Wall Street Giants, Sovereign Wealth Fund Back Canton Network Creator in $355M Round

Digital Asset secured $355 cardinal successful caller backing from investors including an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealthiness fund, according to a Thursday announcement from the steadfast down the Canton Network.

The steadfast said that the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, done a wholly owned subsidiary, was among participants successful the company’s latest backing round. The improvement follows the public, permissioned blockchain’s debut astir 2 years ago.

The steadfast down Canton, a web designed for fiscal institutions, said the circular was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm, a16z crypto. Other participants included immoderate of Wall Street’s astir salient firms, specified arsenic Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, and S&P Global.

The backing circular besides drew information from a fig of concern banks and fiscal services firms from astir the globe, ranging from South Korea to the Netherlands: William Blair, Hanwha Investment & Securities, BNP Paribas, HSBC, and ABN Amro.

The divers radical of backers underscores Canton’s planetary attack to bringing fiscal institutions on-chain done its “network of networks” architecture, which allows participants to clasp implicit power implicit systems that are connected to a broader ecosystem.

The caller backing besides highlights Canton’s increasing adoption arsenic a web for facilitating transactions involving real-world assets, oregon RWAs, specified arsenic bonds, equities, and commodities. The backing circular featured crypto-native participants specified arsenic Coinbase Ventures.

Canton’s autochthonal token changed hands astir 16 cents, a 12.3% summation implicit the past week, according to CoinGecko. The integer plus deed an all-time precocious of 19 cents successful February.

“Blockchain adoption volition beryllium defined by practical, production-grade applications successful the world’s largest markets,” Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz said successful a statement. “For superior markets to determination on-chain, institutions request infrastructure that reflects however they really operate.”

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Rooz highlighted Canton’s quality to enactment institutions’ privateness and compliance needs. Since the web debuted, Canton has gained much than 700 ecosystem participants, helium added.

Because institutions person implicit power implicit the assets they contented connected the network, immoderate blockchain purists person argued that Canton isn’t a existent blockchain. 

“Many experts (ourselves included) see it a glorified database successful the unreality and not astatine each accordant with Bitcoin's unfastened architecture that is some trustless and permissionless,” TD expert Lance Vitanza, for example, wrote successful a February note.

Prior to the company’s latest backing round, Digital Asset had raised astir $490 cardinal successful funding, according to Crunchbase. Digital Asset said the caller superior volition assistance it enactment the network’s continued growth, portion deepening engagement with developers.