Digital Asset Raises $135 Million to Bolster Canton Network Blockchain

Digital Asset has raised $135 million to promote adoption of its Canton Network blockchain.

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 helped launch the blockchain.

“This funding accelerates institutional and decentralized finance adoption on the Canton Network, the only public, permissionless Layer-1 blockchain that offers configurable privacy and institutional-grade compliance at scale,” the company said in a news release.

The capital expands the integration of hundreds of billions of real-world assets (RWAs) onto Canton, while also strengthening the relationship with many of the companies already part of the network, including Goldman, that have played roles related to testing, governance, infrastructure or app development on the Canton Network since its debut.

“This funding milestone validates the inevitability of what we envisioned years ago: a privacy-enabled public blockchain designed specifically for institutional adoption,” Digital Asset Co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz said in the release.

“Canton is already actively supporting numerous asset classes — from bonds to alternative funds — and this raise will accelerate onboarding even more real-world assets, finally making blockchain’s transformative promise an institutional-scale reality.”

PYMNTS wrote about the Canton Network’s launch last year, noting that its pilot effort was aimed at demonstrating the interoperability of 22 independent distributed ledger applications (dApps) in the capital markets domain “and prove how a network of interoperable applications can seamlessly connect to enable secure, atomic transactions while reducing counterparty and settlement risk.”

The pilot’s chief finding was the ability of distributed ledger networks to leverage blockchain technology and preserve the privacy and controls regulated institutions require. The lack of control over data and the need to trade interoperability for privacy have historically curbed firms’ ability to use the efficiencies that blockchain technology provides.

“Canton allows previously siloed financial systems to connect and synchronize in previously impossible ways while abiding by the current regulatory guardrails,” Rooz said at the time.

In other blockchain-related news, PYMNTS wrote this week about some of the custody issues tied to corporate bitcoin treasuries.

Insurance for digital assets is still in its early stages, that report noted, a reality that has led some companies to weigh creative solutions, like distributed custody arrangements or programmable insurance smart contracts. Others are waiting for clearer regulations that would make insurers more confident about underwriting policies at scale.

“As for on-premises solutions, holding bitcoin securely requires technical knowledge, robust infrastructure and detailed internal controls,” the report added. “The company, in essence, needs to become a bank itself. That is likely a radically different model than most finance departments are used to.”