Canton Network recently announced its full go-live and the launch of the Global Synchronizer. This is an incredible moment for the industry and a high mark for tokenization within financial services. But how is the Canton Network truly different from other solutions already on the market?

Rise of the Canton Network

The Canton Network is the financial industry’s first and only public chain capable of delivering on-chain control, privacy, and composability, making it the most suitable network for institutional assets. Canton Network launched for a pilot back in August 2023, with the participation of a group of leading financial institutions, infrastructure providers, and technology companies, including IntellectEU.

The Canton Network’s creators argue that while many companies make claims about possessing the three essential attributes for the tokenization of real-world assets, only Canton Network goes beyond superficial signaling to deliver. 

So, which attributes are we talking about?

Simultaneous Independent Control

The Canton Network Pilot demonstrated that 45 organizations could run 22 independent applications on subnets, while maintaining control over access, stability, finality, and risk. Without being able to do this, the resulting risk would undermine the value of tokenization in capital markets.

Privacy

Canton Network provides full privacy between users and between applications. This is essential in order to move beyond the excessive transparency engendered by crypto assets.

Atomic Smart Contract Composability 

The Canton Network’s smart contract composability across subnets means that participants have the option to freely create and combine elements from different systems. Without this characteristic, the risk is that the technology simply creates silos, completely undermining its intended purpose. 

What was the recent Canton Network announcement about?

We recently had two entirely new entries into the Canton Network ecosystem. The first is the Global Synchronizer, a decentralized interoperability infrastructure for the Canton Network. The second is the Global Synchronizer Foundation, the decentralized governing body of this infrastructure, managed under the Linux Foundation. IntellectEU was one of 30 strategic partners that helped launch Canton Network and is now a premier member of the Global Synchronizer Foundation. 

Essentially, the recent launch of the Canton Network was, in reality, the launch of the Global Synchronizer and the Global Synchronizer Foundation. 

The Canton Network's controls, governance, and application development have as a consequence become open-sourced and decentralized, being managed now by all participants. This decision was intended to foster greater innovation and maximize the utility of the network.

What is the Global Synchronizer?

The Global Synchronizer is an "always-on", decentralized, distributed Canton domain. Application builders can connect to this domain when their use case requires it. It is effectively a special Canton domain that allows users to participate in the public permissioned network, use or enable Canton applications, and interact using Canton Coin, the newly unveiled utility coin of the network. Canton Coin is used to incentivize adopters of the infrastructure.

To understand how the Global Synchronizer functions we must understand the four key roles of the network, which include Users, Validators, Super Validators, and Application Providers.

Users

Anyone holding and transacting with Canton Coin via the Global Synchronizer. Users can choose to self-host participant nodes or use a participant node hosted by others.

Validators

A Canton participant node with the Canton Coin application installed.

Super Validators

A multi-component node, consisting of a Validator and a Canton synchronizer node, that participates in the Global Synchronizer.

Application Providers

A Validator operator that gives users, and their validator nodes, access to a Canton application that submits at least some portion of its transactions through the Global Synchronizer.

The Special Role of Super Validators

Super Validator nodes validate every Canton Coin transfer. They also provide the Name Service and a small number of other applications that support the Global Synchronizer and Canton Coin ecosystems. The goal of creating Super Validators was to build an ecosystem that fosters and accelerates the creation of a “network of networks”, making greater composability of applications possible within regulated finance and other areas. A backbone infrastructure like the Global Synchronizer is an important step in achieving this.

Accelerating adoption with Catalyst Blockchain Manager

On our mission to accelerate the evolution of global markets, IntellectEU’s Catalyst Blockchain Manager has been supporting Canton Network since the initial launch of the pilot last year. 

Catalyst is a blockchain infrastructure deployment and management tool, empowering organizations to leverage blockchain’s strengths without having to wrestle with the underlying complexity of the technology.

As well as providing greater ease and simplicity to organizations that want to work with Canton Network and the Global Synchronizer, Catalyst enables streamlined deployment of validator nodes. In our next release, Catalyst will add support for 2-click deployments of a validator node. You will soon be able to spin up your validator node and start minting Canton Coin in an instant. 

Anyone interested in exploring Canton Network applications supported by Catalyst, can contact our experts for more information.

Contact our experts now to schedule a demo

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