{"id":"_bYujKmdfnw","title":"Eric Saraniecki Launching the Canton Network at FT Live Crypto and Digital Assets Summit 2023","description":"With tokenized digital securities set to approach USD $5T in value by 2030, we are at a tipping point for the adoption of blockchain. What will be the catalyst that drives the industry forward and unlocks the promise of this technology for regulated institutions? Watch Eric Saraniecki as he shares his perspectives with moderator Nikou Asgari (Digital Markets Correspondent for the Financial Times) on the challenges and near-term opportunities during FT Live's Crypto and Digital Assets Summit in London on May 9th, 2023.","channel_name":"Digital Asset","published_at":"2023-05-26T00:00:00.000Z","thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_bYujKmdfnw/hqdefault.jpg","transcript_text":"hello everyone thank you very much for joining us um as Scott said on my name is Nico Askari I'm the ft's digital markets correspondent and I am hosting to meet a moderating today panel on the view from the banks on blockchain and I'm joined here by Eric saraneki co-founder of digital assets so thank you Eric for joining us thanks for having me can you briefly explain what digital asset does and how you fit into this ecosystem sure so the I think the easiest way to summarize this is that we provide all the core technical components that make it possible for financial institutions to not only adopt blockchain but to really make the most of their investment get all the full benefits of approaching the space and how to use it and how best to apply it Beyond just okay let's tokenize some positions we're lucky enough to boast nine out of 10 of the largest banks in the world use our software and some shaper form our customers are processing in excess of about a trillion per month across a broad set of use cases and we fully anticipate that that'll exceed a trillion per day by the end of this year um they do that we're the creator of a demo the smart contract language and Canton the Privacy enabled private blockchain and we're really proud to announce today that us along with 30 Partners have launched the Canton Network the first interoperable network of networks so anybody using our technology is perfectly interoperable with any any other application use case in this space no matter whether they share any infrastructure whatsoever or not um and I think the easiest way to think about okay what does that really mean for us we're purely a technology vendor we don't we're not a broker dealer we're not an ATS we're not a transfer agent we license our largely open source software to our commercial uh Fiat commercial distribution to our Enterprise customers that been so far a greater adoption um of blockchain and financing what is everyone waiting for I mean I'll push back a little bit first and just say you know again we're seeing really good early signs of life that the adoption is taking place uh you know again I cited a few statistics of our customers and our use cases how prevalent that's becoming but uh generally speaking I think that we need to look at the industry as a whole and and say there's a there's a little bit of a failure of of the technology vendors in a certain sense so if you look at anyone who would approach the blockchain space and say okay I want to apply a blockchain to my business in some shape or form they're being pushed into one of two types of of a technology on one side you have a public blockchain on the other side you have a private blockchain and on the public blockchain side there's this incredible interoperability experience that really is worth considering anyone that's overlooking defy anyone that isn't really digging into what interoperability can mean for their business I think is really overlooking something very important but in order to get that benefit in order to actually be able to participate in that interoperable ecosystem you have to throw out so much of what means to run a safe and sound business today so if you're on a public blockchain all of your data is fully transparent to the world as a public permanent record and then there's a couple other subtle things that are a little bit harder to maybe initially understand but you don't really control your application in a public network you deploy a smart contract and some pool of anonymous or pseudonymous validators run that smart contract for you and you're also competing for capacity in the network so imagine you know you're operating a big Bond issuance platform and you have to reach out to your issuer on the issuance day and say sorry we can't go live today meme coins have flooded the network and there's no capacity for your very legitimate business that's obviously a non-starter so you know in a public blockchain there's this really strong pull to get to this interoperability capability but you have to throw out so much of what it means to be a compliant organization to adopt it and on the flip side on the private blockchain space you're clawing back some of those controls you're able to determine who can connect and under what conditions and what applications can run in that ecosystem but generally speaking you haven't solved for privacy most of the private blockchains have no privacy components to them but the Killer is that you've thrown out interoperability when you're on your own little Private blockchain Island sure you can do the way we do interoperability in the markets today counterparty risk Hurst at risk messaging coordination reconciliation there's no native D5 like Atomic transactional interoperability across independent instances of a private blockchain so the question really becomes what is the benefit of that what is what are you lifting to get to so when you look at those two Avenues it's hard to look at that path as a as a compliant organization and say this makes sense let's go down this journey so I mentioned the launch of the Canton Network earlier but really our goal is to present a third option something that tries to give you the benefits of both and we solved for this it's not an accident that we landed here we were driven by the strict requirements of our customers started from Ground Zero started from scratch and we solved for two main things complete Sovereign control of your application you run it you permission it you determine it fine-grained privacy and data controls the same sort of data permissioning controls you're accustomed to the applications you manage today but with this perfect seamless interoperability with the rest of the network which is really critical to be able to capture that tail of opportunity if you don't have that Avenue it's very difficult to make the large investment these institutions have to make to go down these blockchain paths and What Makes You confident that this will will be used that this has a place in the future I know you've got a arms on board on your counter Network what what does this bring and what does the future hold I'm convicted most by the problem the problems in finance are