Why Institutions Prefer Canton Network, and Who Can Read Its Private Data

The new core for the next era of finance.

Ben, welcome to Sableash Live. Good to see you. Hello. Thanks. Nice nice to meet you guys. Great to meet you too. Good to have on. Really excited to dive into this business and what you're building and all the good stuff. We were just having Philip on from from LeFi. We're already kind of talking about infrastructure tokenization.

We were specifically talking about that in the context of stock trading. So, yeah, let's keep kinda keep the tokenization thread going. Yeah. Maybe we kick off with a quick intro. Before before we dive into it, just wanna say you have an awesome team member in Christian. Christian is probably one of the first guys I met in Web three, and he met he's I think he's been with you guys two, three years now, if I'm not mistaken. It feels like half. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, shout out to him. Thank you.

You know, he coordinated bringing you on. So yeah. But like like Drew said, maybe for those who don't know, Nova, just give us give us a quick intro on who you are, what you're building, and we'll dive into some of the more dive into some of the weeds. Sure. Yeah. So I'm one of the one of the founders

of Novez. We're a data company. We're deployed on a 110 heard of and care about pretty much, but we're really focused right now on Canton particularly. There's a lot of really interesting problems that come with privacy, and so focused pretty hard on on solving that stuff. And I would say that, you know, as a data company, we're we're really kind of working our way up the stack as we as we talk to people and work with customers and kind of understand how people are trying to get more sophisticated with their data.

We're trying to help move that bar up for what we're able to deliver to kind of keep people from having to do

so much data engineering and plumbing and that sort of stuff that's not really additive to their business, but is also necessary for them to to do what they're trying to do. How how would you describe your business? If you if you if you're you know, I don't know if you have kids, but maybe your kid brings you into a school presentation and says, hey. Bring, you know, bring bring my dad to Workday, and you have to stand up in front of the class, and you have to say, this is what I do.

Do you have, like, a go to analogy that explains, you know, where Nova sits in this on chain finance world? Wow.

I I have not ever tried to explain this to the the fifth graders, so that's that's a different pitch. But I I mean, look. Really generally, I tell, like, people who are very savvy, I just tell them that we help people get data off of blockchains. So there's people doing all these activities and all this stuff, and they need that data to report on or to do their taxes or to to work with some other partner or to all kinds of things.

And so we're sort of the layer that helps them get that information and interpret that and to

understand what's going on and, like, yeah, to get to get them kinda going where they're where they are with that. Yeah. I remember when I was popping in this, it might be helpful to look at it. Like, just the the for me, is kinda helpful, like private versus public, and then the the platform that sits kind of underneath it. How do you maybe just walk through this a little bit in terms of, like, the differences here and and where Novus sits under the hood? Yeah.

So so in this case, like the and this is where the the Canton stuff really comes into play because you have a bunch of data that is private

only to individual validators. There's no way to see that on, like, a a public blockchain like Ethereum or something like that where you can just get all the data and then serve it to people when they want it. With Canton, a lot of the data isn't visible to the public. And so we run two sides of our data platform, our public side where we have an index of of public data that we can serve.

And on the private side, we have software that is deployable, alongside a client's validator that's able to get access to that private data, runs in their security context. We don't get the data. It doesn't come to us, but we run the same tech and the same stack. And so you get the same or a very similar experience whether you're dealing with the public or the private data. It's kind of like a unified surface. I mean, we're working to continue to to make those even more aligned, I guess.

So whether you're dealing with data that's from a public chain or a private chain, you have that that full set of tools and that that experience

that you would be expecting to have. What what has it been like working with, like, the Canton ecosystem? And was this something if I just remember right, going back a few years, kind of the evolution of Nova's, I can't I can remember Christian doing I think you guys had, like, a Chrome extension where you can make blockchain data readable, and I've kinda watched this this watch Nova's mature and then noticing more and more working with the Canton ecosystem. What what was some of that pull?

Was this just a was this a new problem for on chain finance given the architecture of the network? Did you anticipate that you'd be solving these types of problems for the company, or was this really just like, oh, like, sort of forced because of the way Canton was arc architected? So,

yeah, I I agree. Like, we we definitely have kind of had a a bit of an evolving path over time. The thread has been pretty consistent through that, which is we really think that data has been underserved kind of historically in the entire crypto space where Mhmm. There's just not been a big focus on accuracy, completeness, on the meaning.

