ZURICH – July 1, 2024 - Leading market participants powering the Canton Network proudly announce the go-live of the Global Synchronizer, the Canton Network’s decentralized interoperability infrastructure. This launch marks a pivotal step towards unlocking the full potential of synchronized financial markets, providing first-of-its-kind connectivity for the tokenization and frictionless exchange of regulated financial assets and liabilities. The Global Synchronizer is going live after ten years of technological development, nearly a year of extensive testing— including powering the recent Canton Pilot program—and following each of the anchoring Network participants, known as super validators, voting in favor of the launch.

There is a growing industry need to deliver near-term efficiencies for the highest concentrations of tokenized assets, while also facilitating new opportunities as more applications and liquidity are brought on-chain. Canton Network delivers on both value propositions: it features the highest number of live use cases of real-world assets and is the only network that can handle the on-chain privacy, control, and interoperability of participants and their corresponding asset flows.

Organizations are engaging in the Network in a range of ways—including running a super validator, running a node, joining the Global Synchronizer Foundation, or running an application on the Network. Current participants in these various points of engagement include: 7RIDGE, Bitwave, Brale, Broadridge, Calastone, Copper.co, Cumberland DRW, Dfns, Digital Asset, EquiLend, Global Blockchain Business Council, Gravity Team, Hashnote, Hidden Road, Hydra X, InfStones, IntellectEU, Kaleido, LendOS, Liberty City Ventures, MPCH, Obsidian Systems, Ownera, QCP, SBI Digital Asset Holdings, Taurus, The Tie, Tradeweb, Validation Cloud, XBTO, XVentures, and Zodia Custody.

Revolutionizing Financial Connectivity

For the first time, market participants can harness the power of synchronized financial markets through the Global Synchronizer. The Global Synchronizer enhances interoperability on the Canton Network, an innovative public-permissioned blockchain network designed with the privacy and controls essential to facilitating the exchange of regulated financial assets. The Global Synchronizer is operated and governed in a decentralized manner, with internet-like scalability, ensuring that no single party controls the service and there is no single point of failure; thereby harnessing the benefits of decentralized finance. This transformative infrastructure is set to revolutionize the way financial transactions are conducted, offering enhanced efficiency, reduced operational costs, and minimized risks.

“Canton Network participants have taken a long-term strategic view on what was needed to enable the modernization of synchronized global capital markets,” said Yuval Rooz, CEO and Co-Founder of Digital Asset. “Industry-leading firms have convened over the past year for the initial launch and subsequent testing of the Canton Network. We are excited to see the governance and incentive mechanisms in place to facilitate the adoption and use of the Network as it goes live.”

Open Governance with Linux Foundation and the Global Synchronizer Foundation

In conjunction with the Global Synchronizer’s operational go-live, the Linux Foundation is supporting the Global Synchronizer Foundation. The Global Synchronizer Foundation is an independent U.S.-based entity composed of forward-thinking market participants dedicated to ensuring that the Global Synchronizer is governed transparently in a decentralized manner with organizational neutrality to maintain its integrity. The Linux Foundation will support the Global Synchronizer Foundation under an open governance model that fosters trust and neutrality.

Introducing Canton Coin: Accelerating Connected Capital Markets

The Global Synchronizer includes a utility token, called Canton Coin, which is used to pay traffic fees for using the Global Synchronizer. Canton Coin can be minted by app builders and infrastructure providers who bring utility to the Global Synchronizer ecosystem, marking the first time a public network has rewarded both infrastructure providers and app developers. It is designed to incentivize third parties to build applications utilizing the Global Synchronizer, rewarding connections that accelerate connected capital markets. Network participants can use Canton Coin for Canton-native operations between participants and across applications globally on a 24x7 basis.

Splice a Hyperledger Lab: The Springboard for Additional Decentralized Infrastructure on the Canton Network

The Global Synchronizer is the first decentralized infrastructure for the Canton Network. To encourage additional infrastructure development, Digital Asset has open-sourced the core technology for decentralized Canton synchronization domains, including a native utility token– the same technology that powers the Global Synchronizer and Canton Coin. The technology is maintained by Hyperledger Labs under the name Splice to ensure that anyone seeking to set up their own decentralized synchronization domain for the Canton Network can do so freely.

To learn more about the Canton Network and the Global Synchronizer, click here.