Cancore, a Canton-based trading platform positioning itself as a “Liquidity OS for tokenized finance,” has closed a $7.2 million seed round at a $60 million fully diluted token valuation for its planned CNRX token.
The round was backed by Paper Ventures, dao5, ArkStream Capital, X Ventures, MH Ventures and Proof of Talk. Paper Ventures and dao5 took the largest allocations, although no formal lead investor was named. Funding was raised through simple agreements for future tokens, or SAFTs, for the CNRX token, according to co-founder and CEO Wasif Rashid. The company began investor conversations in June, formally started raising in July, and closed the round in mid-September.
Cancore has been live on Canton mainnet since April, operating as both a validator and Featured App. Its stated goal is to connect Canton-native assets, including tokenized real-world assets, with stablecoins and DeFi liquidity on public blockchains. The platform currently supports trading across Canton, Ethereum, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Robinhood Chain and Tron, with Base and Solana integrations planned. Solana is expected after an external security audit.
Rashid described the platform’s approach: “Tokenization puts financial assets onchain. Programmability takes this further, allowing assets to be traded, managed, and settled automatically based on predefined rules, without requiring manual intervention.”
Since launch, Cancore says it has processed more than $86 million in volume across more than 160,000 trades, generating over $700,000 in revenue. An earlier update as of October 1 cited $53.2 million in cumulative volume, more than 84,000 transactions and roughly $538,000 in protocol revenue. The platform charges a 0.5% fee on each side of a trade, adds 10% to Canton network fees, and takes 20% of profits from liquidity pools, with the remaining 80% going to liquidity providers. Cancore emphasizes atomic settlement, meaning trades either complete fully on both chains or both parties are refunded.
The company also plans to expand AI-powered trading through its Model Context Protocol server, eventually letting users create and deploy automated trading agents for strategy execution, portfolio rebalancing and liquidity allocation. It runs a validator on Canton and has locked 5 million CC tokens under CIP-0116.
Investors framed the raise as infrastructure for tokenized capital movement. ArkStream General Partner Ye Su said: “Canton has built strong institutional foundations, and the next step is opening it to broader market liquidity. Cancore is taking a practical approach, with live volume and revenue from day one.” Paper Ventures General Partner Danish Chaudhry added that tokenized markets will need a clearing, settlement and prime-brokerage-style layer, and that Cancore is building that to institutional security standards.
Cancore was founded in late 2025 and has about 10 employees, mainly in the UAE and Pakistan. It plans to hire for engineering, security, AI infrastructure and institutional business development. Rashid previously co-founded blockchain security firm BlockApex, which he said completed more than 125 audits and helped secure over $3.2 billion in assets.