I mean, one of the things you get with blockchain is you have all of the the protocol protocol's kind of a a loaded word here, but all of the technical details of the chain are completely commingled with the context of the data of what's happening. Like, those two pieces are fully, you know, mixed in with each other in in in blockchain. And in the rest of the world, we separate those things out. Right?

Like, you don't have your, like, TCP IP details and your, like, bank transaction jammed into the same, like, layer of data. We have these things, like, nicely separated. And in general, in blockchain, like, you don't see that. You have all the stuff. And so when you're building an app and you're trying to get data out, you have to do all of this, like, interpretation and parsing and sort of, like, extracting of data out. And that's kind of, like, core thing that everywhere that we've been that we've been focused on.

It's just, like, starting to parse out those pieces so that we can deal with data in a more reasonable way in blockchain like we do everywhere else. As far as Canton, you get this, like, extra challenge. So, again, with a chain like Ethereum, we have an automated tool that just, like, pulls random transactions and sees if we know what they are. And if we don't, then we can queue it up and build a a mapping, and we can do all these kinds of things to kinda automatically handle it.

But in Canton, we can't because you can't see that stuff. And so, like I said at the beginning, there's just like a whole new set of problems that come with the benefits of privacy. And for us, a lot of that other public stuff is kind of like a solved problem, and so this was a place where we could really dive in and take the things that we had been building and working on for so long and apply it to a place where the old solutions just don't work.

And I think that that's been it's been really cool for us to be somewhere where we could get there really quickly and to build and deploy something that's different and useful and and works in in a way that just doesn't work in other places. Yeah. The use case around

you mentioned like earlier tax and accounting or like helping transaction level data make sense to a business use case that needs to go report. Like, if I make a trade or I do something, there's context around that action, or if I send money, there's context around that action, and someone is responsible for, yeah, the the the context around that. Like is that a am I sending money to a a vendor? Is it an employee payout? Is it a internal transfer that doesn't actually technically, like, move to another party?

Like, all of these different con pieces of context around payments or or data on chain, that use case seems to be really clear to me of, like, okay. That makes sense of, like, why you need context around it. What other what other examples are we not thinking about where giving visibility and context to the data or helping parse it out like you're saying to resemble more of the traditional system? Like, what are some of these other big unlocks that that has? So,

I mean, I think that I think that everything that we do really has that kind of element to it. So a lot of this is handled sort of implicitly. Right? So when you're building a if you're building a DEX, the layer in between your UI and the chain or the contracts is essentially doing the same thing. And it's fine because it's your contracts and you know what you're doing and and and you have that data.

But if anybody else is gonna build anything to connect to it, they also have to deeply understand your individual contracts so that they can just read some basic things out of there. And so I think that it's we're very focused on reporting particularly in all of its different in all of its different elements, but there are plenty of other things. So, like, we're we're working with somebody right now that's building a new vaults sort of a of a structure on Canton.

And because it's private, there's no easy way for anybody to just verify

that what they are claiming about the vaults is actually true because you can't see the data. Right? When when did this become a problem you wanted to go solve? What was what was the give us a little bit of the origin story of how you started the business. And it sounds like it's evolved pretty pretty significantly along the way. I'd love to know a bit more about what that means. Yeah. Sure. It has evolved, but also we just keep coming back, I guess. We originally

started planning to try to launch a couple of different funds. And as we were talking to service providers to fund admins and that sort of thing, we had a I remember we had a call with this fund administrator, and, we asked about, like, how we would get our trading data to them. And they said that we could put it in a spreadsheet and send them the spreadsheet, and then they would have some guys type it into their management system.

And we're like, you want to manage tens of millions dollars via spreadsheets that people are gonna type in, which was super hard for me to get my head around because we have, like, a perfect immutable ledger of exactly what happened, and it's going into another computer system. So, like, why would we have people do this? Why would we insert humans in the middle of this thing? Right?

But it's because there was just it's too complicated to try to process the data, and they just, like, didn't have a way to do this, and it was just easier to have humans do the work. And so we obviously were no way we were gonna do that, so we started building a stack out to, like, enable some reporting and some other, like, capabilities and things that we needed.

