Canton Coin: How Should We Think about FDV?

Everyone looks at the Canton Coin (CC) minting curve and assumes there’s a fixed maximum supply of 100 billion. That’s wrong — and here’s why.

Dynamic Supply, Not Fixed Cap
The supply of Canton Coin (CC) works much like Ethereum (ETH) or Solana (SOL): unlimited in theory, but fairly stable in practice.

There’s no hard cap on issuance. However, every transaction on Canton burns CC, offsetting new emissions. Over time, these two forces — minting and burning — balance around network activity and market price.

That means total supply will stabilize well below the theoretical issuance curve as the burn rate rises with usage.

FDV and Market Cap
For Canton Coin, Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) and Market Capitalization are effectively the same:

FDV = MarketCap = CurrentTotalSupply×CurrentMarketPrice

Future supply depends on how much is burned vs. how much is minted — a function of network demand.

Near term, inflation will run higher than Ethereum or Solana, but it will decline steadily as the emission rate halves and as burn increases with adoption.

How Supply Adjusts
Canton fees are denominated in USD (dollars per MB of transaction data), but paid by burning CC at the on-chain conversion rate.

• When network demand is high (i.e., CC price is low relative to usage), more CC is burned and supply growth slows — even turning deflationary.
• When activity is lower, burn slows, allowing supply to expand.

This dynamic creates a natural burn–mint equilibrium (BME) — a feedback loop between usage, price, and supply.

Equilibrium Over Time
Once the market finds equilibrium under the BME, issuance and burn should roughly balance.

At that point, total supply should remain fairly constant, adjusting slowly around long-term demand.

Because supply adapts dynamically, market capitalization — not theoretical maximum supply — is the right way to measure value.

Illustrative Example
Scenario: Network Reaches Equilibrium across the Validator + Application pools

• Assume: All coins minted to Validators and Applications are burned within a block
• Super Validator (SV) rewards are the only source of inflation

Then, if equilibrium is reached by mid-2026, total supply might look like:

Estimated Total Supply
July 2026: < 42 b CC
July 2029: < 48 b CC
July 2034: < 50 b CC

These estimates may be high. Over 1 b CC has already been burned, and the network is currently burning ~$900k/day worth of CC.

Under this scenario, if SVs were the only source of emissions, annual inflation would be roughly 32.5 m CC, or < 0.1 % per year on a 40 b CC base.

Key Issuance Milestones
The most important upcoming event in Canton’s supply dynamics is the Jan 1st, 2026 halving, which represents a double reduction for Super Validators (SVs).

• First, total issuance per block will be cut in half.
• Second, the SV share of that issuance will fall from 48 % → 20 % as more rewards are redirected toward Validators and Applications.

Three years later, a similar “double-halving” occurs again:

• Total issuance halves once more, and
• The SV share drops again, from 20 % → 10 %.

This compounding effect means that once the network reaches burn-mint equilibrium (BME) across Validators and Applications, the SV pool becomes the dominant — and rapidly shrinking — source of new issuance.

By the early 2030s, SV emissions will represent only a tiny fraction of total supply, making Canton Coin’s inflation profile one of the lowest among major Layer-1 networks.

Conclusion

As with any resilient network, value accrues to utility. With fee-burn, each transaction contributes to scarcity and alignment. The illustration below captures this dynamic.