very real we have this natural latency in our ecosystem because we use messaging because we use reconciliation because we don't have a way to guarantee that everybody's looking at the same information at any given time and you know interoperability feels like a very futuristic statement so one one day maybe in the future will be interoperable it's actually a decades-long problem for us today um when every time we do a security settlement there's some Securities application and there's some payment application and they're always separate from each other so I'm really convicted that this is a meaningful problem it costs us untold amounts of money on a regular basis and it's a tax on society when I push the button why doesn't something instantly happen because I have this natural latency of the system so this problem needs to be solved and blockchains are really the first time that we have a novel technological solution for that for that problem and um in terms of the the use cases of that I mean how do you see your your network sort of being used I guess by the you know sibo Goldman there's names that have come on board I think the past 18 months have been really interesting because we've we've seen a real meaningful change in the the exploration in the market I'd say it used to be really broad people were looking kind of any any sort of thing under the sun we used to joke you know put a blockchain on it and you'll solve your problem but over the past 18 months the macro conditions and some of the some of the market collapses that we've seen have forced people to take a step back and you had a panel earlier it was uh one of your panelists was talking about there has to be a commercially viable path forward and so what we're seeing is that the market seems to have actually grown in the past 12 to 18 months we're getting more net new logos and and interested participants but the focus is really there and so you know generally it can get collapsed down into roughly three categories we have those that are bringing assets online into these ecosystems you know roughly speaking tokenization we have participants that are being pulled into thinking about okay well tokenizing an asset is interesting but what about all the cash flow so what about everything else associated with it so cash cash on Ledger is a big Focus for for a lot of participants and then value-added services on top of all that right so it's not enough that you would have what I'll call like a primary Market of just buy and hold and wholesale Capital markets the utility of assets are really critical so being able to provide things like securitization security uh securitized lending repo um you know any sort of collateral management collateral optimization but thinking about how to maximize the value of that thing that now exists in this much more efficient form so things roughly fall into those three categories and also magically somehow some things around Sports wagering which I don't really know which bucket to put it in I mean of those three categories is there one that you get more demand for you get more questions about or is it pretty I think that the more obvious entry point is tokenization so that's definitely the thing that's carrying the most weight right now by I'd say volume but the things that are creating the the most like immediate early moats are around those value-added services so when you look at being able to lend those assets and and we actually saw this play out in the crypto markets before the collapse too that these ability to really turn these things into productive assets it not only improves the profile of someone that would participate as an investor but it makes this entire ecosystem more attractive as an issuer too if you're sitting down you're looking at traditional path and traditional distribution you at least know you have traditional access to all the capital markets that go with it so I think the earliest moats that we're seeing start to form and some real flywheel of momentum is around some of these value-added services on top of those tokenization platforms","transcript_synced_at":"2026-10-26T04:07:46.623Z","segments":[{"start_seconds":7,"text":"hello everyone thank you very much for joining us um as Scott said on my name is Nico Askari I'm the ft's digital markets correspondent and I am hosting","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=7s"},{"start_seconds":16,"text":"to meet a moderating today panel on the view from the banks on blockchain and I'm joined here by Eric saraneki co-founder of digital assets so thank","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=16s"},{"start_seconds":24,"text":"you Eric for joining us thanks for having me can you briefly explain what digital asset does and how you fit into this ecosystem sure so the I think the","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=24s"},{"start_seconds":33,"text":"easiest way to summarize this is that we provide all the core technical components that make it possible for financial institutions to not only adopt","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=33s"},{"start_seconds":41,"text":"blockchain but to really make the most of their investment get all the full benefits of approaching the space and","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=41s"},{"start_seconds":48,"text":"how to use it and how best to apply it Beyond just okay let's tokenize some positions we're lucky enough to boast nine out of","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=48s"},{"start_seconds":56,"text":"10 of the largest banks in the world use our software and some shaper form our customers are processing in excess of","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=56s"},{"start_seconds":63,"text":"about a trillion per month across a broad set of use cases and we fully anticipate that that'll exceed a trillion per day by the end of this year","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=63s"},{"start_seconds":72,"text":"um they do that we're the creator of a demo the smart contract language and Canton the Privacy enabled private blockchain","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=72s"},{"start_seconds":80,"text":"and we're really proud to announce today that us along with 30 Partners have launched the Canton Network the first","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=80s"},{"start_seconds":88,"text":"interoperable network of networks so anybody using our technology is perfectly interoperable with any any other application use case in this space","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=88s"},{"start_seconds":97,"text":"no matter whether they share any infrastructure whatsoever or not um and I think the easiest way to think about okay what does that really mean","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=97s"},{"start_seconds":105,"text":"for us we're purely a technology vendor we don't we're not a broker dealer we're not an ATS we're not a transfer agent we license our largely open source