The machine that closes a conflicted deal — fairly

Continuum.

When a PE fund ends but its best company isn't done, the manager sells it to himself. Continuum is the closing room that makes that deal provably fair — on Canton.

● Live on Canton 5N devnet 6 custodied parties one atomic close
Build on Canton · Encode

02 — The case

the conflict, and the six checks on it

A fund is ending. One company is still too good to dump.

So the manager moves it into a new vehicle. Old investors choose: take cash now, or roll into the new fund. A buyer puts in fresh money.

The catch: the manager runs the old fund and the new one. He is the seller and the buyer's boss. Everyone knows it's a conflict.

So five independent parties are wired in as checks on that one conflict.

sellsOld fund
both sides The Manager (GP) ↤  ↦
managesNew vehicle
seller AND the buyer's manager — one party, both sides of the price
FireblocksGP · orchestratorThe conflicted party — runs the deal
KrollValuerPrices the asset independently
CopperBuyerSealed bid discovers the real price
State StreetLPACSigns it's fair, waives the conflict
NorthgateExiting LPElects SELL — takes cash out
BNYRolling LPElects ROLL — stays in

03 — The problem

integrity depends on trusting the conflicted party

Today, every check runs through the one party with the conflict.

leaksSealed bids and LP elections sit in a data room the GP controls.The party who benefits from the price can see who bid what, and who's exiting.
desyncThe close is a chain of sequenced wires and signatures.One leg out of order and the deal is half-closed — a legal problem, not an operational one.
no proofAuditability is reconstructed after the fact, from emails and PDFs.The LPAC and the regulator trust a story, not a record.

04 — How we solved it

the ledger does the checking — not the GP's server

Take the checks off the conflicted party. Put them in the ledger.

Bids & elections leak in the GP's data room→Per-party privacy, enforced by the ledgereach seat is projected only its own slice — not filtered by our server
Sequenced wires can half-close the deal→One atomic transaction — all legs or nonecash, rolled units, buyer units, burnt old interest: together
Integrity depends on trusting the GP→Each party signs with its own custody keyno shared database any single party owns or operates
Audit is reconstructed from emails→Valuation hash anchored on-chaincarried on the minted units — every seat can verify it

05 — Live demo

follow Copper — watch what a buyer can and cannot see
1Copper · buyer

Bid

A sealed bid goes on-chain. No other buyer — and not the seller — can see the amount.

2Northgate / BNY

Elect

The exiting LP elects SELL, the rolling LP elects ROLL — each private to itself.

3GP · Fireblocks

Close

One atomic transaction: cash out, units in, old interest burned. All-or-nothing.

4any validator

Verify

Query a third-party Canton validator — the minted units and receipt come back as JSON.

Watch #1 · after the sealed bidOpen the Ledger Inspector: the GP's own view does not contain the bid amount. Privacy is live, not promised.
Watch #2 · after the closeThere's no explorer for private contracts — that's the point. A validator I don't control confirms the contracts are live.

Every action pops a real transaction id — that hash is the committed Canton transaction.

06 — How it works

one transaction · six different views

Six seats. Six views. One transaction.

The ledger enforces who sees what — not our app code.

FireblocksGPSEESThe entire dealCAN'TBids stay sealed till clearing
KrollValuerSEESThe asset it pricesCAN'TBids or elections
State StreetLPACSEESTotals + fairness hashCAN'TAnyone's book
one atomic transaction Close all-or-nothing · one ledger commit
no operator holds the whole picture
CopperBuyerSEESOnly its own bidCAN'TRival bids
NorthgateExiting LPSEESIts own cash outCAN'TOthers' elections
BNYRolling LPSEESIts own rolled unitsCAN'TOthers' elections

On a transparent chain everyone sees the bids — the use case dies at slide one. Even the GP can't see sealed bids: that's the check.

07 — Next steps

same six-seat closing room · different deal type

A general engine for multi-party corporate actions. Continuation funds are the wedge.

next

Fund liquidation

A wind-down is the same room — assets out, cash to LPs, all-or-nothing, with a scoped auditor view.

next

NAV fund-finance closes

Multiple lenders commit tranches privately; the drawdown settles atomically against collateral.

next

Tender offers / block crossings

Sealed offers, private elections, one atomic settlement — the same privacy-then-close pattern.

Same participants, same primitives, same codebase. Every one is a conflicted or confidential multi-party close — the exact thing Canton makes possible and a transparent chain cannot.

Thanks

Continuum.

The manager sells to himself — and Continuum is the machine that closes that deal fairly, privately, and all at once, on Canton.

Codegithub.com/kmadorin/continuum-prototype
Live app · Canton 5N devnetcontinuum-custody.fly.dev
StackCanton · Daml · Ed25519 custody
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