CN Dark Pools

A dark pool trading venue built on the Canton Network. Traders place private limit orders; the venue pairs crossing orders and settles them atomically at the midpoint price. The privacy comes from Canton's per-party data model: an order's only stakeholders are the trader and the venue, so nobody else can see the book.

Live at https://darkpools.cc/.

Monorepo layout

flowchart LR
    subgraph ws["npm workspace packages"]
        FE["frontend/<br/>Trading dApp<br/>:3012"]
        BE["backend/<br/>Dark pool service<br/>:3020"]
        KIT["canton-connect-kit/<br/>wagmi-style Canton wallet hooks<br/>(library)"]
    end
    subgraph daml["standalone Daml project"]
        C["contracts/<br/>Daml smart contracts"]
    end
    subgraph bin["pre-built binary"]
        W["wallet/<br/>Carpincho extension"]
    end

    FE -->|REST| BE
    BE -->|JSON Ledger API| C
    FE -->|uses| KIT
    KIT -->|CIP-0103| W

    click FE "frontend/"
    click BE "backend/"
    click KIT "canton-connect-kit/"
    click C "contracts/"
    click W "wallet/"

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You can explore the structure interactively at map.darkpools.cc, a full atlas of the stack down to individual modules.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 24
• npm >= 7
• Carpincho browser extension (see wallet/README.md)
• Docker (for the containerized backend)
• dpm with SDK 3.4.11 + JDK 17+ (contracts only)

Setup

npm install

One install links every workspace package. No per-package install step needed.

Running the frontend

npm run app:dev

Opens at http://localhost:3012. Click Connect Carpincho and approve in the extension.

The frontend reads its data from the backend at VITE_DARK_POOL_API (defaults to http://localhost:3020).

Running the backend

npm run backend:up       # Docker
# or, for local dev without Docker:
npm run backend:dev      # tsx watch

API at http://localhost:3020. Defaults to mock mode (in-memory ledger, no Canton node), see backend/README.md for live-ledger configuration.

Building the contracts

cd contracts
npm install      # vendors Daml dependencies + builds harness DARs
npm run build    # builds all four Daml packages
npm test         # runs the Daml Script test suite

See contracts/README.md for deployment.

Common commands

npm run app:dev           # start the frontend dev server
npm run backend:dev       # start the backend with tsx watch (mock mode)
npm run backend:up        # build + start the backend Docker container
npm run backend:down      # stop the backend container
npm run backend:logs      # tail backend container logs
npm run backend:test      # run backend unit tests
npm run lint              # biome check across all workspace packages
npm run lint:fix          # auto-fix lint issues
npm run format            # biome format