software","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=105s"},{"start_seconds":113,"text":"to our commercial uh Fiat commercial distribution to our Enterprise customers","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=113s"},{"start_seconds":122,"text":"that been so far a greater adoption um of blockchain and financing what is everyone waiting for","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=122s"},{"start_seconds":130,"text":"I mean I'll push back a little bit first and just say you know again we're seeing really good early signs of life that the adoption is taking place uh you know","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=130s"},{"start_seconds":138,"text":"again I cited a few statistics of our customers and our use cases how prevalent that's becoming but uh generally speaking I think that we need","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=138s"},{"start_seconds":146,"text":"to look at the industry as a whole and and say there's a there's a little bit of a failure of of the technology vendors in a certain sense so if you","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=146s"},{"start_seconds":153,"text":"look at anyone who would approach the blockchain space and say okay I want to apply a blockchain to my business in some shape or form they're being pushed","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=153s"},{"start_seconds":160,"text":"into one of two types of of a technology on one side you have a public blockchain on the other side you have a private blockchain and on the public blockchain","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=160s"},{"start_seconds":169,"text":"side there's this incredible interoperability experience that really is worth considering anyone that's overlooking defy anyone that isn't","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=169s"},{"start_seconds":178,"text":"really digging into what interoperability can mean for their business I think is really overlooking something very important but in order to get that benefit in order to actually be","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=178s"},{"start_seconds":186,"text":"able to participate in that interoperable ecosystem you have to throw out so much of what means to run a safe and sound business today so if","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=186s"},{"start_seconds":195,"text":"you're on a public blockchain all of your data is fully transparent to the world as a public permanent record and then there's a couple other subtle","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=195s"},{"start_seconds":203,"text":"things that are a little bit harder to maybe initially understand but you don't really control your application in a public network you deploy a smart","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=203s"},{"start_seconds":210,"text":"contract and some pool of anonymous or pseudonymous validators run that smart contract for you and you're also competing for capacity in the network so","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=210s"},{"start_seconds":218,"text":"imagine you know you're operating a big Bond issuance platform and you have to reach out to your issuer on the issuance day and say sorry we can't go live today","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=218s"},{"start_seconds":226,"text":"meme coins have flooded the network and there's no capacity for your very legitimate business that's obviously a non-starter so you know in a public","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=226s"},{"start_seconds":235,"text":"blockchain there's this really strong pull to get to this interoperability capability but you have to throw out so much of what it means to be a compliant","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=235s"},{"start_seconds":244,"text":"organization to adopt it and on the flip side on the private blockchain space you're clawing back some of those controls you're able to determine who","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=244s"},{"start_seconds":252,"text":"can connect and under what conditions and what applications can run in that ecosystem but generally speaking you haven't solved for privacy most of the private blockchains have no privacy","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=252s"},{"start_seconds":261,"text":"components to them but the Killer is that you've thrown out interoperability when you're on your own little Private blockchain Island sure you can do the","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=261s"},{"start_seconds":269,"text":"way we do interoperability in the markets today counterparty risk Hurst at risk messaging coordination reconciliation there's no native D5 like","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=269s"},{"start_seconds":278,"text":"Atomic transactional interoperability across independent instances of a private blockchain so the question really becomes what is","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=278s"},{"start_seconds":286,"text":"the benefit of that what is what are you lifting to get to so when you look at those two Avenues it's hard to look at that path","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=286s"},{"start_seconds":294,"text":"as a as a compliant organization and say this makes sense let's go down this journey so I mentioned the launch of the Canton","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=294s"},{"start_seconds":301,"text":"Network earlier but really our goal is to present a third option something that tries to give you the benefits of both and we solved for this it's not an","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=301s"},{"start_seconds":309,"text":"accident that we landed here we were driven by the strict requirements of our customers started from Ground Zero started from scratch and we solved for","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=309s"},{"start_seconds":316,"text":"two main things complete Sovereign control of your application you run it you permission it you determine it fine-grained privacy and data controls","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=316s"},{"start_seconds":325,"text":"the same sort of data permissioning controls you're accustomed to the applications you manage today but with this perfect seamless interoperability with the rest of the","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=325s"},{"start_seconds":334,"text":"network which is really critical to be able to capture that tail of opportunity if you don't have that Avenue","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=334s"},{"start_seconds":341,"text":"it's very difficult to make the large investment these institutions have to make to go down these blockchain paths and What Makes You confident that this","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=341s"},{"start_seconds":350,"text":"will will be used that this has a place in the future I know you've got a arms on board on your counter