Canton Network

Reminder that Canton is in fact permissionless. The Super Validators don't "vet" wallets or apps before they join the network, and it's now possible for anyone to get a Validator node. Featured apps do pass a certain level of vetting, but it's very minimal: just a description of the app's functionality, contact info, and a partyID for featuring the app. Various institutions are going to vet their counterparties, and you'll see services appear this year that vet their users and hand out credentials. But neither the Super Validators nor the Foundation are controlling what apps can launch on the network. If an app does no harm to the network itself, it will be allowed to operate. It's up to you to decide who to trust. Just to recap how Canton is permissionless: * Anyone can operate a synchronizer node. The Super Validators jointly operate the Global Synchronizer nodes, but you can spin up your own synchronizer if you want. The SVs may restrict whether you can interoperate with the gSync, but not whether you can run a synchronizer. * Anyone can spin up a Validator node. There's still a cap of 35 new Validators per week, and the SVs will prioritize institutions and app providers over private individuals, but recently the cap has not been met, meaning that anyone can get a node who asks. This will continue indefinitely: we'll keep scaling up Validator caps so that there are thousands of Canton Validators out there. And Validators can decide which synchronizers they use. * Anyone can build and deploy an app * Anyone can issue an asset, and decide whether it is permissioned or permissionless * Anyone can hold any asset they want; it's between them and the issuer, not the network. In this case, PrivKet onboarded too many parties too quickly, by giving away onboarding invites to bots. As a result the SVs blocked its IP. The Global Synchronizer has scaling caps for new parties, and each of the wallets & apps needs to abide by those caps. There's active work underway on the Canton Scaling team to remove these party scalling caps, but the caps are going to be in place for several more months at least.