And, ultimately, we're really we're we're builders, and we're we're not we're not money manager type people, so we kind of pursued the thing that felt more aligned with with who we are. Yeah. So you go to build that. Canton comes on your radar. We're looking at the current state of Canton. We're just seeing more and more, you Vault's trading experiences come on. And now all of a sudden, we think we have it all figured out. We're getting privacy and a private data sorted, and then now AI agents. Right?

AI is hitting the scene. And how does that change the way your approach to data and even what you know? Again, I'm thinking through, like, what are the things that we should be thinking about that we're not thinking about right now, especially now when it comes to the intersection of AI and private data? Yeah.

Well, I think the good news, I guess, is that at at the heart of things, I think AI agents are gonna be smart enough to want privacy, and I think they probably are gonna care about it more than the average person, which a lot of people, I I guess, just can't be bothered to to deal with the extra hassle of privacy, but I think that most agents are gonna prefer privacy by default.

And so everything, you know, everything that's being done on Canton or or on other, honestly, on other privacy chains where work is going on, I think is gonna be as relevant or more for agents than it is for humans.

Especially as that agentic footprint grows, that also means that the analysis and the speed with which systems are gonna react to the data that they're gathering is going to increase as well, which is only gonna push the bar up for privacy because you're gonna have all these agents doing things all the time, and you don't wanna be leaking that info to other people because that's edge that you're giving up.

And so to me, I I just don't see any way that private by default doesn't become the norm in the future, and I think that agents are gonna require that. Yeah. That's insert. Drew, it reminds me of what

we had him on incline recently. Rialo. He had that point about that it was kind of an moment for us of just how code may be slowly getting poisoned over time from some of these agents and, like, that data leak leakage. What's been your experience with within the the greater AgenTic developer community right now? Is is this a is this a top of mind issue, or is this an issue right now that we just haven't reached, you know, that that critical mass moment where there's a problem yet?

On on the development on the on the side of code, you mean, or on the side of Yeah. On the side of, you know, developers or even just just using agents when it comes to on chain finance. You know, it's almost like, do we need to have a black swan event with this before this people realize, oh, this is a problem, or is it right now, like, hey. We're kinda nervous,

and we need to put safeguards in place right now. I I think that I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on this, but from my perspective, I think that we're still pretty early in that regard. I think majority, we have agents that are still very much acting in, like, humanesque ways and humanesque roles. And so I think that we're already used to not having privacy. We're already used to whatever they're doing on chain is just visible to everybody, and everybody just kind of accepts that as okay.

I think that it hasn't risen to the level that this becomes, like, a big problem. But what I think is gonna happen is there's gonna be use cases or there's gonna be people that start to migrate into private settings, and those people are gonna have an advantage. And that's gonna drive that's gonna drive more people to want to adopt that.

And also as it becomes a thing that people get used to for themselves, like once people have privacy, then it's gonna automatically go, well, why doesn't my agent also have that privacy? So those things to evolve together, but I I don't really see a reason for, like, a black swan type situation, at least with chains, because it's been public forever, and we've had every I mean, any more than we do. Right? Any more than all the hacks and all of the all that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's just interesting.

Just I just think about the scenarios. You know, you hear about the massive data breaches, and you're right. You know, this is some very sensitive personal information,

and there has just been this acceptance in in at least in the world of, you know, on chain financing that as you can go on chain, sure, maybe it's a little bit different than my social security number or something like that, but there is a feeling of unsettling about knowing that even if you can't directly trace it, it's still that that data is still out there. Yeah. Ben, on the just relationship with Canton, they seem like from from our vantage point, we've had both Eric and Yuval on the show before,

they've they've discussed so much about what they're what they're building with us. It's been a couple months, I think, since we've caught up with them. We've we've been seeing some pretty significant launches within that ecosystem as of late.

I know, like, some of the early, like, repo market tests are finally coming to to light, and would love any, like, kind of observations or things that you've seen lately that are are getting your attention specifically with Canton, but also more, like, more macro on what seems like a like a a great first use case or, like, really core use case for this private data infrastructure for for the business.

Like, Canton seems like a one of potentially many, many, many different types of partners and ecosystems that you guys could serve. Are you seeing a proliferation of other Canton like players, or are they still kind of holding this extremely, like, cornering of the market of sorts? Or how do you how do you just think about that? They just seem to be dominating.

Lack of seem to be dominating. The so there there's a lot to unpack there, but I think that to me, there there are a lot of other players. We're definitely talking to these people. In general, I think that that Canton seems to really have hit the sweet spot between a lot of the elements of blockchain that people want with a lot of the elements that especially, like, institutions and more, like, regulated parties don't want, like, taken out of the picture. They seem to kinda, like, really have that well.

