Well-known financial firms, such as BNY Mellon, Cboe Global Markets, and Goldman Sachs, have finished a comprehensive blockchain trial programme.

A Bloomberg report from March 12th states that institutional investors used distributed ledger technology to carry out more than 350 simulated transactions in areas like margin management, securities lending, tokenized assets, fund registry, digital cash, repo, and securities lending on the Canton network, which was introduced in May 2023 by startup Digital Asset Holdings. Involved in the trial programme were three exchanges, fifteen asset managers, thirteen banks, four custodians, and Paxos Trust, the stablecoin issuer.

In its announcement the same day, the Canton Network said that 155 participants from 45 major organizations have since demonstrated settlement across 22 permissioned blockchains connected to its ledger. The firm stated:

“Over a four-day period, participants were invited to try 22 dApps comprising five fund registries, five cash registries, three bond registries, three trading, four margin, and two financing apps, to exchange tokenized securities, money market funds, and deposits across applications.”

The Canton Network is a privacy-enabled interoperable blockchain network designed for institutional investors. In part, the blockchain allows financial institutions to move regulated assets, data and cash between each other in real time.

With the Canton Network, a digital bond and a digital payment can be composed across two separate applications into a single atomic transaction, guaranteeing simultaneous exchange without operational risk,” according to a press release from Canton. It added, “Likewise, a digital asset could be used in a collateralized financial transaction via connection to a repo or leveraged loan application.”

At the moment, Microsoft, Moody's, S&P Global, Deloitte, Deutsche Börse, and Moody's are members of the Canton Network.

Tokenization has attracted a lot of attention from both celebrities and institutional investors in the last year. Together with the local cryptocurrency exchange OSL, the Hong Kong branch of the international Swiss bank UBS tokenized an options call warrant on the stock of Xiaomi, the market leader in Chinese smartphones, on Ethereum on February 7. A few weeks later, the PLANET token's environmental nonprofit sponsor, Join The Planet, partnered with Argentine football legend Lionel Messi to announce the launch of a tokenized product.