The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has chosen Canton Network as its blockchain partner for tokenizing US Treasury securities, marking a watershed moment for institutional adoption of distributed ledger technology. 

Announced on December 17, the collaboration represents the first step in DTCC's strategy to bring real-world assets on-chain, following regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

But the decision carries more weight than that. 

DTCC processes $3.7 quadrillion in securities transactions annually and provides custody for $99 trillion worth of securities from over 150 countries, making it the backbone of global capital markets. As a result, its choice of blockchain infrastructure will more than likely influence how other major financial institutions approach tokenization.

Partnership Details

Under the agreement, DTCC will tokenize a subset of DTC-custodied U.S. Treasury securities on Canton Network, with an MVP launch planned for the first half of 2026 in a controlled production environment. The organization will use its ComposerX platform suite to facilitate the tokenization process, allowing DTC participants to convert select supported assets between traditional book-entry and tokenized forms while maintaining the same CUSIP identifiers, investor protections, and ownership rights.

"This collaboration creates a roadmap to bring real-world, high-value tokenization use cases to market, starting with U.S. Treasury securities and eventually expanding to a broad spectrum of DTC-eligible assets," said Frank La Salla, DTCC's CEO, in the joint announcement.

The partnership builds on DTCC's earlier collateral mobility experiments and aligns with its broader digital asset strategy. 

Brian Steele, Managing Director and President of Clearing & Securities Services at DTCC, noted that the initiative advances "a secure, transparent and interoperable digital asset ecosystem that leverages the full potential of blockchain technology across network providers."

DTCC Becomes Canton Super Validator

Beyond the tokenization initiative, DTCC has assumed a governance role as a Super Validator on Canton Network. 

The organization now serves as co-chair of the Canton Foundation alongside Euroclear, positioning it to help establish industry-wide standards for decentralized financial infrastructure. This governance structure was formalized through CIP-0083, approved by existing Super Validator node operators on December 19.

This arrangement is interesting as it differs from more typical blockchain partnerships where traditional financial institutions remain external users rather than active governance participants.

Why Canton Network Won

DTCC's selection of Canton Network over established blockchain platforms like Ethereum represents a notable validation of purpose-built institutional infrastructure, with several factors appearing to have influenced this decision.

Canton Network was designed specifically for institutional use cases, enabling organizations to issue and trade tokenized real-world assets on a shared ledger while maintaining privacy and regulatory compliance. The network employs privacy-preserving technology that allows institutions to transact without exposing sensitive data to all network participants (a clear requirement for regulated financial institutions handling confidential client information).

The platform's architecture centers on the Daml smart contract language, developed concurrently with Ethereum's whitepaper in 2015-2016, according to Heslin Kim, founder of Zenith, which builds applications on Canton. This language provides fine-grained privacy controls and native support for complex financial workflows that traditional finance requires.

“[Canton’s] partnership with dtcc is set to tokenize u.s. treasuries in 2026… institutions are building on canton and powerhouses like goldman sachs, bnp paribas, nasdaq, s&p global and 700+ firms continue to connect… ethereum has its own lane, canton has its own lane, get it straight”, wrote Kim on X/Twitter.

Canton's track record with major institutions further strengthens its credibility. Digital Asset, the company behind Canton Network, counts BlackRock, Blackstone, Nasdaq, S&P Global, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel Securities among its backers. The network has maintained 99.9% uptime, according to Kim's analysis.

Broader Implications: a Watershed Moment

Zooming out, and the partnership signals that institutional tokenization is moving from experimentation to production. 

DTCC's commitment to a controlled production environment in 2026, backed by SEC regulatory approval through a No-Action letter, provides a framework that other institutions can reference when planning their own tokenization initiatives.

The collaboration's phased approach, starting with Treasury securities before expanding to other DTC-eligible assets, creates a proven pathway for bringing additional asset classes on-chain. Market participants including major market makers and hedge funds stand to benefit from operational efficiencies, reduced settlement risk, and improved capital efficiency that tokenization enables.

Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO of Digital Asset, characterized the partnership as reflecting "the collective ambition of leading market participants to create future-proof, interoperable financial ecosystems." 

The involvement of both DTCC and Euroclear in Canton's governance structure suggests European and American capital markets infrastructure is converging on shared technological standards.

The decision also demonstrates that institutional blockchain adoption will likely follow a different path altogether to retail cryptocurrency markets. Rather than adopting existing public blockchains, regulated financial institutions appear to be selecting purpose-built networks that address their specific compliance, privacy, and operational requirements while maintaining the transparency and efficiency benefits that distributed ledger technology offers.

In some respects, this is a ringing endorsement of the ‘App Chain Theory’.

As DTCC begins tokenizing Treasury securities in 2026, the partnership will provide concrete data on whether blockchain technology can deliver the promised improvements in settlement times, operational efficiency, and market transparency at the scale required by global capital markets. 

Accordingly, the outcome of the partnership will inform how quickly and extensively traditional financial infrastructure migrates to tokenized rails. However, for now, it is both an encouraging milestone for both Canton Network, and the wider blockchain industry.

Sources

• Canton Network: DTCC and Digital Asset Partner to Tokenize DTC-Custodied U.S. Treasury Securities on the Canton Network
• DTCC: DTCC and Digital Asset Partner to Tokenize DTC-Custodied U.S. Treasury Securities on the Canton Network
• Digital Asset: DTCC and Digital Asset Partner to Tokenize DTC-Custodied U.S. Treasury Securities on the Canton Network
• CoinDesk: Wall Street giant DTCC Picks privacy focused blockchain Canton Network for tokenization
• Decrypt/Yahoo Finance: DTCC Handles $3.7 Quadrillion in Transactions a Year—Now It's Tokenizing Treasuries on Canton
• DAML: An Introduction to Daml
• Heslin Kim: Social Media Posts‍
• Canton Foundation: Social Media Posts

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