YZi Labs Invests in Temple Digital Group, Creator of Canton Network’s First Native Trading Platform

Key Takeaways

1. YZi Labs backs Temple Digital Group, creator of Canton Network’s first native trading platform, expanding its push for regulation-aligned infrastructure in institutional digital asset markets.
2. Temple bridges TradFi and DeFi, offering a privacy-focused trading stack that unifies tokenized assets, liquidity, and compliance on Canton’s synchronized ledger.

YZi Labs has invested in Temple Digital Group, a privacy focused technical stack for trading capital markets built on the Canton Network — a blockchain designed for regulated financial markets in collaboration with Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, Broadridge, DRW, and other leading institutions. The investment follows YZi Labs’ July 2025 backing of the Canton Network and underscores the firm’s broader commitment to advancing institutional adoption of digital assets by supporting transparent, interoperable, and regulation-aligned infrastructure across blockchain ecosystems worldwide.

Today, the core problem across tokenized markets is structural fragmentation. Most digital asset systems operate in silos, forcing institutions to choose between compliance and interoperability. Public blockchains fail to meet institutional regulatory requirements, while private systems often sacrifice liquidity and connectivity. Temple Digital Group aims to close that gap by building on Canton’s synchronized ledger technology, delivering shared market infrastructure that connects digital assets, tokenized instruments, and institutional networks on a single, interoperable layer.

The flagship offering of Temple Digital Group is Temple, a trading platform which aims to blend the best features from traditional electronic trading systems – including automated order routing, all-to-all liquidity models, post-trade reporting, flexible permissioning, and counterparty privacy – with the key advantages of DeFi, such as asset tokenization, real-time trading, and non-custodial settlement capabilities offered by the Canton Network.

With this funding, Temple will prioritize expanding its engineering and compliance teams, and intends to develop new products like Asset Issuance & Management tools, Perpetual Futures, Cross Network Trade Routing on the Canton Network, alongside continued research into cryptographic interoperability between Canton and other blockchain systems. Temple aims to do for regulated blockchain markets what NASDAQ (for trading and execution) and the DTCC (for instantaneous clearing and settlement) did for traditional finance, providing the reliable infrastructure layer that allows capital to move efficiently, transparently, and at scale.

The founding team brings deep execution experience across fintech, blockchain, and traditional markets. Evan Varsamis, Temple’s Co-founder & CEO, is a New York–based serial founder and investor in projects such as Rainbow, Discord, and Phantom. Before Temple, he scaled Gadget Flow to reach over 30 million people monthly and exited in 2022. Dan Simerman, Co-founder and CSO, previously worked at the IOTA Foundation and has developed  network architectures and technical strategy for billion-dollar protocols, following consulting work at Wells Fargo and a lead product role at Condé Nast.

“We see an incredible opportunity to develop new financial primitives with and for large institutions ready to participate in digital asset markets,” added Evan Varsamis. “We want Temple to be the core trading engine for use cases that have traditionally been inaccessible on decentralized networks.”

“When we backed Canton earlier this year, it became clear that the next step for the ecosystem was execution, linking compliant infrastructure with active institutional use,” said Alex Odagiu, Investment Partner at YZi Labs. “Temple’s disciplined approach and technical depth are addressing that gap directly.   At YZi Labs, we support founders building that connective tissue, investing across ecosystems to strengthen the shared infrastructure that will drive institutional blockchain adoption worldwide.”

About YZi Labs

YZi Labs manages over $10 billion in assets globally. Our investment philosophy emphasizes impact first—we believe that meaningful returns will naturally follow. We invest in ventures at every stage, prioritizing those with solid fundamentals in Web3, AI, and biotech.

YZi Labs’ portfolio covers over 300 projects from over 25 countries across six continents. More than 65 of YZi Labs’ portfolio companies have gone through our incubation programs. For more information, follow YZi Labs on X.

About Temple Digital Group

Temple Digital Group is an infrastructure development company building a privacy focused  technical stack for capital markets on the Canton Network. Its flagship platform, Temple, enables institutions to trade cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets through a compliant and private central limit orderbook.

About the Canton Network

The Canton Network is the first public, permissionless blockchain purpose-built for institutional finance—uniquely combining privacy, compliance, and scalability. Governed by the Global Synchronizer Foundation with participation from leading global financial institutions, Canton enables real-time, secure synchronization and settlement across multiple asset classes on a shared, interoperable infrastructure. Initially developed by Digital Asset and now open-sourced, Canton supports decentralized governance and collaborative app development. By overcoming the limitations of existing blockchains, it unlocks new efficiencies for regulated institutions and facilitates the convergence between traditional finance and institutional crypto.

Disclaimer:

The information provided in this article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, endorsement, analysis, or recommendations with respect to any financial instruments, investments, or issuers. This article may contain forward-looking statements which are by nature subject to risks and uncertainties. Investment in cryptocurrency and DeFi projects involves substantial risk, including the risk of complete loss. This article does not take into account the investment objectives, financial situation, or specific needs of any particular person and each individual is urged to consult their legal and financial advisors before making any investment decisions.