The historical TradFi vs DeFi narrative represents a false choice between the controls and guardrails of traditional financial markets, and the speed, transparency and composability of decentralized finance, that has grown up around the edges. The Canton Network ecosystem shows us that today, the walls that once separated these worlds are dissolving. And where they meet, true opportunity is emerging.
By combining the privacy and controls that institutions demand, with public blockchain composability, decentralization and innovative network economics, Canton Network is busting the trade-offs between traditional and decentralized finance. This is the point where the power of global finance meets the power of blockchain.
In 2025, Canton Network adoption has surged. With ~600 validators live and 15M+ transactions using Canton Coin in their flows each month, traditional institutions, app builders, and the leading names in crypto markets are collaborating on Canton to deliver market transformation at scale. Trusted by leaders like Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Broadridge, and Circle, Canton is the first and only network where traditional finance and DeFi-like business models can operate together on the same rails at scale. The result is that today applications on Canton already process $6T+ in on-chain assets, and over $280Bn in daily U.S. Treasury repo trades.
Forget TradFi or DeFi - Canton is the first AllFi blockchain. It’s the only viable path for both institutions and crypto‑native builders to compose real‑world finance with crypto‑style velocity - without forcing a one‑size‑fits‑all model.
Navigating the rapidly expanding Canton ecosystem when it is growing so fast is not always an easy task. Below is a quick guide to help you explore Canton’s diverse, interconnected world of apps, assets, service providers and contributors today.
Tokenized Assets
On Canton, when assets are tokenized they become the legally recognized assets, living on an L1 which acts as the trusted onchain books and records that can be used by issuers, custodians, and regulators as the source of truth. Onchain means direct ownership, not just the synthetic representation of an asset. It means that the rights and obligations of issuers, investors and everyone in between can be enforced and relied upon at the protocol level. Add to this the benefit of being able to transfer these assets with granular control over privacy, and you can see why institutions issue on Canton, and why more and more digital assets are being ‘Cantonized’.
From real-world financial assets like bonds, repos, money market funds, loan commitments, insurance, mortgages and private equities, to wrapped crypto assets looking for institutional utility (e.g. CBTC), assets on Canton are composable across applications on the network, and increasingly supported by the network's growing wallet and custody ecosystem. The result is seamless workflows combined with the privacy-preserving guarantees that unlock asset utility and investor confidence. Explore on-chain assets and tokenization platforms on Canton here (search for Tokenized Assets in the Network Utility drop down).
Stablecoins
Canton Network serves as a privacy and interoperability layer for regulatory-grade stablecoins, opening up their utility at scale in enterprise workflows and use cases, and for privacy-preserving payments and settlement. Privacy remains a threshold issue for stablecoin adoption whether in treasury and cash management, cross-border payments, margin in crypto derivatives or for financing in 24/7 markets. That’s why institutions chose stablecoins on Canton (e.g. USDC, Brale, M1) to unlock financing against on-chain US Treasuries on the network - because it overcomes this core challenge.
Stablecoin apps on Canton not only benefit from composability with institutional grade real-world assets, but also wider integrations across the network - from leading forensic compliance providers, to trading and margin management applications and custodians, making it the trusted venue for institutional stablecoin flows to grow. For a deep dive into why stablecoins are gaining traction on Canton, read this paper by The Tie. See here for a breakdown of stablecoins on Canton (search for Stablecoins in Network Utility dropdown).
Custody
The Canton Network ecosystem comprises a growing range of providers that make it simple for traditional and crypto-native firms to securely hold and utilize onchain assets, no matter your requirements - from institutional-grade custody and wallet infrastructure, to highly secure key management solutions, Canton Network has you covered. See here to see the different flavours of custody for assets on Canton (search for Custody in Network Utility dropdown).
Liquidity
Digital assets demand distribution and ease of mobility to generate real utility. From leading market makers and crypto liquidity providers, to emerging trading platforms and exchanges, a growing ecosystem of firms is driving network-wide liquidity on Canton.
Market makers such as QCP, DRW, GSR, FalconX, Flowdesk, and B2C2 are already onboard, laying the foundation for deep, composable liquidity across asset classes. These firms activate liquidity for on-chain instruments and utilize privacy enabled assets on Canton because they open up new use cases - from automated margin management, to 24/7 financing leveraging previously unusable assets.
Explore the firms bringing liquidity to Canton here (search for Liquidity in Network Utility dropdown).
Wallets
Canton Network’s token standard CIP-56 ensures seamless composability between wallets and assets, enabling best-in-class user experience and an increasing range of activities with Canton native assets, from Canton Coin to CBTC, USDC, SBC and more. The ecosystem supports a wide range of wallet types - from self-custodial to custodial wallets, enterprise or retail and hot or cold key storage, allowing applications to onboard any user type, whether it’s a corporate client, high net worth individual (HNWI), or retail end users. Emerging retail wallets such as Five North’s Loop is designed for frictionless onboarding and day-to-day asset interactions. HNWI and SME focussed wallets include Bron, and leading self-custody and hardware wallets such as Ledger are moving into production soon. Developers can also benefit from wallet tooling that accelerates time-to-market for building custom wallet experiences using Digital Asset’s Wallet SDK making it easier to integrate with the CIP-56 token standard. See the growing list of enterprise and retail wallet providers here (search for Wallets in Network Utility dropdown).
Developer Tools
Canton’s open ecosystem includes a robust ecosystem of developer tools for beginner and seasoned developers alike to build, test, and launch faster.
For learners, AngelHack recently launched Canton Core Academy, which offers interactive and concise learning courses to help developers build institutional-grade finance applications on Canton Network. With the Academy’s Learn & Earn quests, you can learn more about Canton’s architecture, how to get started with Daml, and how to build an inter-institutional asset transfer application.
For developers ready to build, Canton’s ecosystem also includes a comprehensive range of frameworks, SDKs, and libraries that help you to go to market faster with building, deploying, and testing applications on the network. Digital Asset’s Canton Network Utilities are a powerful suite of building blocks that enables digital asset issuers, and their clients, to rapidly bring assets onto Canton Network. Quickstart introduces developers to Canton’s Token Standard and provides a template for developers to get hands-on learning how to build a full-stack application.
Node-as-a-Service
A growing set of enterprise-grade node-as-a-service (NaaS) providers offer turnkey connectivity, deployment and validator management so that institutions can focus on delivering value to their customers rather than managing the overhead of operating a node. From pure hosting services with DevOps tooling, to crypto-native providers that offer additional DeFi products, services and integrations, explore the providers you can turn to, or find your favourites here.
Data & Analytics
The ecosystem includes a comprehensive suite of block explorers, dashboards, and analytics tools that enable full-stack observability. This gives institutional users the transparency they need to observe, audit, and analyze on-chain activity, all while preserving Canton’s privacy guarantees. Some key tools include: The Tie’s Public Dashboard, which provides visibility into overall real-time network activity, tokenomics, and featured application adoption, so that ecosystem participants can stay informed on the overall health of the network. Node Fortress’ dedicated Canton Network explorer enables users to monitor governance actions and proposals. Coin Metrics’ Canton Intelligence App, a powerful analytics platform, surfaces critical insights such as validator rewards, fee flows, application incentives, and subaccount movements. Proof Group’s CantonScan enables users to explore and search the blockchain by participant, track individual token activity, laying the foundation for institutional-grade auditability. RWA.xyz, a leading dashboard for tokenized real-world assets, integrated with Canton service provider Kaiko to bring insights into how RWAs are issued and behave on-chain. And 5N Lighthouse allows you to explore live data from Super Validators and Validators, follow governance decisions, monitor transactions in real time, and see how featured apps interact with the network. See here for the full list of data & analytics platforms.
Payments
Canton Network’s architecture enables instant and automated payment-versus-payment (PvP) workflows that are designed to bring a wide range of real-world payments on-chain, including: b2b payments, payroll, remittances, cross-border transactions, treasury cash management, and more. Unlike other public L1 blockchains, Canton is a public network with privacy-preserving workflows that prevents institutions from broadcasting sensitive payments data to the world. Canton Network includes a growing set of applications in the payments vertical enhancing the security and reliability of the network for digital payments, including Bitwave, a b2b cross-border payment network, Paysafe, a global leading payments platform, and Worldpay, a global payments technology provider. See here for the full list of validators in the payments vertical.
Forensics & Security
A growing set of compliance and forensic providers are integrated into the ecosystem to support compliance and transaction monitoring, including: Elliptic which offers on-chain AML monitoring solutions trusted by regulated institutions and TRM Labs which provides blockchain analytics solutions to detect and investigate crypto-related fraud and financial crime. On-chain AML monitoring capabilities empower individual operators to define their own compliance parameters - ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements and institutional risk management. Combined with Canton’s selective disclosure capabilities, Canton provides a sophisticated approach to regulatory oversight and compliance. See here for the full list of forensics & security providers.
Interoperability
Canton is the backbone for interoperability across all apps and networks within the Canton ecosystem - connecting fragmented systems across global finance with secure and compliant infrastructure. Canton’s ecosystem is now seeing cross-chain interoperability services from the leading interoperability solutions like Chainlink, LayerZero and Wormhole being added to further open up access for other ecosystems to benefit from the unique features, capabilities and applications on the Canton Network. See here for the full list of interoperability providers.
Take advantage of the latest features in Canton today and start creating highly composable applications for 24/7 on-chain capital markets and payments with institutional-grade privacy: