Wall Street is splitting into two camps over which blockchain will become the backbone of global financial markets. Canton Network, built by Digital Asset and backed by JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and nearly 400 institutional participants, processes over $9 trillion in monthly volume and added EVM c...
"Safety, soundness, security are table stakes. We view this as another set of rails." — Ryan Rugg, Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions
Wall Street is splitting into two camps over which blockchain will become the backbone of global financial markets. Canton Network, built by Digital Asset and backed by JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and nearly 400 institutional participants, processes over $9 trillion in monthly volume and added EVM compatibility on March 9 via the Zenith launch. LayerZero's Zero, announced February 10 with backing from Citadel Securities, DTCC, ICE, ARK Invest, and Google Cloud, targets a September 2026 launch with claimed throughput of 2 million transactions per second.
Both platforms compete for the same prize: replacing the post-trade infrastructure that currently settles $1.7 quadrillion in annual global securities transactions. The stakes extend beyond technology preference. Whichever rails win will determine custody models, settlement windows, privacy architectures, and regulatory frameworks for the next generation of capital markets. DTCC, notably, is exploring both platforms simultaneously.
The race has surfaced a fundamental architectural question: should institutional blockchain infrastructure be privacy-first and permissioned (Canton's model) or permissionless with regulated application layers (Zero's model). The answer will shape trillions in capital flows.
Canton Network, developed by Digital Asset Holdings, operates as a "network of networks" with selective disclosure — transactions are private by default, with institutions choosing what to reveal to regulators. The architecture uses Daml (Digital Asset Modeling Language) for smart contracts with native privacy, enabling multi-party workflows without public visibility.
By the numbers:
The participant list reads like a directory of global finance. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Credit Agricole, and Bank of America sit alongside market infrastructure providers DTCC, Euroclear, Deutsche Börse, ASX, and Cboe Global Markets. Trading firms Citadel Securities, DRW, Optiver, Virtu Financial, and IMC are also participants.
In January 2026, JPMorgan's Kinexys unit announced it would bring JPM Coin natively to Canton, moving beyond its own Onyx blockchain. The phased integration throughout 2026 focuses on issuance, transfer, and near-instant redemption. According to CoinDesk, JPMorgan described the goal as "digital cash that can move at the speed of markets."
DTCC has announced plans to tokenize a subset of U.S. Treasury securities on Canton, with the service expected to begin rolling out in H2 2026 covering Russell 1000 equities, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasurys.
LayerZero Labs, previously known for its cross-chain messaging protocol connecting 168 blockchains, unveiled Zero on February 10, 2026. The new Layer 1 blockchain takes the opposite architectural approach to Canton: permissionless base layer with regulated activity handled at the application level.
Claimed specifications:
Zero will launch in September 2026 with three initial "zones" — permissionless environments governed by the network: a general-purpose EVM environment, a privacy-focused payments system, and a purpose-built trading venue.
Bryan Pellegrino, LayerZero CEO, stated: "Zero's architecture moves the industry's roadmap forward by at least a decade. We believe we can actually bring the entire global economy onchain with this technology."
The backing is significant. Citadel Securities, which handles approximately 35% of U.S. retail stock trades according to Fortune, made a strategic investment in ZRO and is collaborating on trading, clearing, and settlement workflows. DTCC will investigate leveraging Zero to enhance its DTC Tokenization Service and Collateral App Chain. ICE, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, is examining 24/7 trading and tokenized collateral applications. Google Cloud is exploring blockchain-based micropayments and AI agent resource trading.
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest joined the advisory board alongside ICE's Michael Blaugrund and former BNY digital assets head Caroline Butler. Wood called Zero "in a completely different league" regarding speed and transaction capacity, according to Fortune.
LayerZero's prior funding includes a $120 million Series B from a16z and Sequoia at a $3 billion valuation, plus a $55 million ZRO token investment from a16z in April 2024. ZRO market cap currently sits above $500 million, with a $45 million token unlock scheduled for March 20, 2026.
The two platforms reflect fundamentally different assumptions about what institutions need.
Privacy Model: Canton is private by default. Transactions are visible only to counterparties, with selective disclosure to regulators. This aligns with Basel standards and addresses what Ledger Insights described as Ethereum's "complete transparency" being "a dealbreaker for institutional finance."
Zero uses zero-knowledge proofs to enable privacy at the application layer while maintaining a permissionless, auditable base layer. Pellegrino argued: "If you take away the underlying decentralized, permissionless, global capabilities, you lose everything that makes the technology itself valuable."
Performance: Canton has not published formal TPS benchmarks but processes $9 trillion monthly, demonstrating production-grade throughput. Its architecture supports horizontal scaling via sub-networks.
Zero claims 2 million TPS through zero-knowledge systems and Jolt, which remove repeated computation across nodes. For context, according to Fortune, Solana's previous maximum was 100,000 TPS. Zero's claims remain unverified in production.
