Canton tightens its Featured App rewards with on-chain locking requirements

The @CantonFdn has approved CIP-0116, tightening the requirements for Featured App status on @CantonNetwork by making it conditional on locking canton-network:native tokens on-chain. The change shifts qualification away from a discretionary governance review and toward objective, verifiable criteria.

New Locking Thresholds

Under CIP-0116, non-issuer apps must lock 5 million $CC per participant identity to qualify for Featured App status. Asset-issuer apps face a higher bar of 25 million $CC. Apps that are already listed as Featured Apps have 30 days to meet the new thresholds or lose their status.

The move is a meaningful evolution in how Canton governs app incentives. Only Featured Apps with an approved FeaturedAppRight contract earn minting rewards, with approval previously requiring review of user base, transaction volume estimates, fraud prevention controls, and smart contract audit status. CIP-0116 adds a concrete financial commitment on top of that process, meaning applicants must now demonstrate skin in the game through locked capital, not just paperwork.

Targeting Reward Farming

The policy addresses a structural risk in Canton's reward model. From January 2026, 62% of the total rewards pool goes to featured applications, representing around 516 million $CC shared among app providers every month. With that scale of reward available, the Featured App designation was becoming a target for low-effort or speculative applications looking to capture emissions without contributing genuine utility.

The locking requirement raises the cost of entry for opportunistic participants. Real, production-ready applications with committed capital will continue to qualify. Apps built primarily to farm rewards, without the economic commitment to back them up, will find it significantly harder to meet the threshold.

The proposal fits a broader pattern of Canton governance using on-chain economic commitments to align incentives. Super Validators are already required to lock 70% of their lifetime $CC rewards to maintain full governance weight, aligning governance participation with long-term economic exposure. CIP-0116 extends that same logic to the application layer.

Canton's governance framework allows anyone in the community to make proposals and suggest Canton Improvement Proposals (CIPs), which are voted on by Super Validators under a two-thirds supermajority threshold. CIP-0116 cleared that threshold and takes effect immediately for new applicants, with the 30-day grace period applying to existing Featured Apps.

Sources
Canton Foundation CIPs repository, GitHub
Canton Network: Earn with every transaction
Messari: Understanding Canton Network