Cantor8: Building The Future of Canton Network

“Cantor8 is fast-becoming the ConsenSys of the Canton Network ecosystem”, said Cantor8 CEO & Founder, Philip Kaddaj. “Downloading C8 is like downloading MetaMask in 2016, but Cantor8 itself is much more than just a wallet”.

Cantor8 is the leading web3 startup building on Canton Network and is one of just four companies that is both…

• Publicly endorsed by the Canton Foundation itself
• Flush with DAML-based expertise; Canton’s native smart contract language

Effectively the ‘ConsenSys of Canton’, Cantor8 not only offers Canton Network’s leading self-custody wallet, but also offers core infrastructure for the ecosystem (more on this below).

Its mission?: To make Canton Network usable for builders, enterprises, and end users through real products, not slideware.

Context: Canton Network’s Potential

Countless attempts have been made by well-funded organizations to ‘Tokenize Finance’, but Canton Network is the very first to get it right.

For years, institutions have flirted with blockchain in proof-of-concept mode. The tech was exciting, but public L1s could never square privacy, regulation, and real-world workflows. Their core systems already clear trillions, but they were not built for instant settlement, shared ledgers, or smart contracts regulators can live with.

Canton Network is the first serious attempt to fix that problem: a privacy-enabled, open blockchain network built for regulated finance, already wiring together tokenized assets, collateral, and repo workflows at real scale.

Across the network, participants collectively support over $6 trillion in real-world assets and move about $280 billion in repo activity every single day, backed by global banks, exchanges, and market-infra heavyweights.

What is Cantor8?

Put simply, Cantor8 is a web3 startup building the infrastructure layer that makes Canton Network actually usable.

Think of it as the execution partner that handles all the messy work (compliance, privacy, infrastructure integration) so that both enterprises and developers can build on Canton without starting from scratch. Publicly endorsed by The Canton Foundation, Cantor8 is now responsible for critical pieces of the network's tooling and validator infrastructure.

On the product side, Cantor8 has shipped Canton Network's first native mobile wallet, a vault for compliant staking and yield, and swap modules that work like DeFi but meet institutional standards.

Essentially, Cantor8 sits between Canton's institutional participants and the developer community, building the reusable pieces that turn Canton from merely interesting tech into something people can actually ship products on.

Cantor8’s Founder & Team

Behind Cantor8 is founder and CEO, Philip Kaddaj.

Kaddaj studied mathematics at Cambridge University and Imperial College London before pausing his PhD ambitions at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He shelved the academic track when it became clear Canton could really be the on-chain home for institutional finance, and that he wanted to become the ecosystem’s dedicated partner.

Kaddaj now focuses exclusively on building on the Cantor8 ecosystem and works closely with the Canton Foundation to help realize its ambition of bringing traditional finance onchain.

Around Kaddaj is a high calibre team consisting of DAML engineers, former-consulting and VC operators, and product architects that have shipped effectively in both startups and regulated environments.

Ultimately, the team is fully aligned with Canton’s core engineering principle:

Build serious infrastructure that institutions can trust.

What is Cantor8 Building?

One of few companies to successfully balance institutional needs with those of everyday consumers, Cantor8 is building/has already built multiple products to suit the growing needs of all types of Canton Network participants - Both institutional and retail alike.

Two Sides: Institutional & Retail

On the ecosystem side, Cantor8 acts as an execution layer. Its engineers design, and code DAML smart contracts, run validator infrastructure, and ship products like the C8 Wallet and Vault. As a member of the Global Synchronizer Foundation, which stewards Canton’s neutral time-ordering layer, Cantor8 turns institutional requirements into concrete tooling and workflows for the broader builder community.

The C8 Wallet

Cantor8’s most visible product meanwhile is the C8 Wallet: one of the very first wallets built natively for Canton. It hides the complexity of subnets and synchronizers behind a clean interface: secure keys, a simple portfolio view, and transaction flows that respect Canton’s confidentiality model by default. For most users, it is the front door to the network on iOS and Android.

The Vault: Staking & Yield

Behind that, Cantor8 has been building Canton’s yield and staking layer. The Vault gives users a compliant, transparent way to participate in network activity and earn rewards (something risk teams and regulators can actually read and sign off on). The Recursive Vault takes it further, automating restaking and compounding within Canton’s guardrails, with complex financial logic encoded as deterministic Daml workflows instead of opaque spreadsheets.

Swap Module

To round out the stack, a native swap module lets users move between assets on Canton with a DeFi-like UX but infrastructure-grade behavior. Swaps honor Canton’s privacy and compliance primitives while giving builders a simple primitive to plug into their own apps – proof that ‘DeFi for institutions’ on Canton is already shipping as a product, not just a theory.

Takeaway: The Biggest Opportunity Since Bitcoin?

Ultimately, Canton already has the institutions. What it needs now is an adoption layer that makes the network usable day to day.

Builders need… Clean tooling and opinionated templates. Institutions need deterministic workflows, real privacy, and a clear path from pilot to production.

Users need… Interfaces that feel like modern fintech, not a command line.

This is exactly what Cantor8 delivers.

Just The Beginning

Cantor8’s existing stack is just the beginning. Next up are modules for identity and KYC, institutional settlement flows, RWA issuance frameworks, compliance rails, and cross-application interoperability so Canton feels like an institutional Web3 operating system, not a set of isolated apps.

Cantor8’s role is to be the primary accelerator for that future: shipping reusable building blocks, co-designing products with ecosystem partners, and seeding a university fellowship and research program that funds DAML-based projects and student-led experiments on Canton Network.

Get Involved

If you’re a builder who cares about compliant, real-world crypto, Canton is the network to watch and Cantor8 is the team shipping on it.

Grab the C8 Wallet, explore the Vault, and plug into the community to see what institutional-grade Web3 actually feels like in practice.

Follow Cantor8 on X and LinkedIn and be the first to hear about the company’s latest products, launches, and news.