Canton Network, support for which Ripple’s custody service launched at the beginning of this month, was used to conduct the first on-chain trade by S&P Dow Jones Indices. The index giant moved an over-the-counter (OTC) total return swap onto a distributed ledger (DLT).
In the financial sector, Canton is now trying to take the same place as the main corporate hub that the Polygon network has held in the public Web3 space. The difference is that Canton is building closed “rails” for digitizing TradFi capital markets, bypassing public networks.
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The OTC total return swap deal was concluded between market maker DRW and financial group Marex through the Derivnex platform. This is the first use of a fully tokenized index in such a deal: the contract relied on data from the iBoxx USD Liquid Investment Grade Index, which was distributed within the network by the firm Kaiko.
The counterparties managed the derivative’s lifecycle through a single blockchain interface based on the standards of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), abandoning manual data reconciliation.
In the future, the participants plan to conduct cash settlements and manage collateral directly through Canton Network.
“Uncleared OTC derivatives are a massive market with bespoke, cumbersome workflows. By executing this trade on Derivnex on Canton, Marex and DRW are able to operate off the same immutable record, streamlining workflows,” — Don Wilson, Founder and CEO of DRW.
How Ripple is involved and who is unhappy
S&P’s arrival on Canton coincided with a software update for participants in this network: on October 5, the Ripple Custody service (version 1.43) added support for the blockchain. Canton Network itself is an isolated structure, but Ripple’s integration has given banks a gateway for managing positions.
Large players can now store and transfer Canton Coin (CC) tokens and CIP-56 assets through Ripple software using the “bring your own validator” model — signing keys remain strictly inside the customers’ own vaults.
On the retail crypto market, the news was met with skepticism: proponents of decentralization criticized Canton, calling the private interbank network “not a real blockchain.”
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At the same time, the partnership is purely technical: Canton retains full autonomy, is not part of the Ripple ecosystem, and does not use the XRP token, the XRPL ledger, or the RLUSD stablecoin in settlements.
Nevertheless, while the community argues about decentralization, Canton Network has de facto worked as a tool for Wall Street, and Ripple acts as a custodial gateway to it.
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