Let's dive into it. Today we're going to be doing a breakdown of Canton Network and understanding a little bit more about what they are doing. It's going to be a good one. So stick around for that. I do want to thank our sponsor today and that of course is Tandem. This is where you guys can get into self-custody. One way to do that is just start. Whether you're brand new to crypto or maybe you're an OG, doesn't matter. Self-custody is one of the best models out there. And also a way to diversify assets. So just for safety sakes, use our link. It's going to give you a little bit of a discount. Is it hard? You know, it seems like it's very complicated. It's not with Tandem. Just click that link. You guys can get started. All right, let's go into a couple of things I want to lead off with before we bring on our guest. And if you look at them, they're at the top of the leaderboard right here on the league table. You can kind of see that total value 350 bill. And if you look at the represented versus distributed, DeFi versus, you know, we'll see some interesting things that we want to break down with the CEO and founder of Canton. Now, the Bankless guys did an interview with them already, and I wanted to play a couple of clips to kind of set the stage. Take a look.
You know, Canton, it shows represented asset value of 380 billion. Like 380 billion is bigger than all the stable coins on public crypto network. It is not rational to think that a CEO of a $30 billion company would gify numbers to get some attention on a website for what benefit? Like for what?
All right. So, when you look at DeFi Llama and we'll just kind of take a look here. I'm just going to pull up Canton real quick. And as you can see, Canton not showing up there. So I think the point that Ryan was trying to make there when you look at where Canton is and the valuation is the question mark. I don't think it was a bad question but I think you know the answer you look at it you look at the history of all things financial the number one reason people do these things is money. You know that's the number one reason. So hopefully we'll be able to drill down into that clear the air with them and kind of get into it. If you take a look at the top leaderboard here on Coin Market Cap, I'm just going to go down here to Canton. And if you look at where they are, let me kind of see if I can zoom in on that a little bit for you guys. You'll notice right there, I'm kind of scrolling across. Right there's the volume, which is 12 mil. In comparison to some of the other top chains that are in here, if you look at the top 30, that is a big deal. I think these are questions that everybody has to answer. Charles Hoskinson came on talking about I love it when Legacy Finance comes together with Canton and try to build what XRP and Midnight are already doing at scale. They never learn blah blah blah. And then of course you go after what the next component was, which was a clip here talking about how Canton maybe compares to next generation, you know, technology. Take a look.
Yeah. So, so first of all, I would say that I had to bet that if I had to put a poly market bet on do you listen to music on Napster or Spotify, I'm pretty sure that I can make the right bet of where you listen to music.
Hey, how you doing? Al here. It's my understanding that I had over 80 million streams on Spotify this year. So, if I'm doing the math right, that means I earned $12. So, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for your support and thanks for the sandwich.
They just sent me some stuff from Spotify where I got a billion streams, right? That stuff wasn't even $45,000.
Let me tell you the thing that worked with me. It was simple. It was transparency.
All right. You know, Snoop's got it right. Transparency, that's one of the biggest things. And when you look at where Spotify, this is a good example of it because tech that really kind of started what was going on in the world of Napster and MP3s. I mean, that was the precedence of where technology was going in terms of music streaming. You look at Spotify, it's a different world now. There is no transparency. And that I think is the concern that I think a lot of people have. So, and again, this is something that people were kind of proud of me on Twitter to talk about Canton. So, I put out a quote and a tweet and it was, you know, a few people talked about it, but you've all came on rightly so and said, 'My post could not be more wrong. I'm far from what I claimed it is, and also I should try again.' So, we said, 'Let's try again.' And we're going to bring Yuval on to talk a little bit more about this. So, Yuval Rooz coming in today. How are you?
Excellent. Excellent. So, we have a lot of questions. I want to get into a handful that kind of goes into it. First of all, when I go to DeFi Llama, why would it not be on there? What would be the reason?
Um, don't know to be honest. I don't have an answer. Um, you know, even in the XYZ example, I saw your interesting intro, this whole represented versus distributed. Yeah, listen, I think that this industry as every industry has, you know, people that have ideas of what it should represent. We've seen the whole discussion about the Ethereum Foundation in the last few days. We have different approaches at Tempo launching saying that it's permissionless and now people are showing that you need to be permissioned to be a validator. Everybody has their own agenda and at the end of the day we are trying to solve a very specific problem and you know that's what we're doing. We're not going to apologize for the work that we do and the partners that we work with and at the end of the day I believe that DeFi Llama eventually will show the assets that are on Canton and the activity that is happening there.
