Canton and ZKsync are in conflict over blockchain rule enforcement methods. Matter Labs co-founder Alex Gluchowski criticizes Canton’s approach for lacking the ability to enforce rules across networks.
Key points
Canton and ZKsync have differing blockchain enforcement models
Alex Gluchowski criticizes Canton for lacking rule enforcement
Canton prioritizes privacy and control over global state
Institutional adoption is splitting the blockchain industry
Zero-knowledge systems can enforce rules on public blockchains
Banks are moving onchain through competing models that take different approaches to how financial rules are enforced.
On the one hand are blockchain-native builders like Matter Labs co-founder Alex Gluchowski, who argue that financial systems require rules to be enforced across all participants. On the other are institution-led networks like Canton, which prioritize privacy, control and interoperability over global state.
Gluchowski is among the most vocal critics of the latter approach, arguing it reproduces the limitations of traditional finance in a new form. The core of the critique is whether rules can be enforced across an entire network. That’s not possible in systems like Canton, he claimed.
“But they are possible with blockchains — specifically with zero-knowledge systems anchored to public blockchains like Ethereum, which is an environment all parties can trust because it cannot be captured by any single corporate interest,” Gluchowski told Cointelegraph.
Crypto’s institutional adoption is bringing banks and financial institutions onchain, but it’s also splitting the industry along a deeper fault line than geography or regulation.
Decentralization, Privacy, Consensus, zk-Rollup, Tokenization, Features, Canton
Canton rose into the top 21 cryptocurrencies despite criticism from decentralization purists. Source:CoinGecko
Whether Canton counts as a blockchain depends on how the term is defined and what properties it is expected to guarantee.
Q&A
What is the main disagreement between Canton and ZKsync?
The main disagreement is over how financial rules should be enforced on blockchains, with ZKsync advocating for universal enforcement and Canton prioritizing privacy and control.
Who is Alex Gluchowski and what is his stance on blockchain enforcement?
Alex Gluchowski is the co-founder of Matter Labs and he argues that effective rule enforcement is possible only with blockchain-native systems, criticizing Canton for its limitations.
How does institutional adoption of crypto affect blockchain models?
Institutional adoption is leading to a division in the blockchain industry, highlighting differing approaches to rule enforcement and governance among financial institutions.
What role do zero-knowledge systems play in blockchain rule enforcement?
Zero-knowledge systems, particularly those anchored to public blockchains like Ethereum, are seen as a way to enforce rules across all participants in a network, according to Gluchowski.
See every story in Crypto — including breaking news and analysis.
For Gluchowski, a blockchain’s core feature is a single shared ledger that allows rules to be enforced across all participants at once. He claimed Canton does not qualify. The network connects institutions through bilateral or trilateral relationships, where each party sees and verifies the transactions it is directly involved in.
“Before blockchains, banks had to enter bilateral relationships and define how they handle edge cases through contracts and API interactions,” Gluchowski said. “It’s just taking these existing relationships and workflows and putting them into a tokenized form.”
Gluchowski said Canton’s model limits what the system can guarantee. While participants can verify the transactions they are directly involved in, they cannot independently verify system-wide properties such as total asset supply or other rules that apply across all users. He added that those kinds of guarantees require a shared state that everyone can check.
Decentralization, Privacy, Consensus, zk-Rollup, Tokenization, Features, Canton
Digital Asset co-founder details how Canton differs from legacy systems in practice. Source:Shaul Kfir
“[Gluchowski] is correct that Canton does not have a global shared state, but he is incorrect in implying that this negatively affects Canton’s trust model,” Shaul Kfir, co-founder of Digital Asset, responded through a statement shared with Cointelegraph.
“In Canton, as in all other blockchains, I only trust my own validator and assume anyone else can be malicious. This ‘don’t trust, verify’ approach is very different from a distributed API system,” Kfir added.
In Canton’s model, trust does not come from a single system-wide view, but from each party independently checking the transactions it is involved in.
Network rules clash with issuer control
Following the conversation with Cointelegraph, Gluchowski took part in a live debate with another Digital Asset co-founder, Yuval Rooz. He reiterated his argument that financial rules must be enforced across an entire network in a blockchain network.
Rooz countered that system-wide enforcement doesn’t eliminate reliance on trusted parties, as public blockchain users still depend on token issuers. Rooz pointed to hacks that involved assets like USDC to argue that issuers remain the key enforcement mechanism.
Decentralization, Privacy, Consensus, zk-Rollup, Tokenization, Features, Canton
The industry has repeatedly called for Circle to freeze stolen funds before illicit actors trade them for decentralized assets. Source:ZachXBT
“Actually, we would have been happier — as we've seen a lot of the crypto space saying if the centralized issuer were to intervene sooner rather than allowing these assets being traded and swapped into permissionless assets where then they can no longer interfere,” Rooz said.
“On Canton, no different than any other public chain, the issuer is centralized in real world assets, and they have different properties or similar properties to what they would have on public permissionless chains,” he added.
Gluchowski argued that issuance limits can be embedded directly into smart contracts. He said that on networks like Ethereum, activity beyond a certain threshold can be restricted or require additional approval, rather than relying solely on the issuer’s infrastructure.
“On Canton, you rely solely on the multisig. On Ethereum, you rely on smart contracts that are enforced by the network,” Gluchowski said.
“It's just absolutely not true,” Rooz replied.
Kfir, whose statement was shared with Cointelegraph after the live debate, said that Gluchowski is “confusing the capabilities of Canton” with how it is used by centralized RWA issuers.
“When there’s a centralized RWA issuer, e.g. a stablecoin issuer, you’re already trusting them with the ‘mint’ function, and you’re trusting them and their auditors that the amount onchain is backed by reserves off-chain,” Kfir said.
Competing visions for bringing banks onchain
Canton and Matter Labs are competing to solve the same problem of how institutional finance moves onchain. Matter Labs, the developer of ZKsync, is targeting institutional use cases with Prividium, a model that keeps transactions private while anchoring verification to Ethereum through zero-knowledge proofs.
Kfir argued that systems like Prividium risk concentrating trust in a different place. In his view, users are no longer independently validating the relevant state, forcing them to reconcile their own records against what an operator reports happened onchain.
“ZKsync relies on Prividium operators who create ZKPs, but ZKsync’s own open source client doesn’t verify these proofs,” he said. “And even if a user does verify, it doesn’t verify which smart contract logic is running. The user is completely at the mercy of the Prividium operator.”
Decentralization, Privacy, Consensus, zk-Rollup, Tokenization, Features, Canton
Gluchowski defended ZK technology in a February social media exchange with Rooz. Source:Alex Gluchowski
Rooz did concede one point during the debate, which is that Canton does not have public verifiability, while adding that there are plans to introduce it in the future.
For now, the divide remains unresolved. Canton is built around privacy and institutional control, while ZKsync’s Prividium attempts to preserve those features while anchoring verification to a public network. Both claim to offer a viable path for bringing banks onchain, but they are built on fundamentally different assumptions about how financial systems should work.
