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A stablecoin transfer on Ethereum moves value, and that’s all it does — a single one-directional token movement, public to anyone, that settles regardless of what the counterparty does. Musubi moves value as an atomic four-leg swap: both currencies change hands in one Canton transaction, the counterparty’s identity is never exposed to the market maker, and no single party can move the assets alone. The reference case throughout this page: party A sends 1,000,000 USDC on Ethereum to party B.

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What’s On-Chain

On Ethereum, the Transfer event is broadcast to the whole network and fires whether or not the receiving side ever expected it. On Musubi, the FXOrder carries party-ids and settlement data only, visible to entitled parties, and settles both legs atomically.

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Atomicity of Settlement

A one-way Transfer is the default on Ethereum — atomicity across two currencies and two counterparties has to be engineered on top, with bridges, escrows, or trust. On Musubi, atomic delivery-versus-payment is the contract: ExecuteSettlement exercises FXOrder.Settle in the same DAML transaction.

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Privacy of the Trade

Ask: “who is on the other side of this 1M trade, and what rate did they get?”
Anyone can read it:
  • The full transfer is on a public ledger — sender address, receiver address, amount, timestamp
  • Address clustering and on-chain analytics link addresses to real-world entities
  • Counterparties, amounts, and timing are visible to every observer, competitor, and indexer
There is no per-trade privacy. Pseudonymity is not confidentiality.
On Ethereum, blinding the counterparty means moving the trade off-chain entirely. On Musubi, the trade is on-ledger and the counterparty identity is still never revealed to the market maker.

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Non-Repudiation and Trust Model

On Ethereum, a single compromised key moves the funds and the transfer is irreversible. On Musubi, settlement requires the cryptographic co-signatures of four independent parties; the operator coordinates and co-submits the four-party settlement but never custodies assets or sets the FX rate. intent_signature is the institution’s non-repudiable proof of intent — you can’t disavow a settlement your custodian co-signed against an intent you signed.

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What You Give Up

Musubi isn’t strictly better — it’s a different trade. Musubi buys atomic, private, dual-controlled settlement at the cost of open access and composability. For cross-border FX between a known set of participants, that is the trade worth making.

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The Structural Point

Public chains broadcast every transfer to every node and settle each leg independently — that is what makes them permissionless and composable, and also what exposes counterparties and leaves cross-currency settlement to bridges and trust. Canton’s sub-transaction privacy lets the FXOrder live on-ledger while showing each party only the parts it is entitled to see, and the four-party signature requirement means the assets move only when every required party co-signs. USDC-on-Ethereum is “one public ledger, one key, one one-way leg.” Musubi is one private record, four signatures, two legs that move together or not at all.
This page compares the operational shape, not the technical merits of EVM vs. Canton as such. Ethereum remains the correct choice for permissionless access and DeFi composability. Musubi is the correct choice for atomic, private, multi-party cross-border FX settlement.