Visa takes on Canton Super Validator role, marking major step in engaging with blockchain governance

Visa, the global payments juggernaut, has crossed the Rubicon on its march to integrate with the crypto ecosystem, perhaps to subdue the renegade sector or be swallowed whole by it. 

On Wednesday, Visa announced that it has been selected as a Super Validator for the Canton network. While the move is not necessarily groundbreaking, as Visa had already backed Canton and there are over 40 named Super Validators, it is also a representation of the payments giant’s growing commitment to distributed blockchain governance. 

Someone with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed to The Block that Visa’s application to become a Canton Super Validator was the company’s first blockchain governance proposal. Meaning this is also the first blockchain governance proposal approved by Visa’s not insignificant legal and compliance teams.

The firm’s application was approved on March 23, three days after it was submitted, appointing Visa the highest Super Validator Weight of 10, according to Canton’s forum. 

“By operating as a Super Validator on Canton Network, we’re bringing Visa-grade trust, governance and operational rigor that define Visa’s global network to privacy‑preserving blockchain infrastructure, so regulated FIs can bring payments onchain without having to rethink how they operate,” Visa’s Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships, Rubail Birwadker, said in a statement. 

Inside the Canton Network

Canton is a privacy-enabled, public, permissionless Layer 1 blockchain backed by a bevy of institutional players, like BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, and Goldman Sachs, as well as more crypto-savvy firms Circle and Paxos, among others. 

Unlike Ethereum or Solana, Canton offers protocol-level privacy and confidentiality guarantees — an increasingly obvious necessity to bring institutions with trade secrets onchain — as well as boosted finality and settlement speeds due to its more constrained validator consensus model. 

While Canton does sacrifice some censorship-resistance guarantees for streamlined consensus, the blockchain is technically permissionless to build on.

Visa will now “work with institutions to bring Canton into production where it complements existing payment, settlement, and treasury strategies,” according to the announcement. As a Super Validator, Visa will also have a say in future Canton governance decisions. 

It will also tap Canton’s payments layer to help expand its growing stablecoin operations, including using the Stablecoins Advisory Practice to “help clients assess how participation in Canton Network,” according to the announcement. 

Canton’s website currently lists 42 Super Validators out of its 849 total validators, which earn collectively about $2.3 million in daily fees. These include DTCC, Nasdaq, Broadridge, Tradeweb, Circle, Chainlink, and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao’s family office, YZi Labs. Cantonscan shows 13 of these Super Validators are active, and that one of Canton R&D firm Digital Asset’s node-as-a-service offerings is earning the majority of the network fees. 

Despite taking a clear position to validate the Canton network, Visa noted it is not backing away from its existing onchain deployments and will remain “chain agnostic.” Visa has rolled out stablecoin-backed cards in over 100 countries and supports stablecoin settlements and a pilot for creator payments.

Last week, a startup called Zenith demonstrated the ability to make atomic swaps between Canton and an EVM chain, potentially opening the door for more established Ethereum-based apps to expand to Canton. 

Visa has also recently consulted on Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol and rolled out an experimental command-line interface tool for AI commerce.