Canton Catalyst Research

The Canton Quadrant

A public, rubric-scored map of pre-token Canton Network projects. Two axes: what a project has verifiably built, and how far it has moved toward a token. Confirmed evidence only. Published monthly, never edited after the fact.

Issue 01 · July 2026

confirmed evidence ● · announced, worth zero points until verified ◌*

How to read it

The vertical axis is verified substance, scored 0 to 7. One point per confirmed item on a seven-item checklist. Nothing is weighted and nothing is subjective: an item is either publicly verifiable or it scores zero.

The horizontal axis is token intent, an ordinal ladder from 0 (no token statement of any kind) to 4 (token live, at which point the project exits this chart's scope). Position on this axis describes what a project has said and shipped about a future asset. It is not a prediction and not a recommendation.

A dashed marker above a project shows where it would sit if its announced claims verify. Announcements move the dashed marker. Only confirmed evidence moves the dot.

The substance checklist

Seven items, each binary. A project either shows the evidence publicly or it scores zero on that item. Here is what each one means and why it earns a point.

S1 · Live mainnet deployment. Working software on Canton mainnet that outside users can touch, even behind a whitelist. A demo, testnet, or "coming soon" page does not count. This is the most basic proof that a team ships.
S2 · Named institutional counterparty. A real institution doing real business with the project, confirmed by that institution or visible on-chain. "In talks with major banks" scores zero. A bank saying it themselves scores one.
S3 · Official ecosystem status. Recognition from the network itself: a canton.network listing, Featured App status, or Canton Foundation membership. Weak on its own, but it means the project cleared someone else's bar, not just mine.
S4 · Infrastructure role. The project runs part of the network: a Super Validator or node operation. Operating infrastructure means capital committed and reputation at stake, which is harder to fake than marketing.
S5 · Identified legal entity and named leadership. A registered company and real people with names and faces attached. Anonymous teams can build great things, but accountability starts with knowing who you are dealing with.
S6 · Named, disclosed backers or funding. Investors named by the project and verifiable through a third party. "Backed by leading investors" without names scores zero.
S7 · Independent audit or regulatory registration. A published audit by a recognized security firm, or registration with a financial regulator. Someone outside the team, with a reputation to lose, has examined the thing.

Inclusion bar: a project appears on the chart only if at least one of S1, S2, or S4 is confirmed. Projects reviewed that do not clear the bar are listed beneath the chart, not hidden.

The intent ladder

0 · No token statement
1 · Structural hints (language, architecture, or assets that imply a future token)
2 · Incentive program live (points, rewards, allocation mechanics)
3 · TGE on a published roadmap
4 · Token live. The project exits Quadrant scope.

Evidence standards

Every claim behind a placement is tagged one of three ways. Confirmed: filed, live, on-chain, or verified by the counterparty. Announced: stated by the team but not yet independently verifiable. Speculated: my read, or ecosystem chatter. Only confirmed evidence scores points. Announced claims are shown, marked, and worth zero until they verify. Speculated claims never appear in a score.

Unverifiable pedigree claims are a standing category: track records or AUM figures that cannot be checked are not counted, not repeated as fact, and noted as unverifiable in the scorecard.

The Canton caveat. Canton is private by default. Unlike public chains, most activity cannot be confirmed on-chain by an outside observer. That makes independent verification harder here than anywhere else in crypto, and it is exactly why this chart scores only what can be verified. Where privacy limits confirmation, the scorecard says so.

Issue 01 scorecards

Project	Substance	Evidence	Intent	Notes
Alpend Palladium Labs	4 / 7	S1 live whitelisted beta S3 Featured App · Foundation member S5 Palladium Labs, named leadership S7 Halborn audit S6 backers named, raise unclear*	1	ONE is a CC-backed dollar instrument with no value accrual to the project, so it does not qualify as token intent as-is. Any points or allocation mechanics attached to it move Alpend to tier 2 immediately. Audit notes a single-operator custody model. Sources: Halborn audit · alpend.com · Palladium Labs · PitchBook · Genesis Fund release
Canborsa	2 / 7	S1 live public beta S3 ecosystem listing S6 "$300M AUM across previous ventures": unverifiable, not counted	3	Explicit TGE and airdrop on the published roadmap. Highest intent on the chart against the thinnest verified substance.
Zenith	2 / 7 → 4 if verified	S1 VERIFY S3 VERIFY S2 institutional working group* S4 Tier-1 Super Validator role*	1	Its two strongest claims are announced-tier only. The dashed riser shows where it sits if they verify.
ACME	Reviewed, not cleared. Directory listing only. None of S1, S2, S4 confirmed.			Returns to the chart if a qualifying item verifies.

On the radar

Named, not yet scored. Every project below is queued for the full rubric, 2 to 3 per issue. Being on this list is not a placement and not an endorsement: it means the project is visibly active on Canton and worth the verification work. Projects with a live token exit Quadrant scope at screening.

Category	Projects
Capital markets / trading	Temple (capital markets trading stack) · Cantex (private professional trading)
Lending / credit / yield	Helios (money markets for BTC and CC) · Alldefi (expert vaults and yield layer) · EQ Market (credit layer for tokenized assets)
DEXs / liquidity	OneSwap (leading DEX and AMM, token status to confirm at screening) · Tradecraft (permissionless liquidity layer) · Pool Party (exchange) · Askar (non-custodial wallet and DEX) · HelvetSwap (institutional DEX)
Derivatives / markets	Raven Markets (digital options) · Ekiden (institutional derivatives infrastructure) · Unhedged (private prediction markets) · Rocky (perp DEX and RWA yield)
Payments / infrastructure	EA Finance (liquidity gateway) · Silvana (agentic DeFi layer) · Send (peer-to-peer money app)

Projects with live tokens (EDEL, HANDL, HECTO among them) are covered in the portfolio and holdings content instead, where position disclosure applies.

Disclosure and record-keeping

I hold positions in the Canton ecosystem, including $CC, the collateral asset behind Alpend's ONE. Full public portfolio is on the home page. Positions are disclosed in every issue that touches them. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.

Every issue is archived and never edited after publication. Corrections appear in the next issue with a note saying what changed and why. Placements move on confirmed evidence only. If you can show a scoring error with a verifiable source, I will correct it and credit you: hello@cantoncatalyst.xyz.