TL;DR
Digital Asset raises 300Mat2B valuation led by a16z.
Moody’s delivers on-chain credit ratings via the Canton Network directly.
JSCC tests tokenized Japanese government bonds as digital collateral assets.
Digital Asset Holdings, the company that built the Canton Network, is securing $300 million in fresh capital at a $2 billion valuation. Venture firm a16z crypto leads the investment, which multiple sources expect to close within several weeks, Bloomberg reported. The firm declined to comment on the transaction. The planned raise arrives less than a year after Digital Asset pulled in $135 million from DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets.
The funding underscores deepening institutional appetite for permissioned blockchain networks designed with privacy at the core—an architecture that sets Canton apart from open, permissionless chains. While some corners of the crypto sector argue that such networks sacrifice decentralization, the adoption figures tell a different story.
Ground Gained Among Global Financial Giants
The Canton Network continues to register an influx of major financial infrastructure players. In March, Moody’s Ratings pushed its credit scores onto the network, allowing institutions to consume that data directly inside automated workflows without intermediary steps. For the first time, a credit rating agency placed its information on-chain in a live operational setting.
In April, the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation (JSCC), a clearinghouse for equities, commodities, and derivatives, began testing tokenized Japanese government bonds on Canton. The trial explores whether ownership of those government securities can transfer on-chain and serve as digital collateral, a concrete move toward removing frictions in collateral markets.
Earlier this month, Swiss crypto bank Amina, regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), announced custody and trading support for Canton Coin, the network’s utility token. Amina stands as the first FINMA-licensed bank to offer these services for the Canton asset.
The most ambitious move, however, comes from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which custodies $114 trillion in liquid assets. In December, Digital Asset, the Canton Network, and DTCC agreed to enable tokenization of DTCC-custodied securities on the network.
Last week, DTCC confirmed plans to start a trading pilot for tokenized versions of those assets in July, targeting a full-service launch in October. Turning a slice of that vast inventory into movable, programmable digital tokens represents a forceful bet on an institutional settlement rail that does not rely on traditional messaging systems.
Each of these steps shows that the perimeter of what regulated finance is willing to test expands well beyond speculative crypto assets. Participants are not chasing alternative currencies. They are representing existing assets in a format that permits atomic transfers and simultaneous settlement, wrapped in privacy layers that keep sensitive data off a public ledger.
The mixed reactions that Canton receives from decentralization activists carry little weight with institutional priorities. For these players, the network delivers what public chains cannot offer without compromise: full transaction confidentiality, known counterparty identities, and regulatory compliance baked into the design. The trade-off means forgoing open, permissionless validation, but that sacrifice proves acceptable when the objective is moving regulated instruments.
Digital Asset, staffed with engineers and former financial executives, advances along a path distinct from protocols pursuing total decentralization. The company builds connectivity layers that institutions use to interoperate while retaining control over their data. The $300 million round, at a $2 billion valuation, reflects investor conviction that this approach will capture a substantial slice of real-world asset tokenization.
While decentralized finance battles to attract retail liquidity, the Canton–DTCC plan targets the hard core of the financial system: the assets that pension funds, insurers, and corporate treasuries move each day. The trials with Japanese sovereign bonds, live credit rating data, and the DTCC pilot do not read as isolated press releases—they form a vertical integration sequence that spans issuance, rating, custody, collateral, and trading.
If the new round closes successfully, Digital Asset stands in a reinforced capital position just as tokenization projects start to move beyond proof-of-concept. The company does not sell a narrative of sweeping overhaul but an argument of operational efficiency, settlement risk reduction, and speedier collateral transfers—language that bank treasurers understand without translation.
The Canton story demonstrates that the true push for digitalization in global finance does not always originate from the crypto periphery. It comes from clearinghouses, custodian banks, and market infrastructure agencies. The a16z-led round seals that trend with real money, at a moment when institutional tokenization volumes begin to materialize.
