting with builders and institutions across the APAC region. ◽ First Canton Builder Office Hours completed, opening a direct line between the Foundation and developers building on the network. Six milestones in just one month. The Canton Network ecosystem continues to grow, govern, and build.

The build matters more than the moment - and Canton has been quietly putting the fundamentals in place for years.

On June 9 we co-hosted Canton Café with the @CantonFdn & @Noves_fi in New York, a private coffee reception for the operators and institutions building on Canton. The ecosystem grows in rooms like this. More to come.

Several of the firms in this latest round led by @a16zcrypto were already building on @CantonNetwork before the capital came in. Yuval: "If you actually get builders to contribute their sweat equity, which in my opinion is much more expensive than money, that is a better alignment because you also bring people that are much more dedicated to the network." "If I go to Nasdaq and I say, can you give me five million dollars versus the equivalent of five million dollars of your employees' time? Much easier for them just to give you five million dollars." "It's a much bigger ask to say, hey, integrate Calipso, commit to billions of dollars of collateral movements. That's a much harder ask to get from Nasdaq." "If you do that, you would earn a piece of the network for doing that work." @YuvalRooz on the show in March.

Ethereum's developer ecosystem and Canton's institutional infrastructure have been building toward the same destination from different directions, Zenith is where they connect. And the economic model behind it matters as much as the architecture. Every EVM transaction on Zenith is native @CantonNetwork activity, consuming Global Synchronizer traffic, triggering $CC burn through Canton's standard traffic mechanics, and contributing to the minting rights that reward builders driving real usage. No extraction, no value leaving the network, the burn-mint equilibrium that governs Canton's token supply extends fully to cover EVM activity. As Zenith scales, the EVM-generated demand for Canton traffic grows with it. This is what non-extractive execution looks like in practice. The full breakdown is in Understanding Canton #1: zenith.network/resources/blo… Zth.

USDCx on @CantonNetwork is now live on Kraken. The Canton Network is a public, privacy-enabled Layer 1 blockchain built specifically for institutional finance. Deposit now → app.kraken.com/JDNW/CANTON

a16z crypto leads $355 million raise for Canton developer Digital Asset theblock.co/post/404386/a16z…

Almost 12 years ago, I left @DRWTrading with @wesarn_real to start @digitalasset. @ShaulKfir joined us shortly after. The name felt right. The idea was simple but audacious: build a global settlement system that is asset agnostic. One that doesn’t eliminate banks, exchanges, and intermediaries, but tears down the barriers keeping people from accessing assets and settling at a fraction of today’s cost. A new financial world, built for the end consumer. We knew institutional adoption was the path. We just didn’t know how long it would take. We failed. We made bad decisions. There are things we would have done differently. But we never let go of our North Star, even when people around us were convinced we had no idea what we were doing. That focus, conviction, and most of all, patience, led us to launching @CantonNetwork. And the results speak for themselves. Today is a new chapter in that story. I’m proud to announce that @a16zcrypto is leading our latest round, joined by some of the giants of the global financial system, including @ABNAMRO, ADIA, @apolloglobal, @BNPParibasCIB, @Broadridge, @citsecurities, @CMEVentures, @cbventures, Green Wolf Asset Management, @Hanwha_Official, @HSBC, @icapitalnetwork, @LCVentures, @OptiverGlobal, @polychain, @R136Ventures, @SPGlobal, @sbigroup, @smash_capital, @SoFi, @Tradeweb, and @WilliamBlair, and others we’ll be naming shortly. Twelve years ago, I could not have imagined building alongside partners of this caliber. $CC today processes the highest fees of any institutional blockchain network. And we’re just getting started. What’s coming later this year is just as exciting. None of this happens without the builders, the ones who show up to weekly tokenomics meetings, dial into operations subcommittees, spend nights and weekends building apps on Canton, and show up on @X to cheer this ecosystem forward. You are not just supporters. You are partners. I’m honored to be on this journey with you. On a personal note: @a16z hits differently for me. Ben’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things was one I kept coming back to during the hard stretches. Having his firm lead this round is meaningful in a way that’s hard to put into words. So I’ll let him do it: “The hard thing isn’t setting a big, audacious goal. The hard thing is spending sleepless nights trying to achieve it. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare. Motivating yourself by watching YouTube shorts or Instagram reels isn’t the hard thing. The hard thing is working every day and being consistent even if you feel like shit. The hard thing isn’t boasting you could achieve anything. The hard thing is working like hell to achieve something. The hard thing isn’t believing in yourself. The hard thing is getting things done when nobody believes in you, even when you doubt yourself. The hard thing isn’t telling yourself that you must achieve the impossible. The hard thing is toiling hard every day for years despite knowing that success is too uncertain.” theblock.co/post/404386/a16z…

The most common misconception about Canton is that it's a private, permissioned chain built exclusively for banks. The reality is that Canton is public infrastructure. Where anyone can run a validator and anyone can build an application. The CIP governance process is open and documented. What is different from most L1s is that transaction privacy is the default. Participants see their own data, not everyone else's. This is the feature that makes institutional participation possible, not a limitation. On Canton, privacy and public infrastructure are the same design.

A16z Crypto Leads $355 Million Raise for Canton Network Developer @a16zcrypto leads a $355M funding round for Digital Asset to accelerate the @CantonNetwork's global scale. The investment is supported by a massive institutional consortium including HSBC, SGP Global, Citadel, and Coinbase, providing the developer with a formidable balance sheet for strategic M&A. Already profitable, Digital Asset aims to utilize the capital to transition its partners' legacy workflows entirely on-chain through its privacy-centric Layer 1 architecture.

Stablecoins proved that money can move onchain. But what happens when the world's banks begin bringing deposits onchain too?

Canton uses a mediator-based coordination model. In a multi-party transaction, a mediator coordinates confirmation across the relevant validators. Each validator independently checks that the inputs haven’t already been consumed. The mediator and validators only see what they need, no one sees the full transaction. If all validators confirm, it settles atomically. If any detect a conflict, it’s rejected, no partial execution. This is how Canton reaches consensus without broadcasting transaction data network-wide.

New Canton Insiders is up! Sophia Grami from C7 - identity infra, Super Validator ops, and the rare three-hat combo: governor, builder, investor. I enjoy talking to the @CantonNetwork builders, give it a watch: youtube.com/watch?v=SJhLfCY7… More episodes soon @catalyx_suite 👀

If you're interested in building on Canton, the Canton Foundation has published a great tutorial video explaining how Seaport works and how developers can build and deploy Daml applications. A big thank you to the FiveNorth engineering team whose hard work went into building Seaport and simplifying the developer experience on Canton. We’re excited to see more developers start building and deploying applications across the ecosystem. youtube.com/watch?v=uFi9meqp… #CantonNetwork #Daml #BlockchainDevelopment #Web3 #DigitalAssets