Canton Glossary
Reference guide to the essential vocabulary to understand and operate in the Canton Network.
The underlying protocol and reference application for creating native payment utilities on Canton synchronizers. Canton Coin (CC) is the first deployment of Amulet, specifically on the Global Synchronizer. You’ll see “Amulet” in GitHub repos, API responses, and developer docs when referring to the token layer.
If you’re reading Canton code or docs and see “Amulet,” it’s referring to the same token as CC, just at the protocol level rather than the product name.
CC earned by applications on Canton based on the actual Global Synchronizer traffic their transactions generate. Following CIP-0104 (Feb 2026), app rewards shifted from a governance-assigned 'Featured App' marker system to a protocol-measured, traffic-weighted model. The more meaningful traffic an app drives on the network, the more CC it can earn through minting.
CIP-0104 made app rewards directly proportional to real network usage, replacing the older system where governance votes determined which apps received reward markers. This creates a transparent, meritocratic incentive: build something people use, earn CC automatically.
The guarantee that a multi-step transaction either completes entirely or not at all. All legs of a trade settle simultaneously, eliminating the risk that one side delivers while the other doesn’t.
Atomic settlement eliminates settlement risk, which is one of the biggest costs in traditional finance. On Canton, a delivery-versus-payment trade settles both the asset and the payment in one indivisible step.
A free tier of synchronizer traffic available to every Canton participant. Currently set at 400KB within a 20-minute burst window, fully replenishing after a window of inactivity. Usage beyond the base rate requires purchasing extra traffic by burning CC. The base rate balance is always consumed first before paid traffic is drawn down.
The base rate means lightweight participants can operate on Canton without spending any CC. It only becomes a cost consideration for high-throughput applications or validators processing significant transaction volume.
Canton's self-correcting economic mechanism. Users burn CC to purchase synchronizer traffic. Validators and apps mint new CC as rewards for operating infrastructure and driving usage. As more participants burn CC, supply decreases, pushing the CC/USD rate up, which reduces the number of CC needed per MB of traffic. The reverse also holds. This creates a natural price stabilization loop tied to real network demand.
Burn-mint equilibrium is what connects CC's value to actual network usage rather than speculation. It is the core economic design that differentiates Canton's tokenomics from most other blockchains.
The ratio of CC tokens burned (consumed through synchronizer traffic fees) versus CC tokens minted (created as validator and app rewards) over a given period. A ratio above 1.0 means more CC is being burned than created.
The burn/mint ratio is the single best indicator of Canton's economic health. A ratio of 2.87x (the current level) means the network is strongly deflationary, with nearly three times more CC being burned than minted.
The native utility token of the Canton Network. CC is used to pay transaction fees, reward validators and applications, and participate in governance.
Every transaction on Canton requires CC. As institutional adoption drives more network activity, demand for CC increases while the burn mechanism reduces supply.
The non-profit organization that stewards the Canton Network’s development, coordinates ecosystem growth, and manages the protocol roadmap. The Foundation is separate from Digital Asset (which built the technology).
The Foundation drives ecosystem growth through business development, partnership coordination, and the Canton Protocol Development Fund, which allocates 5% of network rewards to grants for core R&D, developer tooling, security audits, and ecosystem infrastructure. It operates as a neutral facilitator while governance power sits with the Super Validators.
The formal process for proposing changes to the Canton protocol, governance rules, or economic parameters. CIPs are submitted, debated, and voted on by Super Validators through on-chain governance.
CIPs are how Canton evolves. Everything from fee changes to new Featured App approvals to protocol upgrades goes through the CIP process. Tracking active CIPs tells you where the network is heading. See current proposals on the Canton Compass Dashboard.
A public, permissionless Layer 1 blockchain designed for institutional finance, built on the Daml smart contract language. Canton was purpose-built for regulated markets with configurable privacy, horizontal scalability, and cross-application interoperability.
Canton is already processing more real financial activity than any other blockchain, with participants including Goldman Sachs, DTCC, Broadridge, and dozens of global institutions.
Assets pledged to secure a financial transaction or loan. In traditional finance, collateral management is a massive operational burden involving manual processes, reconciliation, and trapped liquidity.
Canton’s interoperability and atomic settlement make collateral management dramatically more efficient. Tokenized collateral on Canton can be pledged, moved, and released across counterparties in real time instead of T+1 or T+2 settlement cycles.
