The blockchain ecosystem is home to several highly successful smart contract protocols, making the arrival of newcomers extremely competitive.
Canton Network is one among the latest “Next Generation Layer One” vying for users and capital from established firms like Ethereum and Solana. Alongside SUI and Aptos, the rise of Canton challenges the idea that we’ve too many blockchains.
The rise of @CantonNetwork could appear quick, but it surely took a decade. A decade of learning from others' mistakes… @gazza_jenks and I chat with Digital Asset co-founder and CEO @YuvalRooz to listen to the origin story of Canton.https://t.co/6koyyOsnht
— Robert Baggs (@rkbaggs) November 24, 2025
Yuval Rooz, co-founder of Digital Asset, spoke exclusively to Cointelegraph's every day show Chain Reaction and shared the backstory behind the Canton Network, which opted out of an initial coin offering (ICO) during its decade-long development journey to what it’s today.
“Our thesis focused on supporting large institutions. We were very patient. We refused to conduct an ICO. We refuse to perform token pre-mining. We really considered tokenomics,” Rooz told Cointelegraph.
“Every time we thought we were ready, another person made a mistake. We wondered: What would occur if we made that mistake? That wouldn't be good.”
The Canton Network is designed to be used by financial institutions and enables secure, interoperable and privacy-preserving transactions. Digital Asset, the corporate that founded Canton Network, describes the protocol’s architecture as a “network of networks” geared toward tokenizing, trading, and settling real-world assets.
The protocol and its native token made big headlines in 2025. Digital Asset closed a $135 million funding round in June to further develop the Canton ecosystem and advance the protocol’s RWA tokenization.
Then got here biotech firm Tharimmune, which raised $540 million in private funding to construct a Canton Coin (CC) digital asset treasury. The DAT plans to make use of the proceeds to amass and stake CC tokens because the network's super validator.
Slow and regular wins the race
As Rooz explained, Digital Asset took a measured approach to developing and launching the Canton Network. In 2020, a permission chain was introduced to measure how the network works and what users want and want by way of functionality:
“It took about 4 years to create possibly the primary version of the ledger, after which it took one other two to a few years to get to a degree where we felt somewhat comfortable putting it on the market without approval.”
Rooz said developers have learned quite a bit from the adoption of other Layer 1 protocols in addition to the teething problems of established players like Ethereum.
“This is where I believe the challenge lies, which individuals underestimate. Once you launch a public network and there are a variety of builders running in production, it's extremely difficult to alter it later. I believe it's going to be extremely difficult for public, permissionless chains to guard privacy in a way that works after the actual fact without really doing much harm to their community,” Rooz said.
Data protection based on the “need-to-know” principle
Privacy is a giant topic across the cryptocurrency space, with protocols like Zcash attracting a variety of attention and a focus.
Rooz said it was a positive development to see industry representatives finally embracing the necessity for privacy in communications and transactions. However, the truth is that many haven’t paid an excessive amount of attention to this aspect of blockchain functionality lately.
“I can let you know that each time we've talked to crypto natives over the past decade and said privacy is a must, they've told us, 'You don't understand crypto.' The whole idea of crypto just isn’t about having privacy,” Rooz said.
The Digital Asset CEO added that privacy ultimately takes “various shapes and forms.” The zero-knowledge cryptography that powers each Zcash and Canton is more about anonymity than privacy.
“ZK comes from a world where people say you actually need to have an on-chain user experience that’s like money, a bearer instrument, meaning nobody knows what assets you will have. I believe that's an interesting aspect. It's very different than Bitcoin,” Rooz said.
From a regulatory perspective, financial institutions and authorities must monitor their activities to comply with Know Your Customer and anti-money laundering standards.
“I assume what makes Canton different than Zcash is that Canton's privacy model is the flexibility to share information on a need-to-know basis. That means if you happen to're a regulator, you could possibly go to a stablecoin issuer and say, 'Hey, I need to see all of Yuval's activity,' which is different than anonymity.”
Digital Asset has received support from major players in the worldwide financial space. BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and Goldman Sachs were amongst the important thing investors within the 2025 funding round.
