Canton Network is developed by Digital Asset Holdings, LLC — a New York-based enterprise blockchain company founded in 2014, which also created the Daml smart contract language. In May 2023, 30 institutions spanning banks, exchanges, and technology firms (including BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Börse, Microsoft, Moody's, Paxos, and Cboe) announced Canton Network, purpose-built for the needs of regulated capital markets.
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June 2024: the Global Synchronizer launches on MainNet — the network's backbone, which synchronizes encrypted messages between participants without anyone seeing the full network state.
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July 2024: Canton Coin (CC) launches — no pre-mine, no private or public token sale; all CC is “mined” as a reward for genuine utility brought to the network. At genesis, Super Validators received 80% of minting rewards.
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Development was funded through Digital Asset's traditional equity raises ($397M+ over 11+ years, from investors including Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, IBM, Nasdaq, Tradeweb, and DRW) — NOT through a token sale.
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The network is governed by the Global Synchronizer Foundation, managed by the Linux Foundation.
Canton*'s key technological differentiator is sub-transaction privacy: every participant sees only the contracts they'*re a stakeholder to — no single party ever holds the full network state, yet atomic, cross-chain transactions are still possible.