Canborsa Beta is live. The first RWA perpetual DEX on @CantonNetwork is now open for trading. Trade tokenized stocks, gold, oil, and crypto with up to 20x leverage. Start trading→canborsa.com

We are proud to announce that BlockSign integrates Canton Network. Banking is moving on-chain. But institutions don’t just need blockchain rails. They need trust. BlockSign brings identity, compliance, authorization and legally enforceable validation into institutional blockchain workflows. The future of finance needs more than infrastructure. It needs a Trust Layer. #BlockSign #CantonNetwork #InstitutionalFinance #DigitalAssets #TrustLayer

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…

Why did we raise our last round: We’re already profitable. So why raise? For years we’ve asked ourselves what it would take to truly bring finance OnChain. We believe @CantonNetwork has finally identified the components needed to establish crypto rails as a new global settlement layer, rather than treating crypto wallets as a mere distribution mechanism (as most “tokenization” does today). Those components are: privacy, issuer control and sovereignty, governance, and alignment of economics. We have the largest organizations in the world moving their core businesses to run on Canton. That will drive utility to canton-network:native. @digitalasset’s entire business is canton-network:native. So why raise? Because we have a unique opportunity right now. Organizations are willing. Regulators are willing. Admin is willing. We could wait for organic growth, or DA can step in to accelerate it. Rather than wait for large corporates with long budget cycles to build this infrastructure, DA will build much of what’s needed to double, triple, and quadruple canton-network:native utility. We will enter new partnerships to build applications that drive more usage. Those will be announced later this year. We will partner with builders to bring burns to subnets. And there are potential M&A activities that will further align other companies with @CantonNetwork. All of this requires a healthy balance sheet, which we now have. There is still a lot of work to do, but I’m excited for what’s ahead.