Canton Network Gets Backing From Institutional Giants Ahead of “AllFi”
The convergence of traditional and decentralized finance took another significant step forward as BNY, iCapital, Nasdaq, and S&P Global invested in the Canton Network, Digital Asset’s permissionless Layer-1 blockchain designed for institutional-grade privacy and regulatory compliance. Their participation expands an already formidable roster of global financial institutions backing the network, underscoring a shift in which infrastructure historically reserved for centralized markets is beginning to migrate onto interoperable blockchain rails. Canton’s architecture, built to support billions in onchain real-world assets, is emerging as a focal point for the industry’s transition toward what Digital Asset describes as an “AllFi” future.
The investment builds on strong momentum for Digital Asset, which has positioned Canton as the only public blockchain purpose-built for regulated markets requiring data compartmentalization, legal certainty, and privacy-preserving execution. With the addition of four industry groups representing asset servicing, wealth management, market data, and financial technology, the network’s institutional footprint now extends across nahead every segment of . Their involvement signals a deepening alignment around the belief that modernization of financial infrastructure requires both decentralization and the rigorous compliance standards demanded by regulated entities.
This shift is not theoretical. More than 600 institutions already operate across the Canton ecosystem, collectively bringing over $6 trillion of assets onchain. The network serves a wide spectrum of use cases—from securities and repo to commodities, mortgages, life insurance, and alternative investment funds. Such breadth indicates that blockchain’s role in enterprise finance is moving beyond experimentation into operational scale, with Canton increasingly regarded as one of the leading attempts to build interoperable digital-market infrastructure capable of supporting global settlement at volume.
Takeaway
Institutions view Blockchain as Critical to Real-Time, Always-On Market Infrastructure
For BNY, the world’s largest custodian, the Canton investment aligns with an industry moving toward real-time settlement and 24/7 operating models. The bank emphasized the increasing need for infrastructure capable of linking fiat markets and tokenized assets without compromising regulatory integrity. BNY’s commentary mirrored a broader institutional narrative: settlement processes, collateral flows, and credit services must evolve to meet the demands of digital market participation, where immediacy and interoperability are no longer optional but expected.
iCapital’s participation highlights a diverse vector of blockchain adoption—private markets and alternative investments. The firm views Canton as a platform capable of supporting large-scale tokenization of alternative asset classes, enabling more transparent fund operations and broader investor access. By blending its established private-markets technology with Digital Asset’s infrastructure, iCapital aims to create new distribution pathways that and improve the end-to-end investment experience for advisors and allocators.
Nasdaq’s engagement builds on years of collaboration with across post-trade modernization and collateral management. The platform operator views tokenization not as an experimental layer but as an extension of existing infrastructure, capable of unlocking operational efficiencies and . Nasdaq’s view reflects a growing conviction among major platforms that tokenized workflows—particularly those involving interoperable and privacy-preserving networks—will eventually sit alongside, or directly power, core marketplace functions.
Market Data, Benchmarking, and Compliance Become Essential Pillars of the Onchain Transition
S&P Global’s decision to join the investment round underscores the critical role of trusted market data and risk assessments in the evolution of digital financial markets. As more assets transition onchain, the need for high-quality reference data, pricing structures, and transparency frameworks becomes increasingly urgent. S&P Global’s expertise in benchmarks, ratings, and data governance positions it to support the Canton ecosystem in creating the informational layer required for widespread institutional adoption.
The broader industry alignment behind Canton demonstrates a major structural shift: blockchain infrastructure is moving from niche applications to foundational market plumbing. Privacy-enabled execution, compliance-ready architecture, and interoperability across asset classes are emerging as the baseline expectations for digital markets. Canton’s model, which preserves confidentiality while allowing synchronized settlement across multiple applications, directly addresses long-standing institutional barriers to blockchain adoption.
Digital Asset’s leadership framed the investment as evidence of blockchain’s inevitability in . Institutions increasingly recognize that tokenization, programmable settlement, and interoperable networks can eliminate operational fragmentation and drastically reduce friction in how real-world assets move and settle. As Canton’s ecosystem expands, it is positioning itself as one of the few networks capable of handling institutional scale while preserving the security and compliance standards required by global markets.
