Digital Asset, the US-based enterprise blockchain company behind the Canton Network, has closed an additional $10 million from Shinhan Financial Group and SC Ventures, the innovation and ventures arm of Standard Chartered. The expansion brings the total raised in this round to approximately $365 million, up from the $355 million announced in June 2026. The company's equity valuation remains unchanged at roughly $2 billion.

The original round, announced June 11 and led by Andreessen Horowitz's crypto fund (a16z crypto), drew a wide roster of institutional names including Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, S&P Global, and Tradeweb, among others. "Digital Asset has built one of the clearest examples of blockchain product-market fit in regulated finance," said Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z crypto. The round was described as oversubscribed at the time of its initial close.

"Blockchain adoption in financial markets will be driven by institutions ready to move beyond experimentation into production," said Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, in a statement accompanying the expanded close.

South Korea Is Now a Coordinated Institutional Bet

The Shinhan investment marks the second major South Korean financial institution to back Digital Asset in the same round. Hanwha Investment and Securities committed approximately 30 billion Korean won (roughly $20.2 million) as part of the original close and signed a memorandum of understanding to develop blockchain finance capabilities in South Korea. Shinhan Financial Group, South Korea's largest banking conglomerate, has now followed with an equity stake.

Shinhan's involvement goes beyond the investment. Its asset management and securities subsidiaries signed separate MOUs with the Canton Foundation in early June, covering governance participation, technology development, policy discussions, and research into tokenized assets. The bank is also in early discussions with Hong Kong regulators about securing a virtual asset trading license. Analysts suggest this could potentially position it to market tokenized Korean assets through a Hong Kong-regulated entity and settle them on Canton's global network, though no such plan has been formally announced.

"We see significant opportunity to support trusted onchain financial infrastructure development in South Korea and the broader region," said Seonghun Hong, Investment Manager at Shinhan Financial Group.

SC Ventures Brings Emerging Market Reach

SC Ventures' participation carries significance beyond the dollar amount. Standard Chartered maintains deep institutional presence across Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, with operations spanning more than 25 markets in Africa and South Asia alone. These are precisely the regions where cross-border settlement remains slow, costly, and fragmented. Canton Network's core capability is real-time, synchronized settlement with granular privacy controls, meaning only parties to a given transaction can see its data. That addresses a specific compliance challenge that has kept many regulated institutions away from public blockchains.

"Trusted, institutional-grade market infrastructure will be fundamental to enabling digital asset adoption across regulated financial services," said Alex Manson, CEO of SC Ventures.

SC Ventures is separately raising a $250 million digital assets fund focused on digital custody, compliance tooling, and hybrid financial platforms. According to reporting by Parameter.io, the firm also has a planned $100 million Africa-focused fund targeting financial inclusion and technology-driven services across the continent. No direct announcement has confirmed a Canton deployment for Africa, but the dual investment direction is consistent with a strategy to bring institutional blockchain settlement into underserved markets over the medium term.

Network Activity Provides Ground-Level Context

Canton is not a speculative network waiting for use. As of mid-2026, the network processes roughly $9 trillion in monthly settlement value and approximately 3 million ledger events per day. Broadridge, a financial services infrastructure firm, runs around $400 billion in daily repo volume through Canton. Tokenized US Treasuries on the network surpassed $10 billion in January 2026. Daily network fees run between $2.5 million and $3 million.

Standard TVL figures, the metric typically used to compare blockchain networks, do not apply to Canton. Because its privacy architecture limits what is publicly visible on-chain, aggregators like DefiLlama do not carry a verified Canton TVL. Settlement volume and fee data serve as more reliable proxies for activity.

The network now has more than 700 ecosystem participants, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Euroclear, the DTCC, and technology partners Microsoft, Chainlink, and Circle.

What Comes Next

With two of South Korea's largest financial groups now holding equity stakes in Digital Asset, and Standard Chartered's venture arm embedded in the cap table, the Canton Network's geographic and institutional footprint has materially widened. Developers building on Daml, the smart contract language underlying Canton, may see rising local demand in Korea, South Asia, and potentially parts of Africa as these institutions move from MOU-stage commitments into production deployments. The stated use of funds covers ecosystem expansion, deeper developer and financial institution engagement, and growth in tokenization, collateral mobility, settlement, payments, and regulated workflows. Whether those commitments translate into live infrastructure in emerging markets will be the real measure of this round's regional significance.