- Digital Asset raises $135 million led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets.
- Institutional investors like BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, DTCC, Goldman Sachs, and Virtu Financial join the funding round.
- The company shifts focus from its Daml smart contract language to the new Canton Network blockchain.
- Canton Network enables integration of tokenized real-world assets, providing new use cases such as using digital bonds as collateral.
- Enterprise partnerships show growing trust in Canton Network’s privacy features and practical applications for financial markets.
Digital Asset, a blockchain technology developer, has secured $135 million in a new funding round. The investment, led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, brings together key backers from traditional finance and the growing decentralized finance sector.
Investors in this round include BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, the DTCC, Goldman Sachs, and Virtu Financial. Organizations from the decentralized finance space like Circle, Paxos, and QCP also joined, attracted by Digital Asset’s recent launch of the Canton Network, which aims to be a public, permissionless blockchain.
This is the company’s first fundraising effort since its $120 million Series D in 2021, when it primarily promoted its Daml smart contract tools. The focus has now shifted to the Canton Network, which connects multiple independent financial applications built on its technology. Notable Canton participants include BNP Paribas with its Neobonds, Goldman Sachs with its Digital Assets Platform (GS DAP), HSBC‘s Orion, and Broadridge’s DLR repo solution, which handles around $1.5 trillion in transactions every month.
By bringing together various tokenized real-world assets on a single network, Canton aims to broaden uses for digital finance. For example, digital bonds could be used as collateral thanks to Canton’s ability to connect otherwise separate blockchain projects, according to statements from Digital Asset.
A key feature highlighted by the company is Canton’s configurable privacy, a result of its enterprise-oriented origin. Unlike other public blockchains that add privacy through complex cryptography called Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs)—which some view as not yet ready for major use—Canton relies on privacy approaches tested in enterprise contexts.
Several backers, including BNP Paribas, DRW, Goldman Sachs, Liberty City Ventures, QCP, and Tradeweb, have participated in Canton either through projects or testing. Tradeweb, a major fixed income platform provider, played roles in both the GS DAP project and a recent partnership with Novaprime to share mortgage forward data.
“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,” said Billy Hult, CEO of Tradeweb. He added, “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.”
The Canton Network’s ability to integrate different tokenized financial products, along with its privacy technology, is drawing attention from major industry players as they explore new ways to use distributed ledger technology.
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