The ability for Canton applications and domains to set their own privacy rules, from fully private (only counterparties see details) to selectively transparent (regulators can audit) to fully open.
Different use cases need different privacy levels. A repo trade needs strict privacy; a governance vote needs transparency. Canton lets each application choose where on the spectrum it sits.
The smart contract language that powers every application on Canton. Developed by Digital Asset, Daml enforces contract logic and privacy rules at the language level rather than bolting them on after the fact.
Daml is what makes Canton’s privacy and interoperability possible. Every app on the network speaks the same language, which means they can compose with each other natively.
A coordination and message-routing layer on Canton (also called a synchronizer in newer documentation). Each domain orders transactions, provides timestamps, and facilitates atomic commits between connected participant nodes, all without seeing the encrypted transaction content. A single institution might run its own private domain, or multiple parties might share one.
Domains are why regulated institutions can use Canton. A bank can keep its sensitive transactions on a private domain while still settling against counterparties on other domains through the Global Synchronizer.
A designation for applications on Canton that have been recognized through governance for their contribution to the network. Prior to CIP-0104 (Feb 2026), Featured Apps received CC rewards through governance-assigned markers. The reward model has since shifted to traffic-based measurement, where all apps earn rewards proportional to the actual synchronizer traffic their transactions generate.
The Featured App designation still signals ecosystem recognition, but the economics changed with CIP-0104. Rewards are now earned through real usage rather than governance allocation.
The shared coordination layer that enables transactions across different Canton domains. Think of it as the connective tissue that lets separate applications and institutions transact with each other while maintaining their own privacy boundaries.
This is what makes Canton a network rather than a collection of isolated chains. The Global Synchronizer is where CC fees are paid and where cross-domain settlement happens.
A standing committee of Super Validators that tracks SV performance through regular reviews. The committee monitors whether SVs are meeting their infrastructure and participation commitments.
This is Canton’s quality control mechanism for its most important operators. It ensures SVs aren’t just collecting rewards but actively contributing to network health and governance.
A standing committee responsible for managing Canton's economic parameters, including synchronizer traffic pricing, fee model adjustments, and app reward structures. The committee operates under authority delegated by Super Validator governance through CIPs.
The Tokenomics Committee makes the day-to-day economic decisions that shape Canton's burn/mint dynamics and fee levels. Understanding their role is key to following how Canton's token economics evolve over time.
A protocol mechanism that limits long-lived, low-value ('dust') Canton Coin records on the ledger. Holding fees accrue notionally over time on each CC UTXO but are not charged continuously. They are only enforced if a Super Validator explicitly expires a coin whose accrued fees meet or exceed its amount. When expired, the full coin amount is burned and the contract is archived. Active coins and normal transaction flows are unaffected. Updated by CIP-0078 (Sep 2025).
Holding fees sound scarier than they are. They do not affect normal CC usage or active wallets. They exist purely to clean up tiny leftover coin fragments ('dust') and keep the ledger from growing indefinitely.
The component within a domain that collects confirmation responses from transaction stakeholders and determines whether a transaction is approved or rejected, without seeing the transaction details.
Like the sequencer, the mediator operates on encrypted data. It confirms that all required parties have signed off on a transaction without learning what the transaction contains.
A managed service where a provider runs and maintains Canton infrastructure on behalf of an organization. Instead of operating your own participant or validator nodes, you outsource the technical operations.
NaaS lowers the barrier to entry for institutions that want to use Canton but don’t want to build blockchain infrastructure expertise in-house. Providers like IntellectEU, MPCH, and Blockdaemon offer this on Canton.
The software that connects an organization to the Canton Network. A participant node lets an entity read and write to one or more domains, run Daml applications, and interact with other participants.
Every institution on Canton runs at least one participant node. It’s their gateway to the network and where their portion of the shared ledger state lives.
A short-term borrowing arrangement where one party sells a security (typically US Treasuries) with an agreement to buy it back at a slightly higher price, usually overnight or within a few days. Repos are the plumbing of global finance, with trillions in daily volume.
Canton is processing hundreds of billions in daily repo volume through platforms like Broadridge. This is the single largest source of real-world transaction activity on the network.
The ability to reveal specific transaction details to chosen parties (like a regulator or auditor) without exposing those details to the rest of the network. The transaction owner controls exactly who sees what.
Regulated institutions need to prove compliance to regulators without exposing proprietary trading data to competitors. Selective disclosure lets them do both on the same network.
The component within a domain that orders transactions and ensures all participants see events in the same sequence. The sequencer doesn’t see transaction content, only encrypted payloads.
This is a key piece of Canton’s privacy architecture. The sequencer ensures consistency without ever accessing the actual data inside transactions.
The ability for Daml smart contracts running on different Canton domains and applications to interact with each other natively. Contracts can reference, consume, and compose with contracts from other apps without bridges, wrappers, or custom integrations.
This is what makes Canton an ecosystem rather than a collection of siloed apps. A tokenized treasury on one app can be used as collateral on another app in a single atomic transaction.
Canton’s ability to reveal only the relevant portions of a transaction to each participant. Unlike public blockchains where every node sees every transaction, Canton breaks transactions into sub-components and only shares each piece with the parties who need to see it.
This is Canton’s killer feature for regulated finance. A bank can settle a trade on Canton without revealing the trade details to validators, other network participants, or anyone who isn’t a direct counterparty.
An organization that operates critical network infrastructure and participates in Canton’s on-chain governance. There are currently 40 Super Validators, including major financial institutions, technology companies, and infrastructure providers.
Super Validators are the decision-makers of the Canton Network. They vote on protocol upgrades, approve Featured Apps, and set key economic parameters like fee schedules.
A coordination layer on Canton responsible for ordering transactions, providing timestamps, and mediating conflicts between participants. A sync domain consists of a sequencer, a mediator, and a topology manager. Each sync domain processes only encrypted payloads, meaning even its operators cannot access private transaction data. The Global Synchronizer is the primary public sync domain; organizations can also run private sync domains for their own use cases.
Sync domains are how Canton scales horizontally. The network’s total capacity grows linearly as new sync domains are added, each handling its own subset of transactions. This is fundamentally different from monolithic blockchains where a single chain processes everything.
The cost of consuming synchronization bandwidth on the Canton Network's Global Synchronizer. Priced at a fixed USD rate per MB (currently $60/MB as of early 2026), paid in CC at the on-chain USD/CC exchange rate determined by Super Validator median voting. CC spent on traffic is burned and converted into a non-transferable traffic balance. Pricing can be adjusted via CIP governance to maintain the target of roughly $1 per typical transfer.
This is the primary fee mechanism on Canton. Understanding that traffic fees are burned (not paid to validators) is key to understanding why increased network usage is deflationary for CC supply.
Traditional financial assets (bonds, equities, real estate, funds) represented as digital tokens on a blockchain. Tokenization makes these assets programmable, instantly transferable, and composable with DeFi protocols.
Canton is purpose-built for RWA tokenization at institutional scale. Its privacy model, regulatory compliance features, and institutional participant base make it the leading blockchain for tokenizing real financial assets rather than synthetic crypto-native instruments.
The cost of using the Canton Network, paid in CC. Following CIP-0078 (Sep 2025), percentage-based transfer fees were removed entirely. The only ongoing protocol-level costs are synchronizer traffic fees (priced in USD per MB of bandwidth, paid in CC, burned on use) and holding fee expiry for dust cleanup. The economic target is approximately $1 per typical CC or asset transfer.
Transaction fees are what drive Canton's deflationary burn mechanic. Every fee paid is CC permanently removed from circulation. Validators and apps are compensated separately through the burn-mint equilibrium, not through direct fee distribution.
Debt securities issued by the US government, considered the safest and most liquid financial instruments in the world. Treasuries serve as the primary collateral asset in repo markets and are widely used as benchmarks for interest rates.
Tokenized US Treasuries are one of Canton’s highest-value use cases. Moving treasury settlement onto Canton reduces settlement time, lowers operational risk, and enables them to be used as programmable collateral across applications.
A node that validates transactions on the Canton Network and earns CC rewards for doing so. Validators verify that transactions follow protocol rules and help secure the network.
Validators are the backbone of Canton’s security model. The network has grown to 1,000+ validators, with the count rising monthly as more organizations join.
A Super Validator that holds active voting rights in Canton’s on-chain governance. Not all Super Validators are Voting SVs. Currently 13 SVs hold voting rights, as tracked by the Lighthouse governance system.
The distinction between total SVs (40) and Voting SVs (13) matters for understanding how governance decisions actually get made. Voting power is concentrated among the 13, not distributed across all 40.