What Is Canto?

Canto is a permissionless general-purpose blockchain running the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It was built to deliver on the promise of DeFi – that through a post-traditional financial movement, new systems will be made accessible, transparent, decentralized, and free.

At launch, Canto provides an EVM execution layer via Ethermint, secured by a Proof of Stake Cosmos SDK consensus layer, in addition to core Free Public Infrastructure (FPI) primitives. These primitives include:

• Canto DEX — a zero-fee DEX for liquidity providers

• Canto Lending Market (CLM) — a pooled lending Compound v2 fork

• NOTE — a fully collateralized unit of account token issued by the CLM which also serves the ecosystem as a USDC/USDT soft-pegged stablecoin

Over time we expect this stack to change significantly and new financial primitives to be added to best fulfill the Canto mission.

Core Tenets

Canto’s goal is to become the best execution layer for original work. Canto accomplishes this in three ways:

Liquidity as a Free Public Good:

Zero fees for Liquidity Providers (LPs). Canto makes liquidity free for protocols, arbitrageurs and traders.

Rent Extraction Resistant:

Canto aims to establish Free Public Infrastructure. Core DeFi primitives will not have sovereign governance tokens, nor the capacity to extract rent in the future.

Minimal Viable User Capture:

Where possible, Canto avoids interface-driven user ownership. Public infrastructure DEXes will have no swapping interface, so all users must trade on third-party aggregators. This will facilitate user acquisition for new protocols.

Approach to Decentralization

Canto is designed to support free public infrastructure, while eliminating centralized incentives:

• There is no official foundation.

• There was no presale.

• There is no vesting.

• There are no venture backers.

Community Engagement

Canto is a distributed community of DeFi advocates for a free public infrastructure.

Though the initial Canto contributors have created the following resources for Canto announcements and details, there are no official Canto channels or branding assets, as any Canto community member can create resources, channels, imagery and discussion on Canto.