Did L2 Fragment Ethereum? - With Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset, Co-Founder of Canton

Canton builds a privacy-first, composable ledger network—enabling atomic cross-canton trades, tokenized treasuries, and private TradFi on‑chain.

Key Takeaways

Canton is a network-of-networks: independent cantons interoperate while composing multi-canton transactions atomically so linked trades either fully succeed or fully fail.
Privacy, not anonymity: Canton shares contract inputs only on a need-to-know basis and can use ZK proofs for compliance while avoiding opaque anonymity risks.
Public chains = composability and censorship resistance but high cost; Canton keeps frequent ledger work private and pays mainnet only for cross-canton composition.
Governance and consensus: ~40 supervalidators provide L1 consensus and composability; decisions need two‑thirds votes; selection favors commercial commitment over pure stake.
DTCC pilot: Canton was chosen to tokenize U.S. Treasuries, enabling on‑chain treasuries, real‑time stablecoin issuance, and phased production tests this year.
Planned use cases: focus on TradFi (OTC derivatives, wrapped BTC/ETH, money market functionality), plus insurance, mortgages, music IP, and private prediction markets.
ZK and security caveats: ZK helps scaling and selective disclosure, but bugs can conceal collateral; lenders and TradFi require visible, auditable proofs for risk.