The company that created Canton Network—a blockchain for major financial institutions—is conducting a new funding round. The round is led by a16z Crypto. The funds are being raised less than a year after the previous nine-figure round.
What Is This Company and Why the Round Matters
Digital Asset Holdings is not a startup in the usual sense. The company works with the world’s largest financial institutions and created Canton Network: a private blockchain with privacy features designed for banks, clearinghouses, and regulators. This is not a DeFi protocol for retail users—it is infrastructure for the institutional financial market.
According to Bloomberg, the new $300 million round is led by a16z Crypto—one of the largest venture funds in crypto. The deal is expected to close within a few weeks. The company’s valuation will be $2 billion.
For context: last year, Digital Asset already raised $135 million in a strategic round led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets. Returning to the market with double the amount in less than a year indicates that the network’s growth rate has exceeded initial expectations.
DTCC and $114 Trillion in Assets
The main partner defining the strategic significance of Canton Network is DTCC, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. DTCC services settlements for most securities in the US and holds $114 trillion in assets.
In December, Digital Asset and DTCC announced a partnership to tokenize assets under DTCC custody on Canton Network. Last week, DTCC went further: it announced a pilot launch for trading tokenized versions of some of these assets—starting in July, with a full service launch in October.
When the world’s largest clearing center begins moving real assets to blockchain, it is no longer an experiment. This is an infrastructure solution that will change how securities are traded and stored.
Moody’s, Japanese Bonds, and a Swiss Bank
Institutional adoption of Canton Network is moving in several directions at once.
In March, Moody’s deployed its ratings data directly on the network. This is the first time a credit rating agency has published its data on a blockchain—now financial institutions can use ratings directly in their blockchain processes without intermediate integration.
In April, the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation (JSCC) began testing the transfer of ownership rights to Japanese government bonds via Canton Network. The goal is to use government bonds as digital collateral within a blockchain environment. If the test is successful, it will set a precedent for one of the world’s largest government bond markets.
Earlier in May, Swiss crypto bank Amina announced support for custody and trading of Canton Coin—the network’s token. Amina became the first FINMA-regulated bank to officially work with this asset.
Why Canton and Not a Public Blockchain
The crypto community has traditionally been skeptical of private corporate blockchains: questions about decentralization, control, and the real need for a proprietary chain arise regularly. Canton Network has not escaped this criticism.
But it has a specific answer to a specific demand. Major financial institutions need transaction privacy—regulatory requirements do not allow deal details to be made public. There must be the ability to precisely control who sees what data. And there must be compatibility with existing infrastructure.
Public blockchains provide liquidity but not privacy and control. Canton provides control and privacy, solving the liquidity problem through partnerships with DTCC and other major market participants. This is not competition with Ethereum or Solana—it is a different segment with different requirements.
What a16z’s Participation Means
Choosing a16z Crypto as the lead investor adds several dimensions to the round. The fund has historically bet on infrastructure projects with a long-term horizon—and rarely participates in rounds without conviction in the addressable market’s scale.
Tokenization of real-world assets is now seen by most institutional players as one of the main trends of the coming decade. Boston Consulting Group estimates the tokenized asset market at $16 trillion by 2030. Canton Network, with its partnership with DTCC and a growing list of financial institutions, is vying to be one of the key infrastructure platforms for this market.
If this positioning proves correct, $300 million at a $2 billion valuation is an early-stage entry into a structure that could serve a significant share of the global financial market.
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