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Learn how Blockdaemon’s Institutional Vault supports governance-aware Canton Gateway signing with policy-driven approvals, transaction decoding, and institutional key management.
Canton is designed for regulated financial use cases. As described in our blog, How Canton Works, the network supports private execution, atomic settlement, and clear separation of responsibilities between participants. These capabilities enable production workflows such as private delivery-versus-payment settlement and tokenization services.
To support these use cases at scale, Canton relies on a layered access model that separates applications from network execution and signing, with standardized interfaces for applications and dedicated infrastructure for connectivity, key management, and transaction approval.
Blockdaemon plays a critical role in this model. Through the Institutional Vault, Blockdaemon provides the only institutional, governance-aware wallet integration with the Canton Gateway, enabling policy-driven signing without requiring applications to change how they integrate with the network. Unlike basic signing services that only approve transaction hashes, Blockdaemon decodes transactions, applies institutional controls, and enforces approval workflows before any signature is produced.
In this blog, we explain how the Canton Gateway works, why it was designed as an open signing framework, and how Blockdaemon’s gateway signer fits into this architecture. We also outline what this means for institutions building and operating real-world applications on Canton today.
The Canton Gateway is a server-side API service that exposes the dApp-facing interface. It is the primary entry point for applications connecting to the Canton Network.
When a user opens a Canton-based application, the application sends standardized requests to the Gateway through the Canton dApp SDK. These requests may include reading ledger data, preparing transactions, creating parties, or requesting approval to sign a transaction. Applications do not interact directly with validators or signing systems.
The Gateway manages sessions, applies access controls, and routes requests to the appropriate backend services. This includes forwarding transactions to validators for execution and delegating signing requests to an external signing provider.
Importantly, the Gateway does not own private keys and does not perform signing. Its role is orchestration, not custody. This design keeps applications simple while allowing security and governance controls to live in dedicated infrastructure.
An “open signer” model means the Gateway can work with multiple, interchangeable signing providers through a standard signing interface. Any compliant signing service can be registered behind the Gateway without requiring changes to applications or the dApp SDK.
From the Gateway’s perspective, a signer is an external service. When a transaction requires approval, the Gateway forwards a signing request to the configured signer and waits for a signed response. The Gateway does not need to know how keys are stored, how approvals are enforced, or how signatures are produced.
This keeps the Gateway neutral and extensible, while allowing signing providers to evolve independently. This design aligns with the goals of CIP-0103, proposed in November 2025 with input from Blockdaemon, which standardizes how dApps, wallets, and signing providers interact within the Canton ecosystem.
Blockdaemon Institutional Vault acts as a gateway signer within this architecture.
Blockdaemon operates a dedicated signing service that integrates behind the Canton Gateway using a signing driver. When the Gateway is configured to use Blockdaemon, signing requests are delegated to Blockdaemon’s infrastructure for execution.
Blockdaemon does not replace the Gateway and does not change how applications connect to Canton. From the dApp’s point of view, it continues to interact with the same standard Gateway interface. The Gateway routes signing requests to Blockdaemon transparently.
As a gateway signer, Blockdaemon is responsible for managing cryptographic keys, decoding and reviewing transactions, enforcing internal policy, and producing cryptographic signatures. These controls operate below the application layer and independently of the dApp itself. Blockdaemon offers function-level policy controls for the CIP-56 standard, such as Mint, Burn, Transfer, and Allocate.
This is what enables governance, such as role-based access controls, maker-checker approval workflows, and transaction review, without embedding complexity into application code.
Blockdaemon is the only institutional wallet providing governance-aware signing through the Canton Gateway, delivering policy-driven approvals while preserving application portability and interoperability across the Canton Network.
If you’re building or operating applications on Canton and want governed, institutional-grade signing through the Canton Gateway, speak with Blockdaemon’s team to learn how the Institutional Vault can support your deployment.
Contact us to learn how we can help you power your blockchain business.
