Network Integrity at Risk: Incentivized Spam vs Real Usage
Hi everyone,
I am writing this as a CC holder and a long-time Canton supporter.
In recent days, CC transfer costs have effectively quadrupled to ~$2 per transfer, making the network increasingly unusable for real economic activity. And it doesn’t take a gigabrain to see why: the network is being flooded with spam CC transactions, largely driven by the very apps the foundation is promoting.
What’s currently happening is highly detrimental to Canton’s positioning as a high-integrity, institutional-grade system. This needs urgent attention.
Anyone who knows what “Fi” stands for in DeFi can see that a significant portion of transactions are non-economic. What’s more concerning is that this activity is being celebrated publicly as “high burn” or “network growth”, when it is clearly artificial and easily identifiable.
There are multiple such apps, but a few particularly obvious examples (screenshots attached):
1. RootsFi: A bridge on Canton seemingly generating more transactions than all the major interoperability protocols combined. The pattern is clear: ping-pong transfers across its own validator cluster.
2. Kora: An app with little to no visible user activity, yet responsible for a disproportionate share of network traffic. The transactions are telling: repetitive 0.01 CC loops across fixed counterparties. This is difficult to interpret as anything other than transaction farming.
3. Modulo: Despite appearing prominently in network activity, there is no ecosystem awareness of what it really is. On-chain behavior suggests micro subscription-style billing patterns, which were explicitly restricted last year to curb transaction farming. If this is indeed the case, it raises serious questions around the Foundation's enforcement and consistency.
Then we have Cypherock and Pixelplex. These wallets are processing 100x as many transactions as the Loop wallet, which is a clear category leader.
Apologies for calling out specific names, but these are not isolated cases, just the most obvious ones. These patterns are widely discussed even in informal Canton communities because they are so easy to detect.
For a network positioning itself at the institutional layer, this is a dangerous signal.
Ultimately, the value of the network depends on real usability and genuine economic activity. If the majority of throughput is dominated by what appears to be “transaction farming”, the long-term outlook becomes questionable.
I strongly urge the Foundation to take a closer look at:
- how this activity is being generated
- why it is being allowed to scale
- how it is being represented externally
Restoring signal quality and bringing transaction costs back under control is critical to making the network usable and credible.
Thanks,
Eric- hi Eric - ledger fees are fixed in USD terms and any transaction of a given size is always the exact same price in USD terms so, notwithstanding activity of other apps, your cost to the use the network is constant. The $/mb rate is calibrated to try to keep CC and CIP-0056 transfers at roughly $1 per transferNonetheless, it is important that activity in the network be increasingly economically valuable and I will make sure the Foundation's accountability committee takes a lookOn Sun, Apr 26, 2026 at 10:41 AM Eric Smith via lists.sync.global <ericjonessm=gmail.com@...> wrote:
Hi everyone,
I am writing this as a CC holder and a long-time Canton supporter.
In recent days, CC transfer costs have effectively quadrupled to ~$2 per transfer, making the network increasingly unusable for real economic activity. And it doesn’t take a gigabrain to see why: the network is being flooded with spam CC transactions, largely driven by the very apps the foundation is promoting.
What’s currently happening is highly detrimental to Canton’s positioning as a high-integrity, institutional-grade system. This needs urgent attention.
Anyone who knows what “Fi” stands for in DeFi can see that a significant portion of transactions are non-economic. What’s more concerning is that this activity is being celebrated publicly as “high burn” or “network growth”, when it is clearly artificial and easily identifiable.
There are multiple such apps, but a few particularly obvious examples (screenshots attached):
1. RootsFi: A bridge on Canton seemingly generating more transactions than all the major interoperability protocols combined. The pattern is clear: ping-pong transfers across its own validator cluster.
2. Kora: An app with little to no visible user activity, yet responsible for a disproportionate share of network traffic. The transactions are telling: repetitive 0.01 CC loops across fixed counterparties. This is difficult to interpret as anything other than transaction farming.
3. Modulo: Despite appearing prominently in network activity, there is no ecosystem awareness of what it really is. On-chain behavior suggests micro subscription-style billing patterns, which were explicitly restricted last year to curb transaction farming. If this is indeed the case, it raises serious questions around the Foundation's enforcement and consistency.
Then we have Cypherock and Pixelplex. These wallets are processing 100x as many transactions as the Loop wallet, which is a clear category leader.
Apologies for calling out specific names, but these are not isolated cases, just the most obvious ones. These patterns are widely discussed even in informal Canton communities because they are so easy to detect.
For a network positioning itself at the institutional layer, this is a dangerous signal.
Ultimately, the value of the network depends on real usability and genuine economic activity. If the majority of throughput is dominated by what appears to be “transaction farming”, the long-term outlook becomes questionable.