Developer Ecosystem: Canton uses Daml, a proprietary smart contract language optimized for multi-party privacy workflows. This limits the developer pool but enforces privacy guarantees at the language level.
Zero launched with a general-purpose EVM zone supporting any Solidity contract, immediately accessing Ethereum's massive developer base. This is the same playbook that helped Polygon, Avalanche, and other EVM-compatible chains attract developers.
Governance: Canton operates with institutional governance — 50+ validators including DTCC and Nasdaq at the highest tier. Zenith achieved Tier-1 Super Validator status with consensus weight equal to DTCC and Nasdaq.
Zero will use ZRO for governance and security, with token holders directing network decisions. This creates potential tension between institutional participants and retail token holders.
On March 9, 2026, Zenith launched as the EVM execution layer natively integrated with Canton Network. Built by a Helsinki-based team led by CEO Teemu Päivinen, Zenith allows developers to deploy unmodified Solidity applications that atomically interact with Canton's institutional infrastructure.
This is Canton's response to its biggest weakness: a limited developer ecosystem constrained by Daml. Zenith enables sub-second confirmations, horizontal scaling via sharding, and planned SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) compatibility. Developers use standard tools — Hardhat and MetaMask — with no bridges required. Transactions settle natively to Canton.
Eric Saraniecki of Digital Asset stated: "Zenith's addition of atomically composable EVM expands Canton's capabilities in a way that can increase network utility."
Zenith integrates with Chainlink and LayerZero for cross-ecosystem interoperability — a notable detail given that LayerZero is simultaneously building a competing institutional chain. The company achieved Tier-1 Super Validator status among Canton's 50+ validators, placing it alongside DTCC and Nasdaq in governance weight.
MainNet launch is targeted for Q2 2026, ahead of Zero's September timeline.
The most striking feature of this competition is the overlap in participants. Several institutions are hedging by engaging with both platforms:
DTCC is the clearest example of dual positioning. It is tokenizing U.S. Treasuries on Canton while simultaneously exploring Zero for its Tokenization Service and Collateral App Chain. DTCC processed $2.5 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2024, making its infrastructure choice consequential for the entire industry.
Citadel Securities appears in Canton's participant list while also making a strategic ZRO investment and collaborating directly with Zero. The firm's market-making operations — handling 35% of U.S. retail equity trades — mean it needs infrastructure that works regardless of which platform wins.
ICE/NYSE announced plans in January 2026 to develop 24/7 tokenized securities trading while also examining Zero's applications for trading and clearing infrastructure.
Citi is pursuing its own path with the Citi Integrated Digital Assets Platform (CIDAP) while also engaging with LayerZero. Ryan Rugg of Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions characterized blockchain as "another set of rails," according to PYMNTS.
The hedging behavior suggests institutions view this as a genuine horse race, not a foregone conclusion. The tokenized Treasury market has grown from $2.5 billion to $9 billion in one year, according to data cited by BlockEden. The RWA market overall is projected to reach $30 trillion by 2030 according to Polymarket data cited by Zenith.
The economic question is where value will accrue in these competing stacks.
Canton's model concentrates value in the network's institutional governance layer and its native token (CC, approximately $5.3 billion market cap). Revenue derives from transaction processing and validator operations within a closed ecosystem. The privacy-first design means Canton captures the full transaction lifecycle internally.
Zero's model distributes value differently. The ZRO token (currently above $500 million market cap) governs the network, but the permissionless design means value leaks to the broader ecosystem — builders, application developers, and interoperability providers all extract fees. LayerZero's existing cross-chain protocol has facilitated $225 billion in total value transferred across 168 chains, with $14 billion in the last 30 days alone.
For institutions, the cost calculus involves more than transaction fees. Canton's privacy-by-default reduces compliance overhead but creates vendor lock-in to the Daml ecosystem. Zero's permissionless design reduces switching costs but requires institutions to build their own privacy and compliance layers.
Neither platform has disclosed fee structures for institutional use. The true economic comparison will only become possible once Zero enters production alongside Canton's established operations.
The institutional blockchain infrastructure race is not a technology competition alone. It is a governance, privacy, and ecosystem design competition that will determine how trillions of dollars in traditional assets move on-chain over the next decade.
Canton has the lead in production volume, institutional adoption, and regulatory alignment. Zero has momentum in developer accessibility, claimed performance, and cross-chain connectivity. The institutions that will use these rails — DTCC, Citadel, ICE — are not choosing sides. They are building on both.
The parallel with early internet infrastructure is instructive. The 1990s saw competing network protocols before TCP/IP consolidated the market. Financial markets may follow a similar pattern, or they may bifurcate permanently between privacy-first and permissionless architectures serving different use cases within the same institutions.
One outcome is increasingly clear: the post-trade infrastructure that has operated largely unchanged since the 1970s is being rebuilt. The question is no longer whether blockchain replaces legacy settlement systems, but which blockchain architecture — and which set of trade-offs — Wall Street will standardize around.