The Financial Backbone Goes On-Chain: DTCC Selects Canton Network for Tokenization
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the global leader in post-trade market infrastructure, officially announced on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, that it has selected the Canton Network as its primary partner for the tokenization of U.S. Treasury securities. This historic collaboration follows a crucial No-Action Letter from the U.S. Securities and platform Commission (SEC), which authorized the DTCC’s depository subsidiary to operate a regulated tokenization service for a three-year pilot period. By choosing Canton, a privacy-enabled blockchain designed specifically for institutional finance, the DTCC is moving beyond the experimental phase of distributed ledger technology and into a production-ready environment. The partnership aims to launch a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in the first half of 2026, marking a fundamental shift in how the $4 quadrillion “plumbing” of Wall Street handles high-value assets.
Enhancing Liquidity Through 24/7 Collateral Mobility
The initial phase of the partnership focuses on creating digital twins of U.S. Treasury bills, bonds, and notes already held in custody at the Depository Trust Company (DTC). By “minting” these assets on the Canton Network, the DTCC intends to unlock massive operational efficiencies that have historically been hindered by the T+1 settlement cycle of the legacy financial system. These tokenized representations allow for near-instant, atomic settlement and “smart collateral” management, enabling assets to be moved and pledged around the clock. This 24/7 mobility is particularly vital for market makers and hedge funds that require high-speed access to liquidity outside of traditional banking hours. DTCC CEO Frank La Salla emphasized that this roadmap will eventually expand to a broad spectrum of DTC-eligible assets, including the Rustrade 1000 and major ETFs, providing a unified digital bridge between traditional markets and the emerging on-chain economy.
Privacy and Governance: A New Institutional Standard
A decisive factor in selecting the Canton Network was its unique architecture, which balances the transparency of blockchain with the strict privacy requirements of regulated finance. Unlike public networks, Canton employs “sub-transaction privacy,” ensuring that sensitive trade details are only visible to the relevant participants and regulators. This allows institutions to benefit from shared-ledger synchronization without exposing their proprietary positions to the broader market. Furthermore, the DTCC is taking an active leadership role in the network’s ecosystem by becoming the co-chair of the Canton Foundation alongside Euroclear. This governance position ensures that the world’s largest clearinghouses are directly involved in setting the standards for decentralized financial infrastructure. As the industry moves toward 2026, this partnership establishes the Canton Network as the primary interoperable backbone for global capital markets, proving that the future of finance is not just digital, but fully programmable and regulated.