I strongly urge the Foundation to take a closer look at:
- how this activity is being generated
- why it is being allowed to scale
- how it is being represented externally
Restoring signal quality and bringing transaction costs back under control is critical to making the network usable and credible.
Thanks,
Eric
This message, and any attachments, is for the intended recipient(s) only, may contain information that is privileged, confidential and/or proprietary and subject to important terms and conditions available at http://www.digitalasset.com/emaildisclaimer.html. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this message. Thanks, Eric, for taking note.
From your message, I understand that CC transfer costs have been adjusted at the network level over the last few days. It just felt odd that in the same period, the number of CC transfers also more than doubled, so I drew that correlation.
My bad if that was based on partial understanding. That said, I still see transactions from some apps that don’t make much financial sense to me. Glad to hear the Foundation is taking a closer look at activity quality.
- nothing has changed at the network level - the cost has been constant in $/mb terms for many monthswallets have been adjusting how pass through network fees to users in differing ways - not sure which wallet you are using but whatever changes to your cost to use the network is due to the wallet's behaviors and nothing has changed at the network levelOn Sun, Apr 26, 2026 at 11:07 AM Eric Smith via lists.sync.global <ericjonessm=gmail.com@...> wrote:
Thanks, Eric, for taking note.
From your message, I understand that CC transfer costs have been adjusted at the network level over the last few days. It just felt odd that in the same period, the number of CC transfers also more than doubled, so I drew that correlation.
My bad if that was based on partial understanding. That said, I still see transactions from some apps that don’t make much financial sense to me. Glad to hear the Foundation is taking a closer look at activity quality.
This message, and any attachments, is for the intended recipient(s) only, may contain information that is privileged, confidential and/or proprietary and subject to important terms and conditions available at http://www.digitalasset.com/emaildisclaimer.html. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this message. Hi all,
Lexy from K-R-O Brokers chiming in here.
First off, #OneLove to everyone. I’m assuming we are all here because we are building toward something excellent, so congratulations.
I also want to acknowledge Eric for raising his concerns, and the group for taking them seriously and triaging them constructively.
Offering another thought: when I enter spaces like this, my first instinct is not to ask what someone is doing wrong. It is to recognize what they likely had to build, risk, and carry to get here, especially if they are still operating ethically without the benefit of a major legacy umbrella.
That is why I think these discussions matter to Canton’s authenticity. We are watching the next internet infrastructure cycle unfold in real time, and the people building now are helping define what trust, privacy, and accountability will mean at scale.
And if questions arise around what appears to be a sudden rise, those participants should have a fair opportunity to respond, clarify, and mediate concerns in good faith. Reputation matters, and when concerns are raised publicly, a fair process should give people room to be heard.
Not everything needs to be public to everyone, but the right parties still need to be able to verify, supervise, and keep the system honest. That balance is the point.
Lexy
On Sunday, April 26th, 2026 at 8:09 AM, Eric Saraniecki via lists.sync.global <eric=digitalasset.com@...> wrote:
- I second all the apps with shady transactions, I already said it once and ill say it again - i think the Foundation is not doing the best work overseeing all these apps that seemingly just drain the ecosystem and not benefit it at all.---- On Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:09:15 +0200 Eric Saraniecki via lists.sync.global <eric=digitalasset.com@...> wrote ----
- Hi all,
My input on this would be to take a more constructive approach to the problem at hand. The concept of FA rewards bootstrapping apps across the network is great. Like any system it will get gamed. That’s markets. I do not believe the answer is to increase policing or set more complex rules. That just leads to a lot more effort and resources being used by the foundation. Who says transactions are bad or good? It can get very arbitrary. A better approach would be to come up with a model that decreased the policing required and solved for the result that we all would like to see - increased economic activity on the network which is a much broader spectrum of tests than TPS.
I do not know what the answer is but as a collective validators should be able to put together a proposal that could ease the situation.
Daryn
- Hi Eric,Thank you for raising your concerns with the community and bringing them directly to our attention.
You are completely right, and I agree that we need to do a much better job of ensuring organic and relevant growth so that everyone in the ecosystem can thrive. I want to sincerely apologize to any parties who were negatively impacted, and extend a specific apology to you. I truly appreciate you stepping up to flag this issue.The foundation delivered a very clear message to our team, and we took immediate action. We restricted access, modified our internal economics, and throttled the heavy transaction flow to address the situation directly.While our name reflects our background in DeFi, our execution here fell short of the standard we want to set for our plans on Canton. Please know that over the past few days, our team has been working around the clock to find economically viable ways to bring users to the network while maximizing the efficiency of the BME system in a fair and sustainable way.We are fully committed to building a solution that works for the entire community. We have new features rolling out this week, and our goal is to continue driving volume and TVL to Canton in a way that truly benefits everyone.Best regards,Ozzy
