Digital Asset has secured $135 million in a strategic funding round to accelerate the expansion of the Canton Network, its public, permissionless Layer-1 blockchain designed for institutional finance. The round was co-led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, with participation from a broad coalition of traditional finance institutions and crypto-native investors.
Participants in the round include BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, DTCC, Goldman Sachs, IMC, Liberty City Ventures, Optiver, Paxos, Polychain Capital, QCP, Republic Digital, 7RIDGE, and Virtu Financial. Many of these organizations are already connected to the Canton Network through governance, infrastructure development, or application testing.
Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO of Digital Asset, commented, “This funding milestone validates the inevitability of what we envisioned years ago: a privacy-enabled public blockchain designed specifically for institutional adoption. 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.”
The Canton Network offers configurable privacy and institutional-grade compliance capabilities, allowing financial institutions to maintain control over transaction confidentiality without sacrificing regulatory alignment. The new capital will support the integration of additional real-world assets (RWAs) such as money market funds, repos, mortgages, life insurance contracts, and annuities.
Don Wilson, Founder and CEO of DRW, said, “Today, major players from crypto and traditional finance have joined Digital Asset on its mission to catalyze the next evolution in markets. With trillions of dollars’ worth of real-world assets already leveraging the Canton Blockchain, this next round of funding creates significant momentum for the company, and cements Canton as the de facto protocol for global collateral mobility.”
Canton has grown rapidly in the past year, now connecting nearly 400 institutional participants. The platform serves as an interoperability layer across various financial applications, offering real-time settlement and secure, private transaction flows between participants.
Billy Hult, CEO of Tradeweb, stated, “Digital Asset and Canton are addressing real-world challenges in financial markets, not just theoretical concepts. The fact that such a wide range of asset classes are already integrated onto Canton is an important sign that this network is ready for mainstream finance. At Tradeweb, we see DLT and smart contracts as catalysts for reimagining and reshaping market structure — unlocking workflow efficiencies and accelerating the shift toward electronic markets.”
Goldman Sachs, a long-time partner of Digital Asset, also participated in the funding round. Mathew McDermott, Global Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs, said, “Our longstanding relationship with Digital Asset stems from a deep conviction in the strength of their technology, which continues to be foundational to the development and ongoing success of GS DAP®. We are pleased to participate in their latest funding round and to continue to support them as a critical player in the institutional digital asset ecosystem.”
Other investors emphasized Canton’s role in solving key adoption bottlenecks such as privacy, interoperability, and compliance.
Melvin Deng, CEO of QCP, commented, “Canton is creating the kind of infrastructure that makes [institutional digital assets] possible — compliant, interoperable, and trusted. Our investment signals belief not only in the technology, but in the purpose behind it.”
Josh Rosenthal, Partner at Polychain Capital, added, “Canton Network addresses critical barriers — privacy, compliance, and scale — that have long hindered institutional DeFi adoption. Canton’s progress positions it as a catalyst for merging traditional finance with decentralized innovation.”
Digital Asset developed the Canton Network to provide a decentralized infrastructure that meets regulatory standards while supporting sophisticated financial workflows. The network’s ability to support asset transfers with configurable privacy settings is seen by backers as a necessary advancement for institutions seeking to digitize and tokenize assets at scale.