I mean because that's a situation I think with DeFi Llama that you guys could probably work out, you know, and get it narrowed down. How is Canton different from the many other institutional chains that are out there? What would you say, you know, to really make it easy for our audience to understand what really makes them different, you different than the other chains that are popping up right now?
Why, first of all I would start with why do you call Canton an institutional chain?
Well, I think that's... Well, we can talk about that. That's what we think it is.
Oh, I understand that it's a good thing to call it. I mean when you look at every L1 in the last two years what have been their biggest announcement? Oh I issued a money market fund with this big institution. Oh I've done this integration with this big institution. I mean that's what all of these L1s have celebrated. So I don't understand where you call a chain an institutional chain. It was actually started by a startup. We created the technology. There are 40 plus super validators. Not all of them are institutions or to be honest I don't even know how you define an institution. I think what we're trying to say by institution it's the old guard of Wall Street. Well actually if you go and look at the list of super validators most of them are not. So I'm just again trying to understand what makes a chain an institutional chain. I would say the network in terms of being able to have dgens, we'll call it that. I mean, that's part of this market anyway. If you look at just a memecoin, memecoins right now, I mean, we have a memecoin now listed as a commodity. So, it's clear that there is a track for that. But what is the top memecoin on Canton?
We don't have a meme coin on Canton. What is that top memecoin on XRP? There's hundreds on XRPL meme coins. Come on, Paul. I mean, what is the top? I'm not gonna mention a meme. I'm not going to mention a memecoin.
I think point was made. What is the top meme coin on Avalanche? What is the top meme coin? I mean, we can keep on going.
I like the ones that I like. You're asking me to just list memecoins.
All right. So, no, I'm saying what is the top? Because you ask what is the top? And I guess my point is there is no memecoin on Canton because maybe we as a community didn't necessarily prioritize having a memecoin. But if not having a memecoin makes us an institutional chain or a corp chain, then I'm accepting it. That's okay.
Okay. All right. By the way, I don't have a problem with the definition. I just am trying to understand what does the question entail.
Well, I think a lot... Yeah. I think the market looks at an institutional chain differently than an open chain. An open chain is going to have networks that have these kind of things available all the time. You know, whether you look at XRP or you look at what's happening on Solana, Avalanche, any of those, all of which have kind of proven themselves to be open networks or at least have the ability to go in that direction. So, I think that's the point.
I just want to clarify. I want to clarify if it was possible to launch a memecoin on Canton in a permissionless manner then we would lose the definition of an institutional chain because again I think that you know we have DEXes we have prediction markets we have other things that you would maybe associate more with a I guess degen economy we just don't have a meme coin so I again I'm just trying to understand where is the definition.
So you're saying it's possible to launch a memecoin now on Canton Network?
Uh because we have other priorities again. I it's maybe we should you know maybe maybe you know listen questions.
I think you maybe maybe you're giving me ideas maybe we should and maybe you know you've given me ideas so maybe stay tuned.
All right. Well, okay. A memecoin coming to Canton, that would be I think the guys from Bankless would probably be all over that for sure. Now that we know that these things are commodities, the likelihood is we're going to see an absolute explosion of it. So, I think the market itself is going to speak and they're going to want it to happen for sure. If you look at Avalanche, we'll go to Avalanche specifically for a couple of reasons, but if you look at Avalanche in general, how would you guys say, well, Canton is a better solution for something than say Avalanche?
Privacy. One. I think that Avalanche will market itself with its sub networks. I think in their documentation you could read that the way to move from one sub network to another is using bridges which in our opinion is not safe. In Canton all transactions between any Canton to any Canton is fully composable as if you were on the same network and I would say at a high level those would be the two big differences.
Well I mean their private network is pretty solid. I think a lot of people are choosing Avalanche because of that the capability of being able to launch their own network.
Private network does not imply privacy. So if you launch a private Ethereum chain, you just have a small subnet of participants that still have no privacy amongst themselves. So...
Okay. So and that has been I think that privacy is a challenge. I think a lot of people look at every chain out there in terms of privacy. You're saying that Canton is a fully privacy chain right now.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it's the only public chain that have privacy capabilities. We don't believe in a binary world. Either everything is privacy or everything is public. You could have things that are public on Canton and you could have things that are private on Canton. So it's the only chain that has privacy capabilities. It is not an all privacy chain.
Yeah. So all right. So let's look at the validators and I'm trying to understand it. But my question when you have a validator in here whether it's a super validator or not, can they look in on transactions?
It again it really depends how the smart contract have defined who's allowed to see what. So on Canton it's not that everything is private or not by definition. The smart contract designates what information is public for people to see and what is private.
So who would be allowed to become a super validator?
There's 13 standalone right now. You're saying that these are not institutional clients that are doing this?
