Canton Network Introduction

Overview

Canton Network is a public Layer-1 blockchain built for privacy-preserving transactions. Unlike chains where every transaction is visible to everyone, Canton enables selective disclosure: parties see only the data they're entitled to. This makes it suitable for regulated finance, tokenization, and confidential cross-organization workflows where exposing positions and terms is a non-starter.

The problem it solves

Traditional blockchains couple integrity to global visibility — every validator sees every transaction to verify it. That tension blocks enterprise use: position visibility enables front-running, transaction patterns leak strategy, and compliance often forbids sharing data with unauthorized parties.

Canton changes what data goes where. Instead of replicating all state to all nodes, state and transactions are distributed only to the nodes named in the smart contracts. Privacy is the core architectural principle, not a bolt-on layer.

Three things that make Canton different

1. Sub-transaction privacy — transactions are decomposed into views; each party sees only its portion. (See canton-privacy-model.)
2. Synchronizers, not global consensus — a synchronizer orders/coordinates consensus without storing or seeing content; validators (participant nodes) store only the data for their hosted parties. (See canton-architecture.)
3. Daml smart contracts — a purpose-built language for multi-party workflows with explicit authorization (signatory/controller), built-in privacy (observer), and immutable contracts (state changes archive + create). (See canton-for-ethereum-devs, canton-daml-templates.)