Canton Network Developer Digital Asset Raises $355 Million Led by a16z Crypto to Bring Wall Street Onchain

Digital Asset, the developer of the Canton Network, raised $355 million in a funding round led by a16z crypto, the company announced Thursday. The financing will support the next phase of growth as more institutions bring assets, applications, and regulated workflows onto Canton.

The round drew a roster of major traditional and digital finance institutions, including ABN Amro, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, iCapital, Optiver, Polychain, S&P Global, SBI Group, SoFi, Tradeweb, William Blair, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority through a wholly owned subsidiary. The round also marks the start of a partnership between Digital Asset and a16z crypto.

Canton is a layer-one blockchain built to address a central barrier to blockchain adoption in finance: letting institutions use shared infrastructure while preserving the privacy, compliance, and control regulated markets require. The network has more than 700 ecosystem participants. “Blockchain adoption will be defined by practical, production-grade applications in the world’s largest markets,” said Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset. “For capital markets to move onchain, institutions need infrastructure that reflects how they actually operate.” Ali Yahya, a general partner at a16z Crypto, said real-world assets and institutional workflows moving onchain is “no longer theoretical.”

The raise lands at a moment when blockchains designed for banks and institutions are drawing heavy investment. Payments company Stripe is building its Tempo blockchain, and stablecoin issuer Circle is developing its Arc network, both raising comparable sums.

Digital Asset said it will focus the capital on use cases where shared, privacy-enabled infrastructure can reduce friction, including tokenization, collateral mobility, settlement, and payments.

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