$355M a16z Round Lifts Canton, Digital Asset Hits $2B
Key Points
- Digital Asset, the firm behind the Canton Network, raised $355 million led by a16z crypto, beating its $300 million target at a $2 billion valuation.
- Global institutions including HSBC, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, Apollo Funds, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority joined the round backing Canton’s tokenized asset rails.
- No $1,000 wallet can settle on Canton’s permissioned ledger, yet Canton Coin and a no-KYC perp DEX on the network stay open to any trader.
Digital Asset, the development firm behind the Canton Network, closed a $355 million funding round led by a16z crypto, beating a $300 million target at a $2 billion valuation. Chief executive Yuval Rooz said capital markets need blockchain infrastructure that reflects how institutions “actually operate, with privacy, compliance, scale, and interoperability built in from the start,” as HSBC, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority joined the round. For a wallet holder the rails this money buys are permissioned and out of reach, which makes the one open retail door the part worth watching.
a16z Leads $355M Into Canton’s Institutional Ledger
Digital Asset said Thursday it closed a $355 million round to push capital markets onchain, led by a16z crypto.
The raise drew ABN Amro, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, HSBC, SBI Group, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority through a subsidiary.
It beat a $300 million target floated last month and values the firm near $2 billion.
The Canton Network is a layer-1 built for banks and trading firms to issue and trade tokenized bonds, loans, and funds on a shared ledger that keeps balances private.
That privacy is the point and the catch.
It blends public-chain settlement with the compliance controls traditional finance demands, leaving the ledger permissioned and closed to anonymous wallets.
The one piece already open is Canton Coin, the network token, which trades on public secondary markets.
Where A $1,000 Wallet Touches Canton Today
This is the third big check in two years.
Digital Asset raised $135 million in June 2025 from backers like Goldman Sachs and Citadel Securities, then added $50 million from BNY Mellon, Nasdaq, and S&P Global.
It pulled in more than $120 million back in 2021, so Wall Street has been funding this rail for years.
The competition is just as flush.
Stripe and Paradigm’s Tempo chain raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation, and Circle’s Arc took $222 million at $3 billion with BlackRock and a16z crypto backing it.
Strip away the press release and this round is really about who controls the settlement layer for tokenized bonds, not about anything a retail wallet can buy into directly.
So what can a wallet actually do.
Canton Coin trades on open secondary venues, so price exposure needs no allowlist, and a no-KYC perpetuals market already lets self-custody wallets trade leveraged RWA pairs on the network.
You can see how institutional RWA rails keep inching toward retail wallets as these venues mature.
a16z’s Ali Yahya Bets On Regulated RWA Flow
The backers think the institutional rails win.
“One of the most compelling blockchain opportunities is no longer theoretical; it is emerging as real-world assets and institutional workflows move onchain,” said Ali Yahya, a general partner at a16z crypto.
He called Canton one of the clearest examples of blockchain product-market fit in regulated finance, and a16z is adding development, policy, and research help beyond the money.
The signal for DeFi is directional.
Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, Standard Chartered, and Deutsche Börse have all piloted Canton for capital-markets work.
Every tokenized bond or fund that settles there is one more asset that could later wrap into a permissionless market.
The catch is timing.
None of this is live for a $1,000 wallet yet, and the privacy that draws the banks is the same wall that keeps retail out.
Canton just out-raised every rival chasing the same Wall Street flow. Whether that lead ever reaches a retail wallet rides on the secondary market, and the next few months of Canton Coin liquidity will tell.
If you want the one Canton venue a wallet can use now, look at the no-KYC perp DEX already running 20x RWA trades on the network.
