Canton Network expands further with the arrival of Dfns, bringing the first institutional grade custody and wallet infrastructure for assets on Canton and Canton Coin. Now validators, app builders or operators can establish a secure Dfns wallet on Canton Network and immediately begin receiving, managing and securely transferring coins between wallets on Canton.

Founded in 2020, Dfns has been built as a bank-grade security infrastructure by design. According to CEO and founder Clarisse Hagège, Dfns focuses on the priorities of institutions: ensuring the security of the digital assets they transact, compliance with the strict processes they have in place, and scalability to run their operations globally and for all their different use cases.

“We’ve concentrated on building the safest, strongest wallet service on the market while respecting the highest NIST-compliant industry standards with regards to securing private keys for example," she says.

“We ensure that Dfns operates with the security fintechs, institutions and businesses require and is compatible with the infrastructure these organizations already have in place”

Clarisse Hagège,
CEO and founder, Dfns

More than just another wallet

That’s welcome news to institutional players like major custodians, FMIs, PSPs,  and wholesale treasury departments looking to increase their exposure to digital assets and meet rising investor demand. Until now, securely managing digital assets at institutional scale has been a significant challenge. While blockchain wallets are suitable for retail crypto use cases,  most wallets haven’t focused on providing the flexibility and security needed by institutions operating in regulated markets. Furthermore, most wallet services operate on public blockchains which don’t prioritize privacy, though it remains a primary business requirement for most institutions and business transactions.  

Institutions need to be able to manage a complex set of policies, workflows and permissions across different corporate entities and a variety of compliance and regulatory requirements. They also need to automate these workflows and interact with programmable solutions. Dfns offers that API-based flexibility and granularity with an institutional-grade solution that can integrate securely with any endpoint across a financial institution's technology stack and core banking systems.

Dfns wallet solutions can immediately be used for Canton Coin

Initial capabilities include transactions and balance tracking for Canton Coin, with additional support for stablecoins, tokenized assets, real-time transaction monitoring, and full indexing of the Global Synchronizer coming in Q2 2025. This will enable smooth asset transfers within the Canton ecosystem and allow financial institutions to manage Canton Coin alongside stablecoins and tokenized assets.

Every transaction executed via Dfns is secured with the highest grade passkey security protection

The authentication service is based on WebAuthn, a W3C standard and open-source protocol (built by Apple, Yubico, Google and others) that uses asymmetric cryptography ensuring that Dfns cannot access the passkeys inside the user device (phone, laptop, U2C devices like Yubikeys, etc.). Combined with the L1 configurable privacy of the Canton Network and its underlying UTXO ledger model, Dfns and Canton provide a highly secure offering.  

Institutional-grade custody and wallet infrastructure pave the way for broader institutional adoption of onchain finance in Canton’s decentralized, interoperable network. 

For app builders and developers on Canton

Dfns’s open architecture, and strong segregation of duties can help accelerate wallet development on Canton, without compromising privacy or interfering with the movement of assets. It also provides a flexible solution to manage Canton Coin as part of Canton Network applications, whether for fee payment or as part of incentives programs.

For application users and existing validators

Dfns provides a flexible private key management solution or fully hosted wallet solution to start transacting and managing Canton Coin and other assets. The keys can be deployed in various ways (managed, hybrid or fully on-premises) using MPC, and they can also sit with clients who want to leverage their HSM.

Three steps to get started:

• Go to Dfns to create an account. You’ll receive a unique party ID on Canton Network.
• Register that ID to be able to start receiving and sending Canton Coin.
• Establish the policies that govern the use of your wallet. 
  
  

“We believe that wallet infrastructure should be streamlined so that builders can focus on their applications rather than reinventing the wheel.” 

Clarisse Hagège,
CEO and founder, Dfns

“We share that belief with Canton Network. With its tokenization accelerators, application interoperability, and now an institutional-grade wallet, it’s easier than ever to connect, access and transfer assets, and realize the efficiency and value of Canton’s privacy-enabled public blockchain.”

Security detail

• State-of-the-art key management services based on multi-party computation (MPC) or on hardware security modules (HSM) through their BYOD API (Bring Your Own Key) compatible with IBM, Thales and other FIPS 140-2 or -3 certified modules,  as well as bank-grade wallet entitlements and transaction policy management that will adapt to any existing business logic and internal compliance rulebook.
• Robust authentication services either based on WebAuthn (FIDO2) and key-based credentials or any internal solution already adopted by the client.
• Intuitive dashboard so policies can be easily set at a granular level, including: limits and other restrictions, numbers of approvers, amount caps, time locks, KYT data flags leveraging Chainalysis, Elliptic and other tools to tailor permissions and create powerful safeguards and workflows.
• Rules can be set so that a particular transaction requires validation by both operations, treasury personnel and a service account that listens to data from an external compliance source in order to proceed.  And user passkeys are required at every step, creating a verifiable audit log. 

• Create a Dfns wallet for Canton Network here
• Contact the Dfns team for more information on how to leverage Dfns as an existing validator, user, or app builder on Canton.
• See Dfns for Canton in action in this demo
• Read more in the Dfns announcement