Latest in Blockchain | December 17, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update. I’ll be switching up my publishing cadence. The goal is to deliver faster news when relevant and more complete coverage when relevant. This means I’ll be publishing in the latter half of the day much more often. Let’s dive in.

DTCC announces its first external blockchain partner…

…and it’s a little-known, little-mentioned network called the Canton Network. The Canton Network has under 100 thousand followers on Twitter, for example, while the Ethereum- and Solana-linked Twitter accounts have around 4 million each. The Canton Network is better known among certain banking insiders. Its design was influenced by, and built for, large institutions, namely banks.

We also got a second look at the timeline to tokenization of stocks held by the Depository Trust Company (DTC), the relevant subsidiary of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). In its Canton Network announcement, it highlighted the first half of 2026 as a pilot period with the Canton Network.

As a reminder, the DTCC just received a no-action letter from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its plan for the DTC to tokenize stocks. The looming question in the immediate aftermath has been exactly what the DTCC will do next. A major question has been how DTCC will approach decisions around blockchain network partners, the competitive landscape, and regulatory questions beyond the legality of tokenizing stocks.

Aside from learning that the Canton Network exists, what else should we take away from this news? First, the DTCC is a legacy player entering a non-legacy space. It makes sense its first announcement is partnering with a friend to legacy players exploring a non-legacy space. Second, the pathway to normal people like us interacting with the DTCC’s tokenized stock plan in the real world remains completely unclear. From that perspective, it does seem that other players, like Ondo and BackedFi with its xStocks lineup, are way ahead of the DTCC. Third, the DTCC’s other blockchain partnership announcements, or at least how its list of approved blockchain networks expands, will be quite interesting. Something to keep an eye on.

Don’t tell users in Iran to use a VPN to evade US sanctions

A custodial wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet where a third party holds, manages, and controls assets on your behalf. The Coinbase app is an example. A good analogy is to stock brokerage accounts, which hold assets for your benefit.

A self-custodial wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet that you hold and manage. Self-custody wallets, and the concept of self-custody more broadly, is one of the few things that most inspires and interests me in the whole onchain world. Self-custody wallets enable direct connections to blockchain networks. The contents of the wallet are tracked on the relevant blockchain network, not a third-party database. The seed phrase allows the holder to see the contents of the wallet from any interface for the network. If you want to try it out, you can download the iOS app built by my friends at Meridian Research here.

This introduction is critical background for understanding yesterday’s news from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). OFAC handles elements of enforcing US sanctions placed on people and governments. All else being equal, if you are a company, you would really prefer to not get in a tussle with OFAC.

OFAC has been something of a longstanding thorn in the side of the onchain world’s approach, or hopes, for the future of finance. Certain expectations that OFAC places on companies present challenging questions for self-custodial wallet providers. The onchain world’s view is that the whole point is that it is self-custodial. The company isn’t managing, in fact shouldn’t manage, the happenings in that wallet. Therefore, if a sanctioned individual uses a self-custodial wallet interface built by a company, the company shouldn’t be responsible for that. The company isn’t creating, managing, offering that sanctioned individual an account. It certainly isn’t reviewing that person’s transactions, or approving them, or anything similar.

But just because that’s the onchain world’s view doesn’t mean it’s OFAC’s view. What is OFAC’s view? OFAC’s view becomes known, in part, through its enforcement actions. Yesterday and today, Crypto Twitter discussions implied some real concern about a recent settlement between OFAC and a self-custody wallet developer:

“The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today announced a $3,103,360 settlement with Exodus Movement, Inc. ("Exodus") to settle its potential civil liability for 254 apparent violations of OFAC’s sanctions on Iran.”

The Crypto Twitter narrative sounded something like what I described above. How can OFAC place responsibility on a self-custody wallet? This would end the concept of self-custody wallets! That’s what it sounded like.

Well, I read the settlement agreement. That narrative is simply unfair. It’s not the right narrative. The right narrative is much, much simpler. The right narrative is one that anyone, whether they know about a self-custody wallet or don’t, can understand almost immediately.

The right narrative: Iran is an extremely sanctioned country under US law. Do not, under any circumstance, suggest that individuals in Iran having trouble using your platform due to US sanctions use a virtual private network (VPN) to evade US sanctions. If you read the settlement agreement, or even the first couple pages, it becomes exceedingly clear that is what OFAC took issue with in this case. Yes, the company provided a self-custody wallet. But also:

“From October 17, 2017 through January 4, 2019, Exodus provided technical and support services by responding to customer inquiries from Exodus Wallet users who identified themselves as located in Iran on 254 occasions. In doing so, Exodus staff also regularly recommended the use of VPNs to users in Iran to address various challenges they faced, including access issues posed by OFAC prohibitions and Iranian government restrictions on Internet access, as well as privacy concerns and certain technical issues…Furthermore, on several occasions Exodus staff provided customer support services to customers in Iran after the users explicitly asked whether U.S. sanctions on Iran could impact their use of Exodus Wallet.”

I mean, come on.

Coinbase is coming for DTCC (not exactly)

Coinbase is a company that exists off-chain, as in it is a publicly traded company listed on NASDAQ, to build things for and related to the on-chain world. It is best known for its centralized exchange (CEX) for crypto assets and app for engaging with that exchange. It is a really big company!

A couple times per year, it does big announcement keynotes. They’re not quite Apple productions, but they are fun to watch if you’re like me and write a newsletter on things happening in the blockchain world.

Coinbase announced a lot of things, but it was the final announcement, in the last few minutes, that caught my attention: Coinbase Tokenize. From Coinbase:

“To begin down that path, we plan to launch Coinbase Tokenize, our new end-to-end institutional platform for tokenizing real-world assets. Tokenize will bring together all the necessary infrastructure to power access to tokenized stocks on Coinbase. Stay tuned early next year for updates.”

You already read the DTCC news. I have mentioned Ondo many times. I have also mentioned that there are already tokenized stocks trading on the Solana network, which you can go and buy right now (extremely not financial or legal advice!). Coinbase is in the game now, very officially. Tokenized stocks, at least as an experiment, are inevitable, as I say here on the Meridian Update with increasing regularity.

I’ll leave you with something funny: will Coinbase tokenize its own stock? Is that kind of, I don’t know, a bit of a bad vibe? And how will it feel to not be the first company to tokenize your own stock?

That’s a wrap

New publishing schedule is officially live. I hope you enjoy it. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.

Think we missed something today? Send us a note: email@meridianupdate.com.