Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset, the company behind the Canton blockchain, says most smart contract networks lack the activity and revenue to justify multibillion-dollar valuations. The Canton Network is a privacy-enabled blockchain infrastructure that aims to connect financial institutions and their tokenized assets across interoperable, permissioned applications. The issue isn’t about any single chain. Many smart contract networks were architected for retail speculation and token trading, not for regulated, institutional financial workflows. When you look at metrics like sustained economic throughput, recurring revenue, and real-world asset activity, there’s often a disconnect between valuation and actual financial usage.
Rooz isn’t anti-crypto. Gold and silver have value because the market assigns it to them. Bitcoin is an asset class, but smart contract networks pitch themselves as the next set of financial rails, so financial institutions should be using them at scale. If you’re processing very small amounts of value on your network, how does the market assign you a $10 or $11 billion valuation?
Bitcoin is an asset class, not a platform. People who secure the asset class get paid, and that model was copied for smart contract chains, and that was a mistake. On many networks, newly minted tokens flow primarily to validators, regardless of whether the chain is generating meaningful economic activity. If usage is thin, inflation dilutes holders while little value accrues back to the token.
Canton’s token is designed to reflect the dollar utility of the network itself. Every transaction burns tokens, and there are no priority or front-running fees. If usage grows in dollar terms, more tokens leave circulation. Canton also features a “mint curve,” with new tokens issued at regular intervals, but those tokens aren’t reserved only for validators. They’re distributed to users and applications that generate fees on the network.
Compensating builders should be merit-based: Can you bring customers? Can you generate fees? That’s how you get paid. Hyperliquid is an example of a model that resonates with investors: the trading platform generates revenue and uses it to buy back tokens. When you do buybacks, price goes up. That’s a much more convincing reason to hold a token. Value must flow. The network is now generating between $2.5 million and $3 million in daily fees, Rooz said, with ambitions to double that.
If a company had bylaws saying any profit it makes will be used to buy back stock, and performance keeps going up, the share price should go up. A decentralized network should be treated the same way. Look at revenue. Look at growth. When the market is good, money flows into memes and speculative tokens. When the market turns, investors get much more demanding. Many altcoins that marketed themselves as smart contract platforms have been eviscerated during recent downturns. Meanwhile, tokens tied to revenue-generating platforms have fared better.
Crypto has defied the laws of gravity for some time. But eventually gravity wins. Stablecoins haven’t hit product-market fit yet. Stablecoins have product-market fit when more than 50% of usage is not crypto-related. Real-world payments and non-crypto financial applications remain a minority of activity. Canton’s strategy is to push deeper into traditional finance, bringing real-world assets and collateral onchain. The network recently announced gold-related initiatives and plans additional non-crypto collateral integrations. Move beyond crypto-native assets and into mainstream financial workflows. If smart contract chains are the next set of financial rails, then financial companies should be using them for financial applications. Uptake, activity and usage; the value will follow. If you’re chasing token price, you’re chasing the wrong thing. Focus on utility. Focus on building real financial infrastructure. Canton coin (CC) was trading around $0.1538 at publication time. The token has risen about 2% year-to-date, outperforming wider crypto markets. The token currently has a market cap of roughly $6 billion.
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