Paul Barron, Charles Hoskinson, Avalanche CEO: All Wrong About Canton?

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]What makes a chain an institutional chain? I >> I would say the uh the network in terms of being able to have dgens, we'll call it that. I mean, that's part of this market anyway. If you look at just a memecoin, memecoins right now, I mean, we have a memecoin now listed as a commodity. So, it's clear that there is a track for that. But what is the top memecoin on Canton?

[00:00:24]>> We don't have a memecoin on Canton.

[00:00:27]There is no memecoin on canton because maybe we as a community didn't necessarily prioritize having a memecoin. But if not having a memecoin makes us an institutional chain or a corp chain, then I'm accepting it.

[00:00:41]That's okay. Okay. All right. By the way, I don't have a problem with the definition. I just am trying to understand what does the question in.

[00:00:48]>> Well, I think a lot Yeah. I think the market looks at an institutional chain differently than an open chain. And open chain is going to have networks that have these kind of things available. So you're saying it's possible to launch a memecoin now on can network >> 100%.

[00:01:05]>> Why haven't you done it?

[00:01:08]>> Uh because we have other priorities again. I I it's it may maybe we should you know maybe maybe you know listen questions.

[00:01:17]>> I think listening to you maybe maybe you're giving me ideas. Maybe we should and and maybe you know you've given me ideas. So maybe stay tuned.

[00:01:25]>> But if you look at Avalanche in general, how would you guys say well Canton is a better solution for something than say Avalanche?

[00:01:35]>> Uh privacy one. Um I think that Avalanche will uh market itself with its sub networks. Um I think in their documentation you could read that the way to move from one subn network to another is using bridges which in our opinion is not safe. uh in canton all transactions between any canton to any canton is fully composable as if you were on the same network and I would say at a high level those would be the two big differences.

[00:02:04]>> Well I mean their private network is pretty solid. Uh I think a lot of people are choosing avalanche because of that the capability of being able to launch their own network.

[00:02:12]>> Private network does not imply privacy.

[00:02:14]So if you launch a private Ethereum chain, you just have a small subnet of participants that still have no privacy amongst themselves. So >> when you Okay. So and that has been I think that privacy is a is a challenge.

[00:02:28]I think a lot of people look at every chain out there in terms of privacy.

[00:02:32]You're saying that Canton is a fully privac privacy chain right now.

[00:02:38]>> No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it's the only public chain that have privacy capabilities. We don't believe in a binary world. Either everything is privacy or everything is public. You could have things that are public on Canton and you could have things that are private on Canton. So it's the only chain that has privacy capabilities. It is not uh all privacy chain of news going on with Canton. We look at this uh as a bank-toank private chain. There's you know we've gone back and forth with their CEO. But I'm curious, is Avalanche maybe the one that is poised to actually take on Canton?

[00:03:16]>> Yes. The answer is yes. Avalanche I think Avalanche as you know from day one we've been working on this >> right >> Avalanche will be call it the default infrastructure in the future for all digital assets and it's because it's interoperable. You can create your own L1 on Avalanche connect it to the Cchain Avalanche and then move it's EVM compatible. so easily move it around the entire crypto >> which is what makes that an advantage.

[00:03:44]>> This is an huge advantage. We believed in the permissionless world from day one. Now what do they also say? Uh copying is the greatest form of flattery. If you look at what Canton is about, >> you know, kudos to them. They've done a great job, you know, >> but they were DT disperate little pockets. They had to create interconnection and then they created their I forget what it's called but it's effectively our C chain. So they reverse engineered >> interesting >> into what Avalanch started with the architecture from day one.

[00:04:16]>> Study that.

[00:04:17]>> So this is a I mean this is kind of one of the things that we've talked with Canton about which is the privacy side of thing. But why would Canton need to exist if you have this more advanced layer of privacy and now you're doing midnight works with banks already? So why would you not why would you need Canton if this exists out there which is 12 mil in comparison to some of the other top chains that are in here if you look at the top 30 that is a big deal. I think these are questions that everybody has to a answer. Charles Hoskinson came on talked about I love it when Legacy Finance comes together with Canton and try to build what XRP and Midnight are already doing at scale. Um, they never learn blah blah blah. And then of course you go after uh what the next component was, which was a clip here talking about how Canton maybe compares to next generation, you know, technology. Take a look.

[00:05:13]>> But now like you're in our you're coming into our world. You're doing the the block sponsorships. You're on the the the Coin Gecko page, marketing it to our industry, which we value the cipher punk maximalism of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

[00:05:26]Yeah. So, so first of all, I I I would say that I I I had to bet that if I had to put a polyarket bet on do you listen to music on Napster or Spotify, I'm I'm pretty sure that I can make the right bet of where you listen to Music.