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Canton Tokenomics: What’s the truth?

Altcoins By
It’s Flashing Again in July
It’s Flashing Again in July

Blockchain ecosystem has several successful smart contracts protocols. This makes it very competitive to introduce new players.

Canton Network is one of the newest ‘next generation layer one’ to vie for users and capital from incumbents like Ethereum and Solana. Canton, SUI, and Aptos’s rapid rise challenge the idea that there are already too many Blockchains.

Talking exclusively about Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction daily showYuval Rooz (co-founder at Digital Asset) recounted how the Canton Network chose not to participate in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) on its 10-year development journey. 

“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,” Rooz told Cointelegraph.

“Every time we thought we were ready, someone else made a mistake. We were like, what would happen if we were to make this mistake? That wouldn’t be good.”

Canton Network, designed by Digital Asset, is a protocol for use in financial institutions. This network allows secure, interoperable and privacy-preserving transaction. Digital Asset, the company that created Canton Network, describes the protocol’s architecture as a ‘network of networks’ aimed at real-world asset tokenization, trading and settlement. 

In 2025, the protocol and native token made headlines. Digital Asset closed a $135 million funding Round in June for the development of the Canton eco-system and the spearheading RWA tokenization protocol.

Tharimmune is a biotech firm that raised private funds of $540,000,000 to create a Canton Coin digital asset treasury. DAT will use proceeds from the sale of CC tokens in order to become a network supervalidator.

Related: Tharimmune makes $540M bet on Canton Coin in crypto treasury push

It is better to be slow than fast.

According to Rooz, Digital Asset developed and rolled out Canton Network in a gradual manner. The network’s performance and the users’ needs were assessed by launching a permissioned chain in 2020.

“It took about four years to build maybe the first version of the ledger and then it took another two to three years to get to a point where we were kind of comfortable to launch it in a permissionless manner.”

Rooz explained that they had learned a lot from both the launch of the other layer-1 protocols and the early problems faced by players like Ethereum. 

“Here’s the challenge I think that people underappreciate. Once you launch a public network and there are a lot of builders that run in production, it’s extremely hard to change it later. I think it will be extremely hard for public permissionless chains to bolt on privacy in a way that works as an afterthought without really creating a massive amount of pain to their community,” Rooz said.

Privacy on a ‘need-to-know’ basis

The privacy narrative has gained a lot of attention in the crypto space. Protocols like Zcash have attracted a great deal of interest.

Rooz noted that the fact that industry leaders are now championing the importance of privacy for transactions and communications is a welcome development. In recent years, many people were less concerned about this feature of the blockchain.

“I can tell you that every time we talked to crypto native folks over the last decade, and we said that privacy is a must-have, they told us, ‘you don’t understand crypto.’ The whole idea of crypto is not to have privacy,” Rooz said. 

The Digital Asset CEO added that privacy ultimately comes in ‘different shapes and forms’. Zcash’s and Canton’s zero-knowledge proof encryption is about privacy more than anonymity. 

“ZK is coming from a world where people are saying, you really want to have onchain user experience of like hard cash, a bearer instrument, meaning nobody gets to know what assets you have. I think that is an interesting angle. It’s very different than Bitcoin,” Rooz said. 

Financial institutions and government authorities are required to monitor activities in order to ensure compliance with anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer standards. 

“I guess what Canton does that is different than Zcash is that the privacy model of Canton is the ability to share information on a need-to-know basis. Meaning, if you are a regulator, you would be able to go to an issuer of a stablecoin and say, ‘hey, I want to see all of Yuval’s activity,’ which is different than anonymity.”

Digital Asset received support from global players in the financial sector. BNP Paribas was amongst the largest investors of its 2025 funding round, along with Circle Ventures Citadel Securities Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation and Goldman Sachs.

Magazine: 2026 is the year of pragmatic privacy in crypto: Canton, Zcash and more