And at least my read is organizationally, they're pretty well aligned, and they understand those people very well. And it's just it's just very finely tuned for a certain sort of set of ideas that I think aligns with where a lot of the financial flows are. And there's certainly other perspectives and other ways to go about this, but there's there's a lot of ideas that are just really hard. I was just talking with somebody the other day about this. Like, ZK is really cool.

And if you're a tech person and you understand it, you realize the benefits of, like, something that is provably true without needing to trust anything. Right? Like, this is a really cool idea. It's also a super hard idea to get some, like, regulator in Washington to, like, get their head around and, like, trust and understand because it's not how the world has, like, ever worked.

And so I think Canton is really well aligned with, like, how people think about things and how the real world currently operates more than a lot of other blockchain projects have, like, tried to get people to shift how they think and, like, adapt a different thing. And to me, that is gonna that is translating to and is going to continue to translate to real success. Just a follow-up question quickly on that earlier comment of, like, what they are doing and what they're not doing.

What what are some of the things that for either either side of that that specifically you feel like they've gotten right? I totally agree that, like, they resonate and and I think practice a lot of empathy commercially with those who they're selling the network to. But what have you seen are the the things that they are or are not doing specifically that that I love the

notion of commercial empathy. That's it's a great one. I so I'll I'll give you a couple examples. Right? You can't just spin up a validator and join the network. Like, if you're running the software, you can't become part of the Canton network. Unlike Ethereum or any other thing, like, Open is part of the pitch of those blockchains. It is not part of the pitch of Canton. To have your node be allowed to connect into the network, you have to be whitelisted by a vote of the super validators. Right?

And so you can still like, any any legitimate party can reasonably join. It's not like a here, but you do have to, like, talk to someone and get approved to join the network. And that that sounds really comforting if you're, like, a traditional bank or something that you just end up person anywhere that wants to that we don't know who they are, spins up a node and is, like, integrating with the system. And the same thing applies to, like, on unlike most other chains, you can't just create a wallet.

Like, your wallet has to be hosted by an actual node on the network. It has to be provisioned by them, operated by them on one of their servers, not just, like, completely disconnected. I just own it because I have the key. And so, like, those things, just the fact that there is a trail to get to people and that there's some sort of, like, chain of responsible parties from anywhere to anywhere else is how the rest of the world works.

And and I think that aligning that way just really resonates with with a lot of entities.

The chain of responsible custody. That is I think that's something I think we've all inherently understood when it comes to traditional finance. But to hear it just phrased that simply just that was a little, like, light bulb moment to me where it makes sense. You just want to know that I if I went here, they're responsible. There's people that are responsible to them, and, you know, that goes all the way back to whatever whatever governing board it is, and you're right. That's how the world works.

And maybe there's another side of the world where Bitcoin and true decentralization can sign, but can or can can live and and, you know, they can coexist to some degree, but doesn't feel like there's a a one, you know, a one solution to to rule them all right now. Ben, we have to wrap here. We're gonna transition. We have we have Beth coming on from Stablecoin Standard. I'm blanking on their their new rebrand. But Previously known as Yeah. Previously known as Stablecoin Standard. Yeah,

man. Ben, anything we missed as we wrap? Anything that maybe final final where people can find you? Final thoughts for the audience watching?

Yeah. I mean, novez.fi is our site. Can find us there. Obviously, we're on you've got our Rx link and stuff like there like that there so people can find us. That's that's about it. Are you hiring? I I think I saw you guys are doing a lot of workshops in Latin America, where right now you guys are just heads down building. Anything like that? We're going we're going pretty hard. We're we're fairly heads down. Yeah.

We're trying to we didn't really get to it today, but we're working on the problem of how we how we help how we enable people to disclose their private data, only the data that they want to and only to the parties that they want to, and how do they know that that's going where it needs to go.

Again, that's a problem you don't have in public public networks at all because the data's out there. Everybody can look at it. Here, it's all private, but we do need to let regulators or partners or service providers access some of that data. So You would buy that product, I think, or integrate some of that for how we're thinking about some things we're building. So would love to talk with you more on that if it applies to non nonfinancial data too in some ways. But more more on that later.

Ben, thanks for your time. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, guys.