Digital Asset, the company behind the privacy-focused blockchain Canton Network, has raised $135 million in a strategic funding round. The round was led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, with participation from BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, Digital Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Virtu Financial, and Paxos. The Canton Network supports the tokenization of various real-world assets, including bonds, money market funds, commodities, repos, mortgages, life insurance, and annuities.
The new capital will be used to expand further into these areas. Last year, the Canton Network tested its platform with major financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon, demonstrating the network’s capabilities in tokenizing real-world assets. Yuval Rooz, CEO of Canton, explained the flexibility of the network’s privacy settings.
Users can choose the privacy levels of the assets they wish to issue, ranging from no privacy, like Ethereum, to full privacy, where the asset’s existence is hidden.
Canton Network receives $135M expansion funding
These assets can coexist on the same network, and transactions can be conducted across both types.
Don Wilson, founder and CEO of DRW, commented on the significance of this funding round. He stated that with trillions of dollars’ worth of real-world assets already leveraging the Canton Blockchain, this investment cements Canton as the de facto protocol for global collateral mobility. The real-world asset tokenization sector has been growing rapidly, increasing from about $10 billion to $24.3 billion over the past 14 months.
According to RWA.xyz, a tracking platform for on-chain tokenized assets, private credit accounts for $14.2 billion, U.S. treasuries for $7.4 billion, and commodities now have $1.6 billion in tokenized assets. This strategic round will enable the Canton Network to continue its growth and innovation in the fast-growing sector of real-world asset tokenization. The investment from prominent financial institutions underscores the increasing acceptance and integration of digital assets in traditional finance.