Canton Network Bets on Institutions: What It Takes to Move Them Onchain | Yuval Rooz, Digital Asset

Summary

The discussion focuses on Canton Network’s effort to move financial institutions’ existing business onto shared onchain infrastructure. Yuval Rooz says Canton’s first summit emphasized live production use cases and their business value, rather than future-facing demos.

The conversation also highlights recent momentum: a $355 million funding round led by a16z, Visa joining as a super validator, and DTCC selecting Canton for tokenization infrastructure.

Key Themes

Treasury management as a near-term use case

Companies need cash available across markets to meet operating expenses while also seeking yield on unused balances. Rooz argues that real-time, round-the-clock transfers and access to yield-bearing products, such as money market funds, could help companies put more of their cash to work. He estimates that moving $1 billion into a money market fund could generate roughly $35 million a year in additional returns, depending on assumptions.

Making institutional access seamless

Corporate users should not have to manage unfamiliar wallets, seed phrases, or new operational processes. Canton is integrating with a treasury-management provider serving about 4,000 corporates, with the aim of letting clients adopt the offering through their existing provider’s interface.

Rooz says this integration-first approach is essential because corporate users are generally not rewarded for taking technology or operational risks.

Adoption is still early

Rooz describes industry enthusiasm as high but institutional progress as being in the “first or second inning.” He says much onchain activity remains retail-driven, and institutional products can still be too complicated compared with established systems and workflows.

He argues that even modest but steadily growing use of mission-critical financial services could demonstrate product-market fit and encourage wider adoption.

Growth benchmarks

Rooz points to Broadridge’s repo activity, which he says grew from about $1.5 trillion per month to $7–9 trillion per month over roughly two years. As an aspirational benchmark, he says the industry could aim to approach $50 trillion in monthly activity within two to three years, while emphasizing that a sustained growth trajectory matters more than a single target.

Composability can make assets more useful

Rooz explains composability as connecting assets with other assets or services at lower cost. For example, using an equity portfolio as collateral for a loan currently requires coordination across separate ledgers, legal agreements, and lien processes. If those steps could be handled through connected onchain records, the cost and time involved could fall, making more assets practical to borrow against.

The same principle could enable money market funds to serve more use cases, including corporate treasury and cash management.

Canton’s institutional strategy

Rooz says institutional markets such as repo, swaps, and foreign exchange may offer more durable activity through market downturns than retail-driven use cases. He also says Digital Asset is investing in companies that can reduce barriers to institutional adoption, though he does not identify the investment discussed.

Response to criticism

Rooz treats much of the online criticism as competitive noise, but says he also looks for substantive criticism that could help improve the network. He suggests some backlash followed major institutional announcements, including DTCC’s selection of Canton.

Reviews, Guides, or Tutorials

None are presented; this is an interview and analysis discussion.

Main Speakers and Sources

• Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset
• The Stabledash interview hosts