“More than 650 firms have connected to Canton over the last two years…we built a system; only you can build the network.” – Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO, Digital Asset

Last month in New York City, executives, builders, and developers from across traditional and decentralized finance gathered in one room for a conference unlike any other.

For the first time, banks, asset managers, exchanges, and market infrastructure players like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Nasdaq, HSBC, DTCC, and Franklin Templeton as well as DeFi players like a16z Crypto, Anchorage Digital, Bullish, and Copper came together around one common goal, making Canton the rails of global financial markets. The day was packed with dynamic panels and networking sessions designed to turn Canton’s momentum into action – showing attendees the value of the network, bringing to life what is already happening on Canton, and, most importantly, giving them a clear sense of what they could do next to accelerate their own businesses on the network.

The discussion focused on Canton’s tremendous growth and what comes next. Institutional adoption of Canton is already underway with more than 650 firms having connected to the network over the past two years. Broadridge settles more than $300 billion in U.S. Treasury repo transactions on Canton each day, while DTCC is bringing U.S. Treasuries and equities onchain. Firms including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Nasdaq, Société Générale, and Lloyds are also building and transacting on Canton.

More broadly, the conversation repeatedly returned to a potential tipping point for the financial system, as the benefits of DeFi become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Major takeaways from the Summit included the following.

Canton is solving for the delays in capital movement that create an effective ‘Tax on Humanity’

“When capital works harder, more things get built. More companies, more homes, more ideas become real…We built Canton for this moment, to make capital work harder.” – Eric Saraniecki, Co-Founder and Head of Network Strategy, Digital Asset

Inefficiencies in today’s financial infrastructure leave capital sitting idle. These inefficiencies aren’t simply inconvenient, they are limiting capital productivity and are effectively a “tax on humanity.” Every dollar sitting idle is not being used to fund a business, build housing and infrastructure, support innovation, or create economic opportunity.

Canton was designed to address this issue by enabling capital to move more easily, while also preserving the privacy, control, and regulatory safeguards global markets require.

The foundations are being laid for a new era of financial products and instruments

“The bigger opportunity becomes possible when assets can actually work together. When markets can operate continuously, collateral can move where it is needed when it is needed. New products become possible because the infrastructure no longer gets in the way…Once we get to a point where the operating cost of moving assets and settling them goes down to zero, no one can predict the number of new financial instruments and financial services that will be born as a result of that.” – Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO, Digital Asset

While institutional adoption is still in its early innings, the infrastructure being put in place today is creating the foundation for an entirely new generation of financial products and services. Just as the early internet enabled applications its architects could not anticipate, programmable and interoperable financial infrastructure could create possibilities we cannot yet predict.

Canton provides the foundation for assets to work together, markets to operate continuously, and collateral to move when and where it is needed.

Institutions require privacy, governance, and sound ecosystem economics for onchain adoption

“We were not going to build against the financial system. We were going to build with it and for it as well.” – Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO, Digital Asset

Institutions need three things to move onchain at scale: privacy, governance, and predictable economics.

Participants must control who can see transactions, no single entity should control critical infrastructure, and costs must be predictable enough for institutions to underwrite.

Canton was designed around these requirements, combining configurable privacy with institutional governance and an economic model tied to real network activity. This gives institutions a clear path to moving their businesses onchain without sacrificing the control and predictability they require.

Quality and centrality of data are critical for institutional onchain adoption

"If we want to transform capital markets…a lot of that has to do with standards and data and not just replicating the exact same thing onchain, but how do we think about assets as programmable assets and data as programmable data that can be embedded into a financial workflow.” – an executive from a major digital asset data and analytics company

Transforming capital markets requires more than bringing assets onchain; the standards, data, and trust underpinning existing markets must move onchain as well. Canton combines programmable data with configurable privacy, giving institutions control over who can see, validate, and access information while embedding that data directly into financial workflows.

This creates opportunities for data updates to automatically trigger financial actions – for example, a ratings change updating a collateralized lending curve. Shared, trusted data can also reduce fragmentation by providing consistent reference information across networks, with Canton serving as a source of truth.

24/7 markets are not a “nice to have” – they are going to address unique global market dynamics and unlock new use cases

“The most difficult point is not technology; it is perception.” – an executive at an APAC-based asset manager

Global commerce does not stop when markets close. As capital, payments and businesses increasingly operate across borders and around the clock, financial infrastructure needs to keep pace, enabling money and assets to move when and where they are needed.

