Microsoft, Goldman, others partner for privacy-enabled blockchain Canton Network

Digital Asset, alongside several traditional financial firms and technology giants, are partnering to launch Canton Network — a privacy-enabled blockchain network designed for institutional assets.

According to a May 9 press statement, the new network would be launched in July when the network participants — which include the likes of Goldman Sachs, Cumberland, S&P Global, SBI Digital Asset Holdings, Umbrage, Microsoft, Paxos, Deloitte, CBOE, and others — would test its interoperability capabilities across a range of applications and use cases.

With Canton Network’s design, traditional financial institutions can offer users new innovative products and experience a safer and reconciliation-free environment where assets, data, and cash can synchronize freely across applications.

“[Canton Network] creates a ‘network of networks’, allowing previously siloed systems in financial markets to interoperate with the appropriate governance, privacy, permissioning and controls required for highly regulated industries.”

A Deloitte Consulting principal, Joseph Cody, said the blockchain network is the first of its kind, adding that the Canton Network can help with the “tokenization of assets, facilitating rapid cross-organizational settlement, creating new marketplaces, and establishing an immutable record of shared data, and facilitating secure transactions.”

Canton is built on Digital Asset’s smart contract language, Daml.

How Canton Network differs from rival blockchains

Canton Network says it combines the smart contract capabilities of blockchain networks like Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) with privacy features similar to those on Bitcoin Lightning and ZCash (ZEC).

According to its white paper, this helps to differentiate it from other blockchain networks, which are limited in their operations. Some of these networks’ limitations include their layer1 strict, vertical limits on transaction capacity. Another challenge of these networks was that asset issuers had to forfeit control of that asset to a pool of pseudonymous validators.

“From a regulatory perspective, the data transparency and loss of control over assets make these networks unsuitable for use by financial institutions.”

Canton Network says it helps solve these limitations by enabling applications across multiple subnets to natively interoperate without requiring a layer 2 protocol or asset bridge.