By the end of this guide you'll have a working CCTools account, a connected wallet, a portfolio view of your Canton holdings, and you'll know how to use the leaderboards, governance feed, and Featured Apps directory to track what's happening on the network day-to-day.
Before you start
- An email address (we support magic-link and Google login).
- A Canton wallet — any party address you control on mainnet.
- About 30 minutes of uninterrupted time (most of it reading, not doing).
What you'll build
A fully-configured CCTools profile: wallet-connected portfolio, gamification level ≥ 3, at least one ecosystem upvote cast, governance notifications enabled, and a first Academy post read. This is the baseline setup most Pro users reach in their first session.
Steps
Create your CCTools account
Go to [/signup](/signup) and pick magic-link login (fastest). You'll get an email with a single click-to-sign-in link. Once inside you'll land on the [Overview](/overview) page — live Canton price, traffic, and network stats.
Your account starts at Level 1 · Newcomer with 0 XP. Every action (connecting a wallet, voting, submitting a post) earns XP and builds reputation.
If you use Google login you'll skip the email step entirely. Both methods create the same account type.
You land on /overview with your avatar in the top-right corner and Level 1 shown in the sidebar profile card.
Connect your first Canton wallet
Click Portfolio in the sidebar, then Add wallet. Paste your party address — the long string that looks like `username::1220abcd...`. CCTools will verify the address on-chain and start ingesting your balance, rewards history, burns, and transfers.
You can add multiple addresses. The portfolio aggregates all of them into a single CC total, USD value, and reward timeline.
# Example party address format
alice::1220abf3e9d2...4f91
# NOT your email, NOT your profile slug —
# the on-chain identifier from your Canton wallet.CCTools is read-only with your wallet. We never request signing keys or write access. If a prompt ever asks for a private key, close it immediately.
Portfolio shows a CC balance, a 30-day reward sparkline, and a 'Hydrating…' indicator that clears within 60 seconds.
Skim the Overview dashboard
The [Overview](/overview) page is your 90-second daily read. Top row: CC price, 24h volume, market cap, circulating supply. Middle: traffic (on-chain messages/min), burn rate, active validators. Bottom: what's happening right now — new governance proposals, fresh academy posts, trending ecosystem projects.
Everything on this page refreshes every 5 minutes from Lighthouse + CoinGecko + our internal Canton indexer.
Bookmark /overview as your browser homepage. Most Pro users check it once per day like a market open.
Explore the ecosystem directory
Click Ecosystem — this is a curated directory of every project building on Canton. Each card shows the project's category (DeFi, RWA, infra), team, socials, and a composite score based on transparency, activity, community, and docs.
Open a project detail page and you'll see: on-chain parties, reward share, engagement metrics, and (for some) a live token chart. Upvote the ones you actually use — your upvotes count toward the [Ecosystem leaderboard](/leaderboard) and reward the project's team.
The 'Compare' tool (/ecosystem/compare) lets you put 2-4 projects side by side on score, rewards, and activity. Useful before allocating capital.
Read a Featured App detail page
From [Featured Apps](/apps), click into any app (e.g. Digital Asset). You'll see: the rank in the issuance pool, total CC rewards all-time, on-chain party addresses, reward share percentage, and the last 30 rounds of rewards with USD value.
This is the most important page if you care about who's actually earning from the Canton economy. The rankings update every 10 minutes.
The app detail shows a rank badge (#1 amber, #2 silver, #3 bronze), a rewards table, and a link out to /ecosystem if the app is registered.
Track governance in real time
Click Governance. You'll see active proposals — each with weight, status (In Progress / Executed / Rejected), SV vote tally, and a 'days left' countdown. Pro users can enable push notifications (Settings → Notifications → Governance) to get pinged the moment a new proposal lands.
CIP numbers in the titles link to the full proposal text. Most proposals are routine (price feed updates, SV rotations) but occasional ones reshape the network (protocol upgrades, issuance tweaks).
Governance proposals typically run for 7 days. If you see one with less than 24h left and you care about the outcome, that's your signal to engage.
Level up by doing things
CCTools has a gamification layer. Every meaningful action earns XP:
Connecting your first wallet: +50 XP
Casting an upvote on ecosystem / academy: +5 XP
Submitting an ecosystem project: +200 XP
Publishing an Academy post: +300 XP
Weekly streak bonus: +25 XP
Levels map to tier names (Newcomer → Explorer → Analyst → … → Canton OG at Level 46+). Your level appears on your public profile, on the leaderboard, and on anything you publish in Academy.
After completing steps 1–6 you should be at roughly Level 3 · Explorer with 80+ XP. Check Profile → Overview to verify.
Troubleshooting
My wallet shows 0 CC balance even though I know I have some
Two common causes: (1) the party address is slightly off — double-check you copied the full string including the `::1220...` suffix; (2) the Lighthouse indexer is still hydrating — first sync takes up to 60 seconds. If it persists more than 5 minutes, open a ticket from Settings → Support.
Magic-link email never arrived
Check spam first (it's always spam). If not there within 2 minutes, request a new link — sometimes the SES rate limiter throttles a single email to 1 link per 60s. If repeated attempts still fail, switch to Google login from the same page.
My Featured App rank doesn't match what I see on other dashboards
CCTools ranks by all-time CC rewards. Other dashboards sometimes rank by 30-day rewards or by TVL. Both are valid — they're just different metrics. The exact methodology is linked at the bottom of /apps.
I can't find where to submit an ecosystem project
From [/ecosystem](/ecosystem), click Submit a project in the top-right. You need a live website, at least one social link, and a one-paragraph description. Submissions go to the admin queue and typically take 24–48 hours to review.
Further reading
Your daily dashboard — price, traffic, trending.
Every project building on Canton, with scores and links.
Who's earning from the issuance pool, ranked.
Live proposals with SV vote tallies.
Long-form articles and guides — this series included.