That gap is particularly acute in APAC, where time zones and borders can separate capital from opportunity. It is already driving practical demand for blockchain infrastructure, from Korean manufacturers exploring tokenized deposits for cross-border payments to consumer brands seeking faster, more efficient ways to receive payments globally, seven days a week.

The biggest barrier to adoption may be less about technology than trust and perception.

Greater speed and convenience must come without compromising compliance, KYC, or control – giving institutions the confidence to put new use cases, including collateral use for non-dollar currencies, into real-world markets.

Institutional adoption requires safeguards and the ability to move capital when it matters

"There is a certain amount of fear of ‘if I put my money onchain, how do I get it offchain if I really need it?’…That on ramp/off ramp mechanism and really removing all of the frictions [are important] so you can have collateral and capital in any format you need in real time.” – an executive at a global market making and HFT company

Moving assets onchain requires more than new technology. Institutions need the safeguards they already rely on, including a reliable source of truth, resilient infrastructure, strong risk management and regulatory compliance, as well as mechanisms for handling real world events such as lost credentials, divorce, or death.

They also need interoperability. Moving financial activity onchain cannot mean replacing today’s silos with a new set of disconnected networks. Institutions need assets and capital to move across applications, markets, and onchain ecosystems so they can be put to work wherever they are needed.

Seamless on- and off-ramps are equally critical, allowing institutions to move collateral and capital into the format or market they need in real time – even to meet an immediate margin call.

Removing these practical frictions and enabling capital to move across rather than remain trapped within individual networks is what can turn onchain finance from an experiment into infrastructure institutions can depend on.

DeFi has changed investor expectations around asset ownership

“DeFi has fundamentally changed what an investor expects when they say, ‘I own this asset...The demand is real, ignore at it at your own peril; the door is still wide open. The winners will give people the experience they expect with the safety and scale that they have grown accustomed to and require.” – Eric Saraniecki, Co-Founder and Head of Network Strategy, Digital Asset

DeFi has reshaped what investors expect from asset ownership: 24/7 access, greater self-direction, and the ability to move seamlessly across venues, ecosystems, and financial services.

As demand expands from cryptocurrencies to tokenized assets, financial institutions and market infrastructure providers have an opportunity to meet these new investor expectations by combining the flexibility and accessibility of DeFi with the safety, trust, and scale of established markets.

Canton is giving existing market infrastructure a network to modernize settlement, collateral, financing, and asset mobility.

Stablecoins are transformational for capital markets infrastructure

“In one to three years, I’ll be able to see a deep market of tokenized T-bills that I can go onto a trading venue, push a button, buy a yard of T-bills to sell and pay for, and settle with stablecoins in 30 seconds.” – an executive at a major U.S. & global asset manager

Making stablecoins useful at institutional scale requires the infrastructure to move seamlessly between stablecoins, dollars, and other assets like T-bills.

Tokenized T-bills offer an early glimpse of that future, allowing investors to purchase assets directly with stablecoins rather than first converting them into dollars.

The potential efficiencies are significant. Reducing the 10-15 basis point cost of moving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars between chains or stablecoins could be transformational, positioning stablecoins as an “AI moment” for financial services that creates structural efficiencies across capital markets.

Agentic commerce and treasury management are beginning to emerge

“Over the next two to three years, this change in treasuries moving from humans to agents is probably going to be one of the bigger trends that is invisible, but we already have a proportion of customers who have made that leap already.” – an executive at a major multinational banking institution

Agentic payments and creating infrastructure for agents to autonomously pay for goods, services, and data is critical.

But commerce is only one use case. A quieter transformation is emerging inside corporate treasury, where agents are beginning to forecast cash, place deposits, manage funding gaps, and select money market funds. As money and liquidity become available 24/7, treasury management increasingly needs to operate 24/7 as well.

Combining agentic treasury management with onchain assets could help meet that need while keeping more cash productive. For example, companies often need to set aside cash in advance to ensure it is available over the weekend, meaning those funds are no longer earning investment returns. With onchain assets, that cash could instead remain invested in a vehicle such as a tokenized money market fund until closer to when it is needed, continuing to earn yield in the meantime.

Agents could help manage how and when that cash moves based on a company’s liquidity needs, helping keep funds productive while ensuring they remain available when required.