Network what what does this bring and what does","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=350s"},{"start_seconds":359,"text":"the future hold I'm convicted most by the problem the problems in finance are very real we have this natural latency in our","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=359s"},{"start_seconds":367,"text":"ecosystem because we use messaging because we use reconciliation because we don't have a way to guarantee that everybody's looking at the same","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=367s"},{"start_seconds":374,"text":"information at any given time and you know interoperability feels like a very futuristic statement so one one day","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=374s"},{"start_seconds":382,"text":"maybe in the future will be interoperable it's actually a decades-long problem for us today um when every time we do a security","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=382s"},{"start_seconds":390,"text":"settlement there's some Securities application and there's some payment application and they're always separate from each other so I'm really convicted","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=390s"},{"start_seconds":397,"text":"that this is a meaningful problem it costs us untold amounts of money on a regular basis and it's a tax on society when I push the button why doesn't","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=397s"},{"start_seconds":405,"text":"something instantly happen because I have this natural latency of the system so this problem needs to be solved and blockchains are really the first time","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=405s"},{"start_seconds":412,"text":"that we have a novel technological solution for that for that problem and um in terms of the the use cases of","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=412s"},{"start_seconds":422,"text":"that I mean how do you see your your network sort of being used I guess by the you know sibo Goldman there's names that have come on board","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=422s"},{"start_seconds":430,"text":"I think the past 18 months have been really interesting because we've we've seen a real meaningful change in the the exploration in the market I'd say it","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=430s"},{"start_seconds":439,"text":"used to be really broad people were looking kind of any any sort of thing under the sun we used to joke you know put a blockchain on it and you'll solve","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=439s"},{"start_seconds":446,"text":"your problem but over the past 18 months the macro conditions and some of the some of the market collapses that we've seen have forced people to take a step","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=446s"},{"start_seconds":455,"text":"back and you had a panel earlier it was uh one of your panelists was talking about there has to be a commercially viable path forward and so what we're","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=455s"},{"start_seconds":463,"text":"seeing is that the market seems to have actually grown in the past 12 to 18 months we're getting more net new logos and and interested participants but the","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=463s"},{"start_seconds":472,"text":"focus is really there and so you know generally it can get collapsed down into roughly three categories we have those that are bringing assets online into","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=472s"},{"start_seconds":479,"text":"these ecosystems you know roughly speaking tokenization we have participants that are being pulled into","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=479s"},{"start_seconds":486,"text":"thinking about okay well tokenizing an asset is interesting but what about all the cash flow so what about everything else associated with it so cash cash on","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=486s"},{"start_seconds":493,"text":"Ledger is a big Focus for for a lot of participants and then value-added services on top of all that right so it's not enough that you would have what","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=493s"},{"start_seconds":501,"text":"I'll call like a primary Market of just buy and hold and wholesale Capital markets the utility of assets are really critical so being able to provide things","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=501s"},{"start_seconds":510,"text":"like securitization security uh securitized lending repo um you know any sort of collateral management collateral optimization but","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=510s"},{"start_seconds":519,"text":"thinking about how to maximize the value of that thing that now exists in this much more efficient form so things roughly fall into those three categories","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=519s"},{"start_seconds":527,"text":"and also magically somehow some things around Sports wagering which I don't really know which bucket to put it in I mean of those three categories is there","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=527s"},{"start_seconds":535,"text":"one that you get more demand for you get more questions about or is it pretty I think that the more obvious entry point is tokenization so","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=535s"},{"start_seconds":543,"text":"that's definitely the thing that's carrying the most weight right now by I'd say volume but the things that are creating the the most like immediate","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=543s"},{"start_seconds":552,"text":"early moats are around those value-added services so when you look at being able to lend those assets and and we actually saw this play out in the crypto markets","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=552s"},{"start_seconds":560,"text":"before the collapse too that these ability to really turn these things into productive assets it not only improves the profile of someone that would","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=560s"},{"start_seconds":568,"text":"participate as an investor but it makes this entire ecosystem more attractive as an issuer too if you're sitting down you're looking at traditional path and","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=568s"},{"start_seconds":576,"text":"traditional distribution you at least know you have traditional access to all the capital markets that go with it so I think the earliest moats that we're","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=576s"},{"start_seconds":583,"text":"seeing start to form and some real flywheel of momentum is around some of these value-added services on top of those tokenization platforms","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw&t=583s"}],"youtube_url":"https://youtube.com/watch?v=_bYujKmdfnw","url":"https://ccpedia.xyz/videos/_bYujKmdfnw"}