BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs lead 45 institutions in testing interbank blockchain network

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Goldman Sachs (NASDAQ: GS) and BNY Mellon (NASDAQ: DMF) have led a host of financial institutions in testing the impact of a new blockchain network on the capital markets.

Known as the Canton Network, it was developed by New York-based blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings and launched in May 2023. According to an announcement, it recently completed a pilot program that involved 155 participants from 45 major financial institutions.

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Highlights:
✅ Engagement of 155 participants from 45… pic.twitter.com/VAvxCjOupi

— Canton Network (@CantonNetwork) March 12, 2024

In the pilot, Digital Asset Holdings provided the participants with 22 decentralized applications (dApps) facilitating fund registry, asset tokenization, securities lending, repo, digital cash, and margin management transactions. All the dApps were interoperable via the Canton Network’s testnet.

Participants completed 350 transactions through the dApps, demonstrating that “real-time settlement and immediate reconciliation across counterparty systems could be achieved while adhering to the regulatory asset control, security, and data privacy requirements to move assets safely,” Digital Asset Holdings says.

The pilot involved 15 asset managers, 13 banks, four custodians, and three exchanges. The banks included BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas (NASDAQ: BNPQF), and Standard Chartered (NASDAQ: SCBFF), while the asset managers included State Street (NASDAQ: STT) and Wellington Capital. IEX exchange, settlement giant DTCC, payments behemoth Visa (NASDAQ: V), and stablecoin issuer Paxos Trust also participated.

According to Digital Asset Holdings, leveraging the interoperable dApps on the Canton Network reduced costs, inefficiencies, and risks while complying with regulatory demands across the issuance and settlement of tokenized assets.

The big challenge that the company seeks to solve with the Canton Network is the trade-off between privacy and interoperability. Digital Asset Holdings claims that blockchain has failed to take off in the financial world because participants are hesitant to expose their data, a challenge Canton solves by offering “privacy controls that would be necessary to operate within a safe and sound regulatory environment.”

“Canton allows previously siloed financial systems to connect and synchronize in previously impossible ways while abiding by the current regulatory guardrails. We’re proud to facilitate the pilot and look forward to working with the pilot participants to continue identifying additional use cases where the Canton Network can be leveraged,” commented Yuval Rooz, the firm’s co-founder and CEO.

Digital Asset has been pushing for institutional blockchain adoption since its founding in 2014. Its most renowned project was with the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) to overhaul its settlement technology and replace it with a blockchain alternative.

However, the project failed spectacularly, with the ASX officially scrapping the blockchain project last May. Yuval acknowledged his company’s part in the project’s failure, noting that the assignment was too big for the startup.

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