I mean, Angel Hack from Asia, to the best of my knowledge, are not one of the biggest players in Wall Street. They are a company that does hackathons and developer education. So, I mean, that's just one example maybe to call out. There's...
That's one of 13. Why are there...
No, 13 are 13 people that operate super validators? There's some that co-run multiple super validators on the same node and there are over 40 of them.
Why would they not be listed here? Then...
Some of these super validators co-run the other super validators. So what you're seeing is the 13 operators of super validators. Proof group is not a bank. If I even look at your list, MPCH is not a bank. Digital Asset one and two. Is that are those you guys?
Yes, I run Digital Assets.
So, so you have 11. Um, so...
Not 11 again. You're going to keep on saying that and I'm going to listen.
We're not trying to hijack you here. This is out there. This is general research.
So do you want to go to the Canton Foundation where they list all of the super validators?
Happy to. What is the website?
So, okay. So, I'm looking to become a super validator. What is the process that PBN would need to take? Here's where I can get in and start accessing the program. So, here's the 40 that you're talking about. Is that right?
All right. So, these are the 40 validators. Some of them are running multiple nodes within one validator even though it's registered as a single validator. But what's the process that I would take to get on as a validator right now? If PBN, if Baron Capital says we want to come in and do one, how would we do that?
Um, so every network decides what is the threshold to be a full node, right?
In Ethereum, I think it requires 32 ETH. On XRPL I don't even know what it requires to be on... I'm not saying that there is no... I just don't know what it is on Solana and Sui and others.
No, I'm trying to explain to you. So those networks have selected to have money as a way to become a full node. On Canton we decided that contribution to the network is a better mechanism to decide if you should become a full node. So Paul...
What do you mean by contribution? What does that mean?
I'm getting there. I promise. Paul will write a SIP, which is a Canton Improvement Proposal. Where he will say, 'Look, I'm Paul Baron. I run the best show in crypto. I have a dedicated list of people that listen. I think I can add a lot of value to the network by grilling you, for example.' And I think that if I am going to do a series of education, I'm going to do continuous research that adds tremendous value to the network and therefore I should become one of the validators on the network. And if the network, which are 40 plus super validators, two-thirds of them will vote in favor, a decentralized process will vote you in favor. Voila, you're a super validator. Just like that. You wouldn't have to stake 30, 40 million to do that.
Yeah. Well, I think... Well, the thing I think when you look at this seems like a good old boy club, you know, which is kind of Wall Street. Yeah. I mean, that's Wall Street right now that if you want to get in on hedge funds, you've got to kind of get accepted into those hedge funds. The same kind of thing.
I think you're mistaking something. Because I think that to get in a hedge fund you need to have a lot of money which is kind of equivalent to become a full node on some of these chains. You need to have a lot of money to become a full node. So I think you're mistaken because like I said most of the people that are super validators on Canton are not some of those old guard that you keep on saying. So, I'm just saying like I think that maybe you are mistaken and you're getting the order incorrectly that actually some of these crypto networks that keep on talking about decentralization have put quantum of money that are not available to the average person to participate as a validator. We're on camera.
I know, but come on. You would not accept...
You would not accept the average person into...
I just gave you Angel Hack, which is a great startup out of Asia that has been building hackathon and trying to bring education to the ecosystem.
That's not an average company. Anybody... not Angel Hack, you know, the guy next door who has 32 ETH can get a validator. Okay, I don't have to be Angel Hack or I don't have to be PBN, you know, the crypto...
Not on average, the guy next door does not on average have 32 ETH, first of all. And second of all, we have a lot of audience members that hold 32 ETH for sure.
I didn't say... you want to corner me into a yes or no black and white. And the reality is that Send is a wallet out of the West Coast that was an early adopter and became a super validator. You know what? Give me one bank again from Wall Street that is a super validator. Please do.
One bank. The problem with banks... Yeah, my point is one bank. Give me one bank that is a super validator on...
There is... there's probably... I don't know... there is none.
Because they're not going to do it until they have a clarity act to where they can actually... mistaken. But let's park that aside. But you keep on trying to put this that this is a Wall Street corp chain and I'm asking you what is the ratio of Wall Street corp chains that are running a super validator on Canton because you did your research.
Chain because remember we're talking about very specific companies that of course line up in these 40 validators. Can you tell me who are the validators on all of those great other L1s that you're saying are accessible for everyone? Well, actually, you can if you go in. The chain is transparent enough to where we can pull that down. I'm pretty sure that you're going to see that these are actually a lot of very large financial institutions.
There would definitely be some in there for sure, but that does not make a decentralized chain a Wall Street corp chain.
