Institutional blockchain infrastructure provider Digital Asset, known for the Canton Network, has secured around $50 million in strategic investments from BNY, iCapital, Nasdaq, and S&P Global, as revealed by a source familiar with the matter.
As announced on Thursday, this strategic funding aims to enhance Digital Asset’s substantial momentum to expand the Canton Network, following a recent $135 million funding milestone.
The involvement of these four prominent institutions underscores the diverse support for the Canton Network, with major banks, exchanges, data firms, and wealth infrastructure all contributing to the same foundational blockchain stack.
“Institutions across the financial ecosystem recognize the necessity of blockchain infrastructure purpose-built for regulated markets,” stated Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset. “The addition of BNY, iCapital, S&P Global, and Nasdaq marks another milestone in the evolution of both Digital Asset and Canton.”
Canton Network’s focus on institutional infrastructure
The Canton Network is a public, permissionless layer-1 blockchain emphasizing institutional-grade compliance and configurable privacy. As per the company, Canton currently supports trillions of dollars’ worth of tokenized real-world assets, with over 600 institutions and validators engaged in the network.
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The latest lineup of investors backing Canton indicates that the network’s proposition resonates with major incumbents seeking public-chain benefits while maintaining privacy and regulatory comfort. Canton positions itself as a “network of networks” with customizable privacy and compliance features, specifically targeting regulated markets rather than retail DeFi experimentation.
Global asset manager Franklin Templeton is already utilizing these rails. In October, the $1.6 trillion asset manager announced it would transition its Benji Investments platform, which tokenizes shares of its leading US money market fund, onto the Canton Network, advancing a live tokenized-fund product that previously operated on public chains into Canton’s institutional ecosystem.
Unlike other networks, Canton bypassed the ICO model. Its tokenomics are structured to benefit validators and applications that foster genuine transaction activity on the network, avoiding speculative token movements, as Rooz previously mentioned to Cointelegraph:
“Our thesis was focused on serving large-scale institutions. We’ve been very patient. We refused to do an ICO. We refuse to do a token pre-mine. We’ve really thought about the tokenomics.”
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Part of a larger institutional evolution
A source familiar with the deal informed Cointelegraph that the latest investments build directly on Digital Asset’s earlier $135 million strategic round this year, which incorporated DRW, Tradeweb, Goldman Sachs, DTCC, Citadel Securities, Paxos, and others to facilitate the scaling of Canton and onboard additional real-world assets.
The timing is noteworthy. This week, Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager, announced that it will enable its clients to begin trading crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and mutual funds on its platform, reversing its previous anti-Bitcoin position.
Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the US, has also adjusted its stance on crypto, reportedly advising a 1%–4% allocation for its wealth management clients.
Simultaneously, Coinbase is deepening collaborations with major US banks on stablecoin, custody, and settlement initiatives, positioning itself as essential infrastructure for institutions that prefer not to develop everything in-house.
Amid this backdrop, a unified stack encompassing banks, an exchange operator, a data and index giant, and a wealth‑tech firm as investors serves as a strong indication of where the industry anticipates long-term on-chain market infrastructure will reside. Brian Ruane, head of Global Clearing, Credit Services, and Corporate Trust at BNY, remarked:
“As capital markets move faster toward a real-time, always-on operating model, the development of financial infrastructure that seamlessly connects digital and traditional markets has never been more important. We’re excited to work with Digital Asset and Canton to continue advancing privacy-enabled and interoperable settlement solutions at institutional scale.”
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