The funding round announced Tuesday (June 24) was led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, with participation from numerous investors including Goldman Sachs, which had been instrumental in launching the blockchain. “This funding accelerates institutional and decentralized finance adoption on the Canton Network, the only public, permissionless Layer-1 blockchain offering configurable privacy and institutional-grade compliance at scale, ” the company stated in a news release. The capital infusion will expand the integration of hundreds of billions in real-world assets (RWAs) onto Canton, while also reinforcing the partnerships with many existing network participants, including Goldman Sachs, who have contributed to testing, governance, infrastructure, or app development on the Canton Network since its inception. “This funding milestone confirms the inevitability of what we envisioned years ago: a privacy-enabled public blockchain specifically designed for institutional adoption, ” said Digital Asset Co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz in the release. “Canton already supports a variety of asset classes — from bonds to alternative funds — and this raise will speed up the onboarding of even more real-world assets, finally making blockchain’s transformative promise a reality at an institutional scale. ” PYMNTS covered Canton Network’s launch last year, highlighting its pilot aimed at demonstrating interoperability among 22 independent distributed ledger applications (dApps) within capital markets “to show how a network of interoperable applications can seamlessly connect to enable secure, atomic transactions while reducing counterparty and settlement risk. ” The pilot’s key finding was the ability of distributed ledger networks to leverage blockchain technology while preserving the privacy and control that regulated institutions require. Historically, firms have been limited by lack of data control and having to trade off interoperability for privacy, which hindered their use of blockchain efficiencies. “Canton enables previously siloed financial systems to connect and synchronize in ways that were once impossible, all within existing regulatory frameworks, ” Rooz said at the time. In related blockchain news, PYMNTS reported this week on custody challenges facing corporate bitcoin treasuries. Digital asset insurance remains nascent, the report noted, prompting some companies to explore innovative solutions like distributed custody or programmable insurance smart contracts, while others wait for clearer regulations that would boost insurers’ confidence in underwriting policies at scale. “Regarding on-premises solutions, securely holding bitcoin demands technical expertise, robust infrastructure, and stringent internal controls, ” the report added.

“Effectively, the company needs to operate like a bank itself, a model vastly different from what most finance departments are